UK Compulsory ID Plan Shelved

e9th writes "Despite a bump or two along the way, it seemed that compulsory ID cards were a done deal in the UK. Now, the Financial Times is reporting that the scheme has been shelved. Unfortunately, it seems that this was more a matter of convenience than of concern for citizens' privacy."

Comments

I don't get it

[Jurily]

What's all the uproar about ID cards? It's not like you don't use photo ID (and credit cards) everywhere already. This looks like it just standardizes the process.

Re:I don't get it

[corsec67]

When they aren't required, it is harder for the police to force you to show them. In the US, if you aren't driving a car, then you don't need to carry anything showing who you are.

I am currently living in Japan, so I have an ID that has my identity, and I am required to carry that (or my passport) on my person at all times. This means that if a police officer stops me, they can require my producing identification documents.

Having a standard format for an ID maybe be useful, but then the next step is to require people to carry it, and then making it a crime to not present that to a police officer when requested.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

To those who modded this up, rather than the original troll: do you understand the difference between voluntary and obligatory? Between free trade and force?

As it happens, I do have a credit card, but I only use it where I want. And I don't walk around with photo ID. In fact, the only form of vague ID that I do make a point of always carrying is my organ donor card, because, you know, unlike state ID, that's actually going to help "protect" my fellow countrymen from the real scourge of organ failure, as opposed to the imagined scare of terrorists round every corner who mysteriously have less of chance of affecting your life than the lottery.

Re:I don't get it

[Inda]

My wife said "so what" last night too.

I replied:

Next they'll add DNA records to it, and there are already convictions based solely on DNA evidence. DNA is easy to plant, easy to share, impossible not to leave you DNA everywhere. Still happy?

Next they'll say "This little chip could do so much more". All your money will be linked to it.

Next they'll refuse to let you borrow a library book without it. And you'll need to show it on the bus. When you buy alcohol. When you enter any public place.

Next, instead of showing it, you'll have to insert it into the card reader. Now your whole life is tracked. Are you happy about the local dustbin man being able to track you?

Next they'll say "this little chip could be made smaller and inserted under the skin". Still happy to say "so what"

"They wouldn't do that", she said.

"They do with dogs. Happy to be treated like a dog by our lords and masters?"

-----

We'll all be forced to own one eventually. As soon as Tescos and the like require you to insert it when you buy anything.

Voluntary, my arse.

Re:I don't get it

[xaxa]

I'm from the UK, just to clarify things.

I can't remember the last time my photo ID was *required*

They want my passport to leave the country ;-)
I'm young (or at least, young-looking), so sometimes I'm asked for photo ID when I purchase alcohol (or certain medicines, knives and chemicals).
Some nightclubs demand photo ID to enter them. Some even *scan* the ID, I don't know how common this is as I don't go to the big mainstream clubs.

I'm pretty sure the only other "photo ID" I've ever had was a student card, because it got me student discounts.

Most university/college-issued student IDs now have a photo. Whether you need to carry it depends on the university's rules though -- I needed to carry mine to unlock doors.

Also, the problem with ID cards *isn't* either of the above. The problem with ID cards is that we were going to be required to pay for them, that they would "link" several disparate databases together and that there was *no* demonstrated need for them at all.

Exactly.

I don't care so much that the council, train company, countless shops and so on have CCTV of me. I don't care that my university and doctor know about some medical condition, that my employer knows how often I'm ill, that the train company knows if I'm staying out late, that my bank knows what I buy.

What I do care about is people aggregating all that data. Joining it all together gives too much insight into my life.

Re:I don't get it

[infolation]

The 'index' is the important point. The National Insurance Number used to be the method of linking information, but it's now flawed. The government want a 'cradle to grave' index that they can relate to all other databases.

It's what New Labour have called 'joined up government', which translates as join up the relational databases of our subjects.

Re:I don't get it

[RivieraKid]

The point is - the security tradeoff of credit cards, passports, driving licenses, etc makes them worth it. You don't say it, but its implied in your standadisation argument, but a national ID card does not give us, the public, anything at all. The only thing an ID card will do is shift the balance of power ever further in the favour of the government. That is not something any free citizen should accept.

