Slashdot Mirror
UK Home Office Set To Scrap National ID Cards
mjwx writes "In what would seem to be a sudden outbreak of common sense for the UK, the Home Office has put forward a plan to scrap the national ID card system put into place by the previous government. From the BBC: 'The Home Office is to reveal later how it will abolish the national identity card programme for UK citizens. The bill, a Queen's Speech pledge, includes scrapping the National Identity Register and the next generation of biometric passports.' The national ID card system, meant to tackle fraud and illegal immigration, has drawn widespread criticism for infringing on privacy and civil rights. However, the main driver for the change in this policy seems to be the 800-million-pound cost. Also in the article, indications of a larger bill aimed at reforms to the DNA database, tighter regulation of CCTV, and a review of libel laws."
This was never really a surprise as it was one of their manifesto pledges to get rid of this project which was always going to be colossal waste of money and probably trivially crackable in a few years time anyway. That said, I'm really glad it's gone. This was just one of the many ways the previous Labour government was trying to erode the civil liberties in this country...
A government that actually gives up some power over people. I am speechless.
You can't handle the truth.
In what would seem to be a sudden outbreak of common sense
Hardly a "sudden" outbreak. We had an election that was hardly a surprise (it was held at basically the last minute it could be, as everyone expected). As a result the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have formed a coalition governement. Both coalition parties have pledged for a long time to scrap ID cards. It was also set out in their initial coalition agreement and it's one of the "freedom" things they feel they have a common platform on. Anyone who is surprised by the suddeness of the plan to scrap ID cards is... well, foreign. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course.
I like mine . . . no really, I do.
To travel to Europe you need to fork out the full fee for a "real passport" rather than the cut-price national-ID card -- most other Europeans can just make do with a national ID card. Or wait -- that might be because Britain is one of the few countries that still does border controls for travel within Europe. Travel north-south from Germany to Holland to Belgium to France to Spain to Portugal and the only thing you notice is the language on the road signs changing, the borders are notionally still there but no checks are done. Im not sure the current system really is that much better.
It had long been thought by everyone (other than the last government, who just got sent packing) that the ID cards just wouldn't work the way they were meant to (i.e. they don't protect anyone, and are just infringements on privacy and civil liberty, costing the citizenry money they shouldn't have to pay).
The £800 million was supposed to be recouped by the Government by charging to have the card (they were intended to be mandatory eventually with every passport). In other words, another tax to fund a scheme that wouldn't work as advertised and gave the populace no benefit while giving even more personal info to the government.
It'd been a promise since the early days (years back) by every other party to scrap this waste of time and money if they ever came into power. Labour were hoping to have it in place and active (making it much harder to scrap) before they were voted out. Thankfully they failed.
Scrapping the plan was never really about the cards; most people weren't really bothered about the card itself, it was the vast amount of data that was to be linked to the card via the National Identity Register that was cause for concern - especially as the previous government had a truly shocking record on both data security and large-scale IT projects.
http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1691.htm Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "The wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive ID card scheme represents everything that has been wrong with government in recent years." Boom! heady stuff in the UK, leading the free world. I still think that the Netherlands 'right to anonymity' is the way things should be heading http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=%201447332
Waiting for the other shoe to...
What made me laugh was the report that David Blunkett (the Labour Home Secretary that gave birth to the scheme) wants to sue the Government for the thirty quid that the card cost him: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/i-might-sue-over-scrapped-id-card-says-blunkett-1985447.html Oh, and it's worth remembering that the Tories wanted to introduce an ID card system (sans database) back in the 90's.
Who would've predicted 20 years ago that a Conservative government is now more liberal than a labour one. What did labour bring the UK in respect to civil liberties?
- Huge amounts of CCTV - one estimate claims the it's the highest in the world
- Useless passports that don't work in most airports
- An illegal war or two
- Sponging off the state is more attractive than working
I voted labour in 1997 and was fairly anti-conservative back then. Since that time something happened to the party (Tony Blair) that has completely transformed them in my view.
The UK military expenditure currently costs about 2.5% of the £1.8 trillion GDP. That's about £45 billion. Therefore ID cards for every citizen in the country cost, in total over the last ten years, approximately 1.7% of the total military (peacetime) budget for *this* year. Call it 2% to actually finish the scheme and issue the cards for free.
