British ID card program meets resistance


Henry Chu writes in the Los Angeles Times:

For skeptics, the ID cards represent one more intrusion on their privacy, yet another government attempt to keep tabs on a citizenry that’s already among the most monitored on Earth, thanks to the countless cameras mounted in public places.

As repositories of biometric data and potentially other kinds of personal information, national ID cards push Britain closer to being a “database state,” critics say. It might seem like just a big bother now, but it could easily turn into Big Brother later. Fierce opposition has already forced the ruling Labor Party to water down the ID plan since it was conceived several years ago. Once envisaged as mandatory, the cards are now being issued on a strictly voluntary basis for British citizens. They’re also being marketed as a convenient tool for consumers and travelers rather than as the powerful weapon against illegal immigration and terrorism that officials had touted.

But these concessions do not satisfy civil libertarians who insist the program should be abolished. It has already proved to be a colossal waste of time and money, they say, and still harbors sinister potential for government nosing around in the lives of ordinary people.

“It changes the relationship between the state and the individual,” said James Elsdon-Baker, an activist with the organization NO2ID. “Everyone in a free democracy has a certain degree of their private life that they’d like to keep to themselves. It removes that privacy.”