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?"

Comments

i was thinking about them today...

[johansalk]

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.

Re:i was thinking about them today...

[TuataraShoes]

With ever increasing requirements to have your identity recorded by government, shown on demand, and your actions tracked... there is a fundamental shift in the relationship between the people and the state.

GOOD

• Government must serve people
• Policeman at door must identify himself to citizen
• People left alone to prosper - no presumption of guilt
• Government accountable to people

BAD

• Government monitor people
• Policeman require people (doing nothing wrong) to identify themselves
• People tracked to see if they are doing anything wrong
• People must justify themselves to government

Ask yourself, who serves whom?

Moral: Liberty

[BrianGa]

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.

Re:Moral: Liberty

[vijayiyer]

Alas, this is a dying concept. Ask your average person on the street about a national ID card, and they use the "if you've got nothing to hide..." justification. Nowadays, people like to err on the side of perceived safety rather than liberty, and I fear the days of true liberty are numbered (or perhaps already gone). The unfortunate fact is that the pioneers of personal freedom would nowadays be branded as extremist [right/left] wing ideologues.

The database is the problem, not the card!

[Timo_UK]

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...

Why are ID cards a bad thing?

[Moderation abuser]

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/

Re:This is the 8th try...

[jd]

Actually, it's about 60 million, and it has been tried almost yearly since the 1950s. After the Poll Tax fiasco, though, the British are more confident about defeating unpopular Government measures through mass protest. Also, the British tend to regard national ID as an open invitation to dictatorship. (It gives one central authority far too much information about far too many people.)

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, ... Oh.