Depending on how you look at it, that can be read as ridiculous in any number of ways. Or to put it in perspective - £800m is approximately 25% of the EU farming subsidies that we pay each year, or twice the amount we pay in "R&D for Environmental protection" each year, or 1% of the old-age-pensions for this year. Now consider that the £800m is the TOTAL for the whole scheme from start to finish to create a national ID card, and that's not actually that much. It's just because it's stated in big numbers, but you're taking those from HUMONGOUS numbers to jump to conclusions. £800m over ten years is £80m a year, which is about £2.70 per working taxpayer per year, roughly. Now consider that the average working UK citizen probably pays about £4000 per year in income tax alone, from a salary of £24k. In actual fact, having http://www.goal.com/en-india/news/2171/premier-league/2010/04/18/1883371/liverpool-owner-tom-hicks-wants-800m-for-the-club
(PS: Got my data from World Bank / ukpublicspending.co.uk / HMRC statistics / other reliable sources).
A big of the reason for doing this was cost, but not the only one. The Conservatives have been opposed to this scheme since forever. Middle England Tories tend to get very hot under the collar about ID card schemes for some reason, though they don't seem to have any problem with CCTV, repressive "anti-terrorism" legislation, or any of the dozens of other ways in which British civil liberties are being curtailed.
As to the current Con/Dem government doing anything about these wider abuses, I remain very sceptical. Previous Tory governments have been equally as big on repressive legislation as the last Labour government was. And as everybody knows, politicians are generally loathe to give up any powers unless forced to by the population.
I Finland everyone has a national identification number. Censuses haven't been done in my lifetime, no need. A drivers license, passport, social security card or ID card identifies the citizens with this number. I'm not sure if there's a law that says you have to posess one of the above, it's just something everyone has anyway.
Still there haven't been any major issues. Is this because the Finnish government is simply less corrupt that many others? I don't have a problem with having a number assigned to me. In fact that number ensures I can use all the services my taxes pay for, like working health care.
So am I living in some socialist police state, or is it just a matter of what kind of government implements this kind of a scheme?
.: Max Romantschuk
Mmm... post got cut off halfway:
The UK military expenditure currently costs about 2.5% of the £1.8 trillion GDP. That's about £45 billion. Therefore ID cards for every citizen in the country cost, in total over the last ten years, approximately 1.7% of the total military (peacetime) budget for *this* year. Call it 2% to actually finish the scheme and issue the cards for free.
Depending on how you look at it, that can be read as ridiculous in any number of ways. Or to put it in perspective - £800m is approximately 25% of the EU farming subsidies that we pay each year, or twice the amount we pay in "R&D for Environmental protection" each year, or 1% of the old-age-pensions for this year. Now consider that the £800m is the TOTAL for the whole scheme from start to finish to create a national ID card, and that's not actually that much. It's just because it's stated in big numbers, but you're taking those from HUMONGOUS numbers to jump to conclusions. £800m over ten years is £80m a year, which is about £2.70 per working taxpayer per year, roughly. Now consider that the average working UK citizen probably pays about £4000 per year in income tax alone, from a salary of £24k. In actual fact, having less than 75% of working age in employment means that we lose £40b a year in income tax from those people, not counting the benefits, etc. that are paid to them.
£800m for a nationwide offical government project is *NOTHING* and people should really worry about other things (like how they are going to survive in their old age if pensions cost already more than ANYTHING else in the UK government budgets). I'm not a supporter of ID cards AT ALL, but stating figures and then going "OOhh, that's a lot" is pointless unless you put them in perspective. The council tax owing to local councils at the moment probably covers the entire 10-year-expenditure on ID cards.
In perspective, £800m is nothing. Liverpool football club would cost about that to buy, according to this horribly-pop-up'ped page: http://www.goal.com/en-india/news/2171/premier-league/2010/04/18/1883371/liverpool-owner-tom-hicks-wants-800m-for-the-club
(PS: Got my data from World Bank / ukpublicspending.co.uk / HMRC statistics / other reliable sources).
"and issue the cards for free."
The cards were never going to be issued for free; they were going to be forced on us and we would have had to pay for them (in fact the 15,000ish who had purchased the cards before the election have been told they will not get refunds but, instead, will have a souvenir of "historical" note).
