David Blunkett, the UK home secretary, is attempting to push through laws that require every citizen of the UK to own a biometric ID card, and to submit personal data to a database. Although many attempts at justifying the ID cards have been put forward (leading to suspicion amongst many as to what the real motives of the proposals are), the main thrust of the pro-ID card argument, as it appears to me, is that it would help combat terrorism.
I can see many problems with the ID card system immediately. First, the claim that the current set of identification documents that we use are in some way flawed. How else, other than through these identification documents will the real identity of someone turning up to have their ID card created be validated? If the argument is that our current set of documents are in some way flawed, then, by definition, the proposed ID card system is also flawed!
Secondly, the government is proposing that we all shall pay a flat fee of around £60 for the cards. It’s amazing the apathy in the UK that this announcement was met with.
Thirdly, the government has stated that it will not be necessary to have the ID card on your person at all times. The question of how exactly these cards will combat terrorism, if that is so, naturally arises. Is the government niave enough to think that a terrorist is going to present himself at a police station within a week, complete with identification documents? Is it more likely that a potential terrorist would simply “dissapear”?
Finally, the UK government has an appalling record with IT projects. To say that our private data would be safe in a government run database is to completely ignore the string of government run IT projects which have either failed miserably or needed extensive work on them after their “completion” to bring them up to scratch.
Can anyone see a coherent argument for the introduction of ID cards?
Another point about the ID-card-fights-terrorism argument:
We never needed ID cards when we had the IRA blowing up pubs, trying to assassinate the governing cabinet and mortaring RUC stations in NI. Why are they neccessary now if they weren’t then?
I second your argument about government run IT projects. If they can’t reliably collect child support, then how can we trust them to manage this database?
I have simply never understood quite how ID cards prevent terrorism. To get into the country you need a passport - is this not ID enough? Once in the country the terrorist or illegal alien will simply avoid situations requiring a passport or ID card, and ignore any mandates to present one within a week. If there is evidence that they are involved in criminal or terrorist activity, there is already legislature covering enforced identification and even extension of habeas corpus until such is forthcoming.
It is hard to know where to start when trying to say how bad an idea this is. But I’ll have a go.
Firstly you have hit the primary problem: The proof of ID required to get the cards will be the same ID we already have. So they won’t prove anything at all.
Also how will it prevent terrorism? The 9/11 bods all used their real names and real IDs. There are plenty of British types (not just religious fanatics) who commit terrorist crimes (I’m thinking of the animal rights muppets here)who make no attempt to hide their identity.
Then there is the arguement that if “you got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear” . This may be true for me as a middle aged middle class white man. However what if I had just entered the country? Who is more likely to produce a card - fat, white, prosperous me, or some teenager with a beard wearing a robe? He’s probably got nothing to hide too - but he does now have something to fear.
And finally, and there’s no right-on way of putting this, they’re just not British damn it! Id cards are for two bob countries who can’t maintain the rule of law and don’t trust their citizens. I am always rather proud when I book into a French hotel and am asked “pour votre carte monsieur” and get to tell him that I am British and therefore from a country that is BETTER THAN THIS. It is something to be proud of and this bunch of jackanapes, foodbags, lollygaggers and cockmongers should not be able to take this birthright away - he should stick to banging other bloke’s wives.
I don’t see why a card should be necessary at all. If the biometrics work then you just keep those details in a honking database and ID punters by thumb-print, retina scan, tricorder readout - whatever. If the biometrics don’t work then the whole thing’s a washout. If the system works without cards then what you’ve got to worry about is who gets to control the database. Start worrying now.
As far as I can see the sensible reason for national ID (forget the cards) is that your ID is unique. You can acquire more than one passport or driver’s licence. If your ID is based on your finger prints then that’s gonna be tricky to forge. You cannot pretend to be someone else and no-one can pretend to be you. And unless you’re very careless you are unlikely to leave your thumbs at home. If it is possible to have two identical but “different” IDs then again, the whole project is pointless.
I’m not for or against the system until I hear coherently exactly what the authorities plan to use them for. Terrorism will not be prevented by any ID system. There’s not a lot you can do about suicidal maniacs… If it is really about benefit fraud identity theft then flippin’ say so. Terrorism is irrelevant
I’ve not bothered to follow the debate (such as it’s been) since most people deliberately or otherwise miss what I think is the point.
And what +MDI said about goverment IT projects, not a hope.
What I find terribly disappointing is that the people who should be telling Blunkett to stuff it - ie his own bloody party - are going to meekly shuffle into the “aye” lobby come the glorious day.
