Government property: your identity
Henry Porter writes on the Guardian Comment web site:
People are beginning to see that ID cards are not being introduced so that they can identify themselves but rather so that the government can identify them and keep track of every important transaction in their lives. It is understood that even if you have nothing to hide, you may still have something to fear from a government that lies about its intentions, to say nothing of the governments that may follow in its authoritarian slipstream.
…
You can well imagine the army of snoopers, informers and bureaucratic bullies that will grow up around ID cards. And lest you have any doubt about the will to enforce the scheme, just look at the scale of fines proposed. The failure to register will be punished by a maximum fine of £2,500. The failure to apply in a manner prescribed (whatever that means) to renew your ID, or to inform the national identity register of a change of your details, or to surrender the ID card, or to notify the register of an invalid card, will all incur a maximum fine of £1,000.
Hold these rules in your mind and ask yourself whether a government that was merely interested in your being able to identify yourself would enforce ID cards with these enormous fines. Of course it would not. The fines are a measure of the government’s terrifying determination to make your identity its property.
March 27th, 2006 at 18:31
ID cards will not only be abused by the government; take a look at this article for an example of how ID cards will be abused in the UK should they become law:
ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their driver’s licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through.
But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are registered.
‘’You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone’s whole life as we know it pops up in front of you,’’ said Paul Barclay, the bar’s owner. ‘’It’s almost voyeuristic.’’
Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID’s. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing. ‘’It’s not just an ID check,’’ he said. ‘’It’s a tool.’ …
NY Times
We will all be squeezed on both sides like oranges in a mechanical juicer; one half pressing from industry and business, the other from HMG enforcing the registration and accuracy of the database with punitive fines. Completely apalling.
March 28th, 2006 at 10:18
[...] Henry Porter
Filed under: Civil Liberties — Longrider @ 10:53 am
Via the NO2ID newsblog; this from Henry Porter writing on the Grauniad’s comment is free: You c [...]
March 29th, 2006 at 23:17
Okay, the question now becomes….
Can I renew my passport early and get the full 10 years.
When do I have to set the wheels in motion by?
March 30th, 2006 at 07:06
You can renew your passport any time you like. I renewed last summer with only three years on my old one. They gave me an extra nine months on the new one. You don’t need a reason, just get the forms, pay the money and apply.
March 30th, 2006 at 07:24
It might be amusing to pick a date (late enough to make the point, early enough so that delays and errors won’t push people over the deadline, perhaps 2-3 months?) and try and arrange for as many as possible to renew at that point, giving the lie to Clarke’s statement that hardly anyone would want to avoid the ID card.
This was mentioned here:
http://www.murky.org/archives/2006/03/passports_at_dawn.html
March 30th, 2006 at 13:35
Great idea, Anon. While it is essential for the fight on this to go on, i think we have to accept that if Blair can wade into war on Iraq in the face of the mass opposition there was to that, our only real hope of defeating this monstrous assault on civil liberty is to make it as impractical as possible. If enough of us renew our passports before 2008 (I hope to renew mine in June of this year), then they will be faced with a situation where either they wait a number of years before they can register thousands of us, or they must countenance ordering *all* valid passports be withsdrawn and submitted for reissue and inclusion in the scheme. This might just be enough to choke it….
My biggest worry is how they seem as of the news today to have sold a false compromise which involves the NIR, which is the real threat, not the cards, still being compulsory for passport holders from 2008. All proceeding on the old lie that a passport is a voluntary document…. even if we assume it is realistic for all of us never to travel abroad for personal reasons, so many of us have to for work that they will not find it hard at all, I fear, to get the kind of “voluntary” majority they at one point said would be the watershed mark for then making the whoel deal compulsory… It’s a sorry state of affairs that people in the UK are so apathetic about their liberty that there aren’t riots in the street over this.
April 2nd, 2006 at 14:01
If you do apply for a new passport while your old one still has a few years left to run on it, do you need signatures and counter signatures, does anyone know?
I believe you can simply renew by sending old one back in, with forms and fee and new photie. Am I right in thinking that since old passport proves identity, you don’t need signatures from JP, or similar?
If existing passport still has a few years on it, and mine has six, do you need to give a reason or can you just renew it? I guess they’ll be glad to take our £51? Which is one aspect that worries me. If we get a big spike in renewals to avoid the 2008 registration, won’t we be helping to finance the ID card scheme and database?
And if Labour get back in after 2009/2010 election and make ID cards compulsory, even if we do renew now, won’t they be made invalid anyway by the new legislation Labour will pass? We can hold out, sure, and I hope many do. But the renewed passport can be made invalid, can’t it, which means we can’t travel without going on register and getting an ID card.
All the more reason to fight fight FIGHT this before we ever get to that stage.
But I’m left wondering … with six more years to go on mine, is it worth renewing since whole thing will be resolved, one way or another, long before I have to renew anyway?
Just wondering what people’s thoughts are.
April 5th, 2006 at 17:06
If I recall correctly, the last time I renewed my passport it was necessary to get the photograph signed on the back and the form countersigned by a responsible person unrelated to you. Yes it is a hassle, but if you leave it till the scheme comes in you will ALSO have to go to a registration office.
As for funding the scheme – I doubt the extra £5 they just added on is going to enable or disable the governments plans, however large the spike. If they thought this could pay for the scheme they wouldn’t be proposing to hike the cost to nearly £100.
I too have six years to go. However, remember what is happening with the police DNA database. If you are at the scene of a crime or ever arrested for anything and not convicted your data stays on the database. People have gone to court to get their kids removed from what is effectively a long list of suspects for any future crime. It starts to look like Judge Dredd’s world more and more…
April 5th, 2006 at 22:31
Oh sure Dunx. The police want *everyone* on the DNA database. I believe the outgoing police chief in Staffordshire said as much. Couldn’t see point of ID cards, he said, but he could see point of a national DNA database.
Perhaps ID card database is just a way to soften us up for what they really want, the DNA database? Most of us here, I suspect, have thought all along that this is what it’s really all about. Or one of the things it’s about.
Shall you renew, Dunx? I might, but haven’t decided yet. I believe if you renew an existing passport, you only need to send it in to prove your identity and no signatures are needed. You do need a new photie, done without smiling, and of course the fee.
August 8th, 2007 at 19:05
All this anguish about a command polity with total control acting under faulty or questionable information. Fair enough but there are democratic reforms which would powerfully counter ID cards and other authority nightmares.
For one thing, effective elections could put the ultimate power in the hands of the public. The Establishment are more afraid of the single transferable vote than you are of ID cards. Hence the blocking of the Sunderland report and Richard report, in Wales, which both recommended STV.
Another thing is the need for a second dimension of democracy with a vocational franchise. That is an elected occupational second chamber, giving Equality of Lobbying rather than control by the most powerful big business lobbyists.