The purchase price of the cards was meant to cover the operating costs of the scheme; government don't pay - we do. They take our taxes, then want more stealth taxes.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
Plenty of very democratic countries (in Scandinavia a.o.) have ID cards. Your "rights" don't get cut down by running around with a silly piece of plastic. If a cop really wants to identify you, how hard can it be? Drivers license, credit card, social insurance. The whole question is how it is USED, and who gets access to the database behind it. Fantastic new system at the library. Borrow a book by simply swiping your ID card past this terminal. Does that mean a cop driving behind me and entering my cars license plate in the cruisers computer can see which books I have checked out lately? ID cards are OK, if they are done in a country where an independent "data-police" makes sure the data does not get abused. And no, that is not a joke, here in Denmark we have exactly that
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Yeah, I liked the way that in true labour spin the cards weren't going to cost the taxpayers anything because the scheme would be paid for by people buying the cards. You know what, if it came out of my taxes at least it's not from my already taxed income, bastards.
800-Million is a shedload for a scheme that no one wanted except a few people that bought what ever the excuse was that week. I MEAN WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY MEANT TO BE FOR? First to fight terrorism...they couldn't figure out how they would help as the july seven attackers would have had valid ones anyway, then to combat benefit fraud....then they figured that benefit ID fraud costs less than the scheme would, then it was to help against ID theft online.....they didn't stick with that one for long as even they couldn't come up with how it could possibly work , then it was easier travel in Europe..... but they never told the travel companies and none of them accepted them, then they were to stop illegal immigration....then they realised the kind of people that employ illegal immigrants is not likely to check for ID, the last reason I saw was as an easy way for people to prove their age to buy drinks....then they realised that perhaps promoting them as a card that lets young people get legless might clash with the how cracking down on yob culture thing. The only reason I could see for anyone to want them is to allow them to monitor the population and generally allow the government stick their nose into other peoples business. Not a reason I too keen on.
When Augusto Pinochet came to power, one of the first things he did was to round up the offices of the Socialist party and get their membership records.
With that list they just went, knocked to the doors of their political oponents, and dealt with them with the brutality characteristic of right wing extremists (when Pinochet died Chilean youngsters saluted the departed leader with Neo Nazi salutes, how ironic that Maggie Thatcher was such a good friend of this bastard).
Europeans, having experienced totalitarian regimes in the last 100 years ( Stalinists in most of Eastern Europe, Fascists in Central and Mediterranean Europe, Ultra Nationalists in the Balkans) one would have thought would be the most reacious people in the world to any form of such political control (which is what it is: no ID, no services. Neat.)
With all its faults, the UK, one of the few countries that escaped totalitarian regimes in recent history, has a sizeable amount of the population with whom this kind of policy seats uncomfortably, even if that means a bit less conveneince during dealing with official business of any kind.
It was only the prominence of Labour (many of its ministers former Left Wing nutcases, i.e. proponents of an overpowering overview of the state of everything) what permitted the idea of ID cards being a good idea. One or two of them actually became closely associated with companies with interest in promoting ID cards after they left office in disgrace.
There is no reason you should not have a number to access your services, the problem is it being unique and the government, not you, having control about who can access the personal information associated to it.
Firstly, 800 Million is the implementation cost. There would still be running costs long term. Also, this seems to be a low number; No2ID identified a billion worth of contracts.
There are also other costs; e.g. organisations which would be required to check the ID card would have to link into the scheme. And finally, this isn't the only one in this set of pointless database schemes. If they also cancelled the scheme to link the whole NHS together that would save really lots.
As they say, a billion here, a billion there. Soon it starts to add up to real money.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I don't understand the privacy issue. I like the lib dems, I'm glad they are in power, and I think ID cards are expensive - but I don't understand why this is such a massive issue for so many people. I'm not afraid of CCTV and I'm not afraid of ID cards. I can't say I'm an expert in the issues (the wiki article is pretty lame, for example), so please feel free to educate me.
I realised your lack of expertise (or thought) from the rest of your post. As for educating you, I'm sure others will help me out here...
