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Blunkett Backs Down on UK ID Cards
Anonymous Brave Guy writes "Some people don't like the civil rights concerns. Some think they'll cost too much. Some think they'll lead to more identity theft than identity verification. Some think governments can't manage big database projects and there are bound to be mistakes and over-runs. Any way you look at it, compulsory ID cards have a lot of potential drawbacks, so is the UK's Home Secretary, David Blunkett, starting to back down from the idea? Combining ID cards with passports and driving licenses was the key way to force them on an often unwilling UK population, and seems to have gone for good, but apparently legislation to bring in some form of ID card is still likely in the next Queen's Speech. Is it the beginning of the end of a bad idea, or just more spin to dodge the remaining concerns?"
Well, ever the thinker, I was thinking about them as I was admiring our little society today as i walked through a typical UK small-city center. No, keep ID cards and militarized police with their guns away from our peaceful, naturally liberal spots.
There was an old british show called Yes Minister. It was on the air from 79-81, and it was about a newly apointed minister in the british government (like a cabinet secretary in the US), and satired how politics ran, with pandering and incompetitant politicians and the civil service who really ran the show, but had to make the politicians feel like they were in charge and so on. It's quite funny. Anyways, back in 1980, they were discussing the creation of this national database and they had already run though how it was going to be a disaster and nobody would like it and such. It's interesting how when they could see the problems that would arise from this system 24 years ago and spoof it on TV, that it would take to long for the government to catch up to the BBC.
It just goes to show that there are a lot of nice sounding reasons for us to give up some freedom and have it nickled and dimed to death, but there is one main reason to keep freedom and that is freedom. Unlike these other things, liberty is an end in itself - it derives from the fact that people are creatures of choice and not like the animals. There is no such thing as too much liberty ... it would be like saying that science is too rational.
I already have an ID that I carry everywhere. It is called a driver's license.
... well, then F' that.
I don't see how an National ID card changes anything. Especially for a country like the UK where the driver's licenses are issued by the national government.
So one want to explain (in relation to driver's licenses):
1) How this costs me any freedom I haven't already given up?
2) How this is supposed to stop terrorism?
OK, if you want to solve other problems like (a) long haul truck drivers having multiple IDs to avoid insurance/ticket issues, or (b) the fact that we are running out of Social Security numbers and will have to assign babies the numbers of dead people, I am OK with solving things like that.
And, if it is just one more card I have to carry in my already crowded wallet (thank you gorcery store loyalty cards)
But I fail to see how this is the end of the world or the world's saviour.
I don't think that a nat'l ID is such a bad thing. Most people already carry multiple forms of ID anyway. A standard would make it easier. Case in point, my friend doesn't have a driver's license, and many bars have turned down his state issue alternative, becuase it's not familiar.
The key element is with how it's used. I don't want to have to swipe my RFID ID to use the pisser at the mall. There needs to be rules about how and when an ID can be required.
Yeah I know that this is a UK topic, but hey, at least I spoke [typed] generally.
While I'm sure you enjoyed bashing Kerry, the fundamental difference between the US and Western Europe is that in most countries over there, the individual still has control over his/her data, meaning a company cannot resell the data without the individual's consent so having some form of national ID is not such a problem over there as it doesn't open the door to big corporations tracking your every move...
Not that this has anything to do with delaying implementations of unpopular laws though....
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If the US were to adopt a universal ID like the one advocated for England, I could only predict a security nightmare. Rest assured that calls for a US national ID will be on the lips of so many politicians if (when) there is another terrorist attack. Yet, far from improving the situation, a national ID would make the US less secure. For one, a national ID would greatly simplify the counterfeiting process. And for another, thieves would reap infinitely greater illicit rewards for stealing wallets. I'm glad the English are rejecting their proposal. (Really scare derivative thought: a global ID! EEK!)
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From the article....
Plans to combine new compulsory identity cards with passports and driving licences have been dropped by Home Secretary David Blunkett.
and then it goes on to say that .....
The legislation to allow ID cards is widely expected to be promised in next month's Queen's Speech.
So, all they have done is backed down on plans to combine ID cards with other forms of ID.
We will still have to get ID cards, and *pay* for the prililage!.....
But the Home Office said the prices remained unchanged: people would pay either £35 for a stand-alone ID card or £77 for a passport and ID card together.
WTF! I have to get this by law, *and* i have to pay for it. So it's a TAX then?!
ID cards are unnecessary. They are just jumping on the 'Total control prevents Terrorism' bandwagon, and we all know that's a load of BS.
This is why no one in the UK trusts labour anymore. The sooner GW's lap dog is kicked out of office the better.
I keep hearing concern over things like a national ID card or other mandatory identification system. However, these sorts of worries just distract us from the real privacy concerns.
Pragmatically we already have national ID cards. Between drivers liscensces, passports and social security cards we have all the disadvantages of a national ID card. I can barely get through a day, much less a lifetime without these IDs.
The fact that I *could* theoretically get along without these cards doesn't mean anything. If I created a national DNA database (full DNA which could be tested for diseases) it wouldn't be okay if I allowed people to pay $100 to opt out.
Continuing to crow about things like national ID cards distracts from real issues of privacy. Defating national ID schemes gives us empty victories that make us think we are maintaining our privacy.
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Personally I think maintaining privacy, at least in the traditional sense, isn't a viable option. Even if we win every legislative victory it is too easy to give corporations access to our personal data for a minor convenience. The fact that a few privacy minded individuals might avoid this net makes no difference in the big picture. Any societal harms will still occur even if 1% of society is not in any database.
