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Scrap the National Identity Scheme (’ID cards’)

“Compulsory ID won’t make you safer, and will cost you more than you know. Ask yourself: who owns you?”

2. How does it fit with Compass’ core beliefs of equality, solidarity, democracy, freedom, sustainability and well being?

It is not the place of government in a liberal democracy to ‘manage’ the identities of its citizens. Centralised ID, on the model currently being pursued, is costly, dangerous and authoritarian.

In a free and just society, individuals should not be pigeonholed into ‘official identities’ designed for the adminstrative convenience of the state. Notional national security should not be used to excuse attacks on personal security and liberty, and privacy need not be compromised - the rule of law already provides the means to intrude where absolutely (and demonstrably) necessary.

3. How does it build the institutions of social democracy, like social groups and collective and cooperative forms of ownership and control?

Handing control to citizens is relatively simple, e.g. when you identify yourself to one part of government, you could be given a ‘credential’ - a portable token that government and other organisations could trust. Digital certificates would work fine.

Not an ID card, no lifelong surveillance, and something that you can use or choose not to - but, so long as you can establish you are a citizen or are entitled to be treated as one, the onus would be on government to *prove* its need to discriminate before collecting any personally identifying information.

4. How much will it cost or raise and where will any cost come from?

Scrapping the National Identity Scheme would save at least tens of billions ove the next decade, and remove the serious economic down-drivers and long-term administrative bottlenecks that the current scheme would impose.

In addition, aggressively pursuing genuine data minimisation (collecting only what is absolutely necessary, deleting everything else as soon as possible) would not only save money it would tend to reduce risk of abuse, misuse and system failure/overload.

5. Which groups in the electorate are likely to support or oppose this measure? Is there any polling evidence you have on this?

Independent polls consistently show less than 50% support for ‘ID cards’, and strong (”I’d rather go to prison”) opposition growing to around 1 in 5 - the first actual ID cards haven’t even been introduced yet!

Related polls show 65% no longer trust the government with their personal data. Without trust, any identity system is bound to fail.

Opposition is across the political spectrum, and whenever a particular group is targeted (e.g. union members, students) serious opposition builds.

6. Is there a place or country where it’s worked? Please provide some information.

In countries which have them, ID cards have not prevented terrorism. They do not stop illegal immigration or the black market, nor do they prevent fraud (though NO2ID’s other suggestion, ‘credit freezes’ demonstrably does).

Adding in another layer of centralised (Home Office-controlled!) bureaucracy is the thing least likely to lead to efficiencies in the delivery of public services.

ID can - and has - led to increased discrimination, social exclusion and division and (in extreme cases) the deliberate targeting of vulnerable or disliked groups.

7. What are the three main arguments in favour/against it?

I genuinely cannot think of a single useful purpose for the National Identity Scheme as currently proposed, other than maybe lining the pockets of the big consultancies that win the contracts. For politicians it’s a way of appearing tough on complex social problems, without actually doing anything about them. And for the bureaucrats, as ever, it’s all about control.

Scrapping them would save billions, preserve privacy and autonomy - and send a strong message that we value our liberty more than simplistic, technocratic ’solutions in search of a problem’.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Liberty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.