Benefit fraud is not really a biG issue here - the amounts are tiddly - especially compared with what the, non-working, computers and civil servants are going to cost (and criminals are pretty bright - they’ll find a way around this. Remember that this ID card is only as good as the weakest existing system in the EU for this. So if you can fiddle, for instance, Latvia’s ID system you can still sign on here)
Quite apart from the massive scope for abuse, curtailing of rights and identity theft, the scheme isn’t going to work because it bears all the familiar marks of the Great British IT Disaster;
We don’t exactly know what it’s going to do, but we think that it’s all jolly exciting and sure to be useful once we’ve got it.
So we’re going to throw about lots of vague notions that we think sound good. Come back to us next month and we’ll have another, entirely different, list. Just don’t ask us to explain how we intend anything to work.
-Actually, there’s a few others that did occured to us right at the start. But they’re not likely to go down well with the electorate just now. So mums the word about them for the moment!
Because we’re not terribly sure about what it’s going to do, our functional specifications are going to be a bit woolly, full of vague waffle that politicians are very good at but is useless in IT. No-one will pick up on this because no-one’s entirely sure whose needs we should be designing to. But we’ll all be pretty sure that some-one somewhere is happy about all this and knows what’s going on, cos it sure isn’t us.
Because our functional spec is so vague the contractors given millions to do the job will interprete every single sentence in a way that best suits them. i.e. what’s easiest to do and most profitable.
It’s all very exciting because no-one has tried such an ambitious project before. Contractors will try out their very latest whizzo technology that they’ve already assured everyone will definitely wark and be the future, safe in the knowledge that the customer isn’t likely to default on payment.
Once it’s nearly finished no-one will know how to test it, because no-one has any real idea of what needs we’re supposed to be testing it against. Was it terrorism, or was it immigration, or health services, or crime, or whatever else was the latest hot topic?
-When it inevitabley doesn’t match the needs that are finally settled on the contractors will point back to the original specifications and ask “Where does it say that?” safe in the knowledge that their backs are covered, because, of course, it doesn’t.
-Not that it matters, because it won’t work properly anyway because the whizzo stuff originally selected turned out to be a total technological dead-end five years previously not long after the project started.
The contractors will walk away, employing 50 lawyers (using 1/100th of their profits from the venture) to defend their role in the disaster and the tax-payer picks up the bill.
Not really. I mean, we get outraged about stuff, march on the streets, 90% of the country is against something and they just go ahead and do it anyway.
I can hardly muster more than a ‘meh’ anymore either.
We know it’s a pointless idea, we know it won’t, we know they’re going to do it anyway…
Grauniad reports that the ID card is set for 2008, when it will cost at least £85 with the threat of a £2500 fine. The anti-ID group No2ID already has 50,000 members promising non-cooperation.
This is the Tories’ battlecry for 2009, just as the Poll Tax ultimately did for them in the 1990’s. The best thing about such a law is that breaking it doesn’t require one to dress up like a supercilious inbred twat and chase a fox with 100+ animals where a single rifle would do, but only for us all to sit on our arses and tell someone to fuck off.
To be perfectly honest, I’d be quite comfortable with the idea of a national ID card (under certain conditions, including that it replaced a passport), if not for the fact that the guy pushing it all is Blunkett; he seems to be on a crusade against human rights; pushing for trial without jury, arrest and detention without warrant or evidence, guilty until proven innocent. I don’t trust the guy.
Another serious obstacle is likely to be that whatever system they implement to generate and manage the ID database and produce the cards is certain to be the biggest fuck-up in recorded history.
I think Blunkett has decided long ago that it is not possible to be too right-wing on tackling crime + terrorism.
I don’t trust him either. Apparently when a recent DNA test showed he was the father of a married woman’s baby, his spokesman said ‘dark forces’ were trying to destroy Blunkett. Just another sleazy politician desperately trying to stay in power.
‘The wronged husband in a sex scandal that threatens to bring down Home Secretary David Blunkett has vowed in an interview to fight for custody of his wife’s child.’
From 2005 when you renew your passport you will automatically be given an ID card as well.
THis system will last for two years (during which I will have to renew my passport, along with lots of others), after that it will be mandatory to get one, even if you don’t want a passport.
THis is the worst idea yet by the worst governement since The Marquis of Bute.
Um, surely you remember the Falklands / poll tax / miner’s strike? :eek:
I am depressed at Tony Blair turning into Margaret Thatcher - but that’s because the Thatcher Government (and several of those that followed) had major weaknesses.