Privacy, despite the name, is not a personal issue. The harms are not individual, accuring to you because your information is in a database but rather societal resulting from the fact that a large enough percentage of people are in databases.
Instead of fighting minor skirmishes against ID cards while our privacy is eroded behind our back we should try and minimize the negative social effects of privacy. The primary danger that erosion of privacy provides is that effective privacy will be availible only to the rich. This is already happening....cameras aren't put in well to do suburbs.
I contend this is the primary danger from losing privacy. Everyone does socially unacceptable things behind closed doors, be it smoking joints or having kinky sex. If we don't make sure privacy is lost by the well-off at the same rate it is lost by the poor we risk exagerating the problems we have in the war on drugs. Namely, where the poor and minorities are targeted, either legally or just by insurance companies and public opinion, for their 'inappropriate behavior' while the rich get a free pass.
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All the biometric data will be stored centrally, so the cops don't even need your card to find out who you are, the simply take a fingerprint. This is COMPLETELY different from German, French etc, cards and goes way beyond them. Why the media don't point that out is beyond me...
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The "If you've nothing to hide" and all that argument. Well, ask the Jews in Germany with the J stamp on their ID cards, or the Rwandans who were massacred because their ethnicity was mentioned on their card whether they thought they had anything to hide.
You may well think you have nothing to hide today, but tomorrow ID cards are the perfect discrimination tool, that is after all the whole purpose for an ID card.
Why ID cards are useless, or at least, the arguments given for them so far are bogus:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/A2561834
UK campaign against ID cards:
http://www.no2id.net/
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Mind you, the British have changed their minds in the past. The reason Nynex laid all the cables in Britain is that British Telecom were banned from doing so in the 1940s. The reason for the ban was that cable networks were seen as dangerous, as in the event of a dictatorial Government, the media would be controllable from a central point. (It was also argued that if people didn't have radio receivers, it would be harder for resistance groups to communicate unobtrusively by radio.)
Today, of course, we wouldn't dream of having an unelected foreign Government dictate British policy, control British troops, invade British businesses,
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You think that because you are issued an ID card that you won't also have to carry your driving license, your credit cards, your library card, your Rotary Club card?
No, it's an *additional* ID that you will have to carry.
Not only that. To be remotely effective it is an ID which it must be compulsory to carry, that means fines and jail time if you don't. The UK ID scheme requires that an individual register with the state *and tell it where you live*. You move house and forget to tell the government, you get fined. You don't tell them you also live at your girlfriends? That's an offense.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
And if you're having a small car accident somewhere and both parties don't want to bother calling the police you can quickly exchage your (authenticated!) name.
In effect, the ID card is a downsized version of the ID card that is already part of EU passports (the plastic, machine-readable part). And there's no secret information stored on it either, because you can tell how the information is encoded in the two machine-readable lines of text:
- The lead string "ID" to calibrate the card readers.
- Surname
- First mame
- Number of the ID card
- Country issued
- Date issued
- Expiration date
- Checksum
Say Cowboy Neal was born in Britain on 1 January 1977 and had an ID card that expired on the UNIX epoch (just making this up), then his entry could read (assuming the British card follows the European model):(X, Y, Z being check digits I can't be bothered to compute right this morning, and the spurious blank is inserted bySo it's very simple and transparent, no Orwellian tech built in. That's why I love my (German) ID card and always carry it (even in Britain) to give evident that I'm me (and not Elvis), fly around without having to remember did I forget my passport, and yet nobody can easily abuse the system.
A biometric passport, on the other hand, would be a completely different matter...
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Seriously *HUGE*. Banks, Post Offices, Hospitals, Doctors, DWP offices, Police Offices would all need access and specialised biometric kit to demonstrate that the cards are valid.
An ID card system would be far far larger and more complex than the NHS IT system. The estimated 3 billion cost is a joke. A white elephant doesn't begin to describe it, a white Mammoth might.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Is it the beginning of the end of a bad idea, or just more spin to dodge the remaining concerns?
No silly - there is an election coming up.
And he is probably number one in the world in terms of rolling back civil liberties. Note that I say rolling back - there are a lot of places worse than Russia, but they have been that way from a long time. Russia is actively moving back towards totalitarianism.
I've said this several times before in slashdot id card discussions, but I've yet to have a sensible explanation for it.
Why do I need to carry biometric data about my eyes and fingerprints with me, when I'm already taking my actual eyes and fingerprints?
If we are going to be identified by biometric data, how can looking at a forgable, breakable, swappable, stealable card be more reliable than looking at the actual evidence?
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You forgat to add - his typical tactic on new laws is to set the bar too high, wait for the initial balking to die down, and then reset the bar a little lower and generally gets the law passed with a little grumbling. That is a dishonest abuse of process and highlights the low class of characters that are in office in the UK. This is true of most politicians in western democracies at the moment.
We could see all this as one big soap opera, if it wasn't for the fact that it affects real lives.
Can someone explain why there is a push for ID cards of this sort?
The explanation is that David Blunkett is a facist control freak in a department of facist control freaks.
The justification given for these cards has varied over the last 5 years with the current bogey man e.g. asylum seekers(codeword for illegal imigrant), benefit fraud(at one point they were trying to pass them off as "entitlement cards"), terrorism, identity theft etc. but they have not produced a coherent explanation as to how any of these problems would be solved by their cards.