Re:I don't get it

[Ginger Unicorn]

yeah but all those database are separate entities and there is practically impenetrable firewall of bureaucracy and privacy laws stopping them being cross referenced.

Re:I don't get it

[RivieraKid]

The ID card won't - as you say, they already have a huge amount of information on me anyway.

The problem, is that the UK government wants to link each and every database that has information on me together. It is that seemingly innocuous act that makes so much difference. With it, the ID cards goes from a single method of identification to the single way that the government gains all of that power over you. Take for example, the governments use of anti-terror laws to press criminal charges against citizens who put plastic bottles in the normal trash instead of the recycle bin. Or the fact that they used anti-terror laws to sieze the assets of Icelandic banks when their economy collapsed. Precisely how long do you think it's going to be before they start opressing the rest of us once they gain the ability to track every last piece of information about us at the click of a button, in realtime (or at least, near-realtime)? The problem isn't that they can get at the information, the problem is that if they get their way, instead of having to go through due process, and have to track you, they will know exactly where you are going to be and when. The problem is that for all the public condemnation of various communist and dictatorial states, that is precisely where they would love to be - with complete control over the populace. The problem is that they are so dishonest about what they want. They claim it will save us from the boogey man - well, I call shenanigans. Smoking kills more people than Bin Laden. Alcohol kills more. Cars kill more. Cancer kills more. The problem is that the national identity register, and the national ID card programs, are a solution looking for a problem. They will do absolutely nothing for the general public that we don't already have. However, the danger to the public is immense, even assuming we give the government the benefit of the doubt, and trust that there are proper auditing, accounting, and restitution procedures in place to prevent abuse, take the example of the national child register. A huge database of the personal information (including name, date of birth, address, school.....) of every child in Britain. It was put in place to "protect" the children. Again, a threat that is so insignificant compared to other less glamorous threats. This was created at great cost, and the entire database was promptly left on a train, unencrypted on CD that anyone could pop into a computer and read. They couldn't even manage to protect a database of extremely vulnerable people with a fraction of the complexity of what they are proposing - they have no chance at all of protecting the rest of us, even if they have purely altruistic goals, which history has shown is simply not the case.

Re:I don't get it

[malkavian]

The big point is that documentation doesn't say who you you are.. It says who you purport to be. For the law abiding majority, this will be the same. If, however, you're into serious criminal activity and want to have a nice document that'll say "this is not the person you're looking for", what better than an ID card that they trust implicitly (though wrongly so).
ID cards are not a security measure that means anything.

Re:I don't get it

[RivieraKid]

It's not the ID - it's the linking and data mining of the information at the back end that is the real privacy concern.

Taking the example of your Texan police officer - I suspect (I have no other information than what you state above) that the reason is that as an officer of the law, and as a person trained in the use of firearms and legally given the right to carry that firearm and use it, she is expected to be held to a much higher standard than a regular citizen - and rightly so.

Unfortunately, another blight on our times crept in - political correctness. The authorities are so terrified of offending minorities that things like this happen. Should she have shot the attacker to prevent additional harm to her partner? Probably, yes. Should she have shot and killed him? No. As a police officer, she is given huge power and authority over regular citizens. It is her duty to use that responsibly. I think you'll find that she is held to exactly the same standard as regular citizens. If the man was attacking her, and she shot and killed him, there would likely have not been an issue since her life was in danger. If her partner had been the one to shoot and kill the assailant - again, no problem. Shooting and killing a man attacking someone else, with her life not being in danger - even if it was her partner, is not reasonable force. Shooting and wounding the assailant, however, would have been reasonable force under the circumstances.

Now, don't misunderstand, under the circumstances, I would likely have done the same thing in the heat of the moment, but that does not excuse you from your responsibilities, and those are greater for police officers than other citizens.

With so many CCTV cameras watching the populace

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

they don't really need ID cards.

BNP has interesting side effects

[geegel]

I somewhat doubt that convenience had anything to do with it. The recent elections and the beating Labour took are probably the reason behind this move. Democracy at work fellas! And it's a really beautiful sight

Re:BNP has interesting side effects

[geegel]

The ascendance of BNP from a fringe party to a main stage party is in my opinion a good thing. I don't agree with their agenda, but they are the voice of a segment which didn't have a voice before. The "solutions" they propose are as sharp as a brick, but the problems they raise are real. This step forward will highlight these problems and as the less extremist parties propose more reasonable solutions, the support for BNP will wane. I know that the first instinct is to remind everybody of Hitler and his rise, but a better equivalent is I think France. Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front had a similar path to that of BNP and they are nowhere to be found nowadays precisely because the main parties found a way to solve these problems.

Not so fast! What about passports?

[mdwh2]

Whilst this is a great step forward, one of the big problems with this scheme is that over the last few years, the Government has been basically turning the British passport into the ID card (the plan was that anyone getting a passport would have a "combined" passport and ID card).

So my fear is that we'll still end up with the same problems for anyone who wants a passport:

* Being put on the National Identity Register database (which is actually what the ID card criticism is mainly about - it's not about the physical "card" as such), along with regulations such as being fined £1,000 for failing to notify authorities of change of address.
* Biometric passports. TFA says these have "cross-part support" - it's unclear if this means fingerprints (currently we already have "biometrics" in the sense of digital photos, which I don't have a problem with, but fingerprints are another issue).
* The cost. Passports have risen from around £30 to £72 in recent years, much of this is due to basically turning the passport into the ID card. This is expected to rise to at least £93.

Even though a passport is not compulsory for everyone, for those of us who want to travel to another country (and remember, the UK isn't a big place like the US - most of the population have passports, and a lot of us like to travel), so my fear is that unless you are giving up your ability to travel, it will still be a compulsory ID card in everything but the name.

Does anyone have more info as to whether the National Identity Register itself will be shelved, or is it simply stepping back the plans on who will have to have one?

This is not a retreat.

[ConfusedVorlon]

All they have said is that they won't make it compulsory.

In the same breath, they said that it would be optional 'like a passport'

Passports are not optional if you want to travel

They could well make id cards not optional if you want to
-open a bank account
-get a drivers licence
-get a mobile phone

Unfortunately, the current british government has a history of such cynical manouvers. Like saying that they are stopping the giant email/call database, then instantly announcing that the private sector will be required to build much the same capability for them.

The ID card project is not cancelled until it is cancelled

Just time to boil the frog more carefully...

[MindKata]

"UK.gov ineptitude when it comes to anything IT"

Its a shame their deviousness isn't as inept as their technical knowledge, but then they are more interested in manipulation and power games than they are in specific details of technology.

They are still bring in ID cards. This move isn't stopping the cards. But now they are bring them in more slower over a long time scale, at first voluntary. Its bring them in by exploiting feature creep. It starts off as its voluntary for this and its voluntary for that. Then it becomes it helps this and it helps that. Then it becomes its important to this and its important to that. Then it becomes its required for this and its required for that. Then finally it becomes its mandatory for this and its mandatory for that and then eventually you can't do anything without the ID cards. Then finally they get what they aimed to do all along.

They know ID cards are very unpopular and so now they are starting to tread more carefully. They know their ever present power grabbing nature is very unpopular, (in this case power grabbing via information grabbing on people for their own gain (after all, information is power)) and so they are now treading more carefully.

So now they are just boiling the frog more carefully. Yet now many people are initially fooled into believing its not going to happen. Exactly what the control freaks want, as it means over time they will now face less resistance to them bring them in more slowly.

Re:Test your liberties every day

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it? Then why doesn't Britain have it already and why are the population generally against it? The British attitude to I.D. has generally been one of "I am who I say I am". Continental Europe countries seem to have always been far more accepting of I.D. cards, and generally those where the populations were citizens were more content with it that way.

Re:The tide *is* turning in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

When on earth have the Tories had any concern for civil liberties? The last Tory government certainly wasn't. The use of CCTV cameras started under them. They used the police to crush political marches against them . They tried to ban dance music being played outside (criminal justice bill). They support restrictive social hierarchies (low/middle/upper classes). They oppose gay marriage (which is a matter of civil liberties for the people involved. Far more films and music was banned under the Tories. And so on.

Now, I've no great love for Labour, but to say the Tories are pro civil liberties is utter rubbish.