The reason I want ID cards, is not really for ID cards. I want my identity to be electronic, to make real world transactions, authentication etc as easy as internet authentication. On the internet I can access any site and make any payments with just a username and password. In the real world there are a bunch of ass backwards tools - coins, keys, access cards, phone sim cards and other bull. One of the reasons I can't shed this crap is because of "privacy concerns", which I don't worry about. For example, I share almost all of my personal information with google - and I don't worry about them trying to misuse it. I also share all of my wealth with the Bank Of England - I don't worry about them either. Germany also has a system of ID cards, which works.
You're doing better than me, I need several userids and passwords - Verrified by Visa and the Mastercard equivalents or paypal spring to mind. And please tell me that you really expect to replace coins and keys with an ID card. These things would soon have been cloned you realise. And how are you going to get mulinational phone companies to use a national ID card as a sim? And how often do you need to worry about your sim card(s)? As you don't have any privacy concerns please tell us you name, d.o.b. address and bank account details - or did you miss Jeremy Clarksons little cock up by doing this? The Bank Of England doesn't have all my wealth, no one institution does. Does Germany also have the Big Brother database that was going to go with these useless cards?
The reason I want CCTV is because it should make solving crime a lot easier. Combine it with face recognition and you can build a map of where people go and when. Add datamining, and perhaps you can start to track down drug dealers, burglars, rapists, etc. It starts to get very difficult to commit the really nasty crimes that still happen (although not nearly as much as people think)
They have a miserably small effect on crime solving at present, and I'm sure the rest would have been great for the Staasi. You should consider the possible unintended conseauences as well as the stated aim. The fact that it is possible to identify how anybody voted in UK General Elections also makes me unhappy, or did you not realise that the ballot papers are traceable?
The best/most frequent arguments against seem to me to be that it would give a corrupt government the power to identify certain elements of society, who could then be, say, put in camps, and it would give police power which they could use to victimise certain groups
The trouble is these things normally tend to happen, laws get applied more loosely than may have been intended: 'sus', 'stop and search'. and the unlwaful harrasing of phorographers (stretching some 'anti-terror' legislation). Someone one descibed Jack Straw (as Home Secretary) as too right wing for Mrs Thatchers government. Another oft-quoted saying is that Labour do what the Police tell them and the Tories tell the Police what to do. Look at the number of laws passed in the last 13 years which can result in imprisonment and read the 'Great Repeal' bill just announced - and be grateful we know have a Con/Dem coalition. I hope they are looking at Detention Orders too.
From a purely personal standpoint I don't see these things happening in Britain. The progress of Nazi Germany towards the holocaust was
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
You post a story about the new British regime.
For those unaware, Britain has had a new coalition government for the past 3 weeks, and it's been active in stating it's goals of rolling back many of the civil liberties infringements in the UK that came about under Labour.
There have been countless stories on Firehose, but positive stories about a final change of state of British politics that has massive meaningful benefits for improving the state of civil liberties here in the UK are apparently not newsworthy, it's better to stick to negative stories about how the world is going to end. Apparently.
It's a shame because Slashdot could use some positive news on the civil liberties front, and there has been a lot from the UK this last few weeks. To sum most of them up, the stated intentions of the new coalition government are:
- The removal of the DNA database
- The removal of the national identity register
- Cancelling the go ahead of enhanced biometric passports
- Cancellation of the contact point database
- Removal of restrictions on right to peaceful protest
- Stronger restrictions on the use of CCTV cameras
- Ban fingerprinting of children in school without parental permission
- Increase the scope of the freedom of information act
- Remove innocent people from the DNA database
- Restore trial by jury as a right in all criminal cases
- Review and hopefully rework libel laws to prevent stifling of freedom of speech
- Introduce more legislation to prevent abuse of anti-terror laws
- Ban interception and storage of e-mail and other digital communications without good reason (i.e. a specific warrant)
Now, you wouldn't realise any of this if you simply read Slashdot of course, but there you go. Hopefully the UK is seeing a bit of a turnaround now that totalitarian Labour have been kicked out, and for the first time in about a hundred years, the Liberals are part of government again.
It's not all perfect of course, no one can like everything their government does. The new coalition has also said that they will allow citizens to put forward bills for repeal, whether the digital economy act can be included is yet to be seen, but right now, the things there are cold hard plans for are extremely promising and look set to get the go ahead.
It's just a shame Slashdot didn't post the full list of changes when Nick Clegg the new deputy PM did a speech on restoring civil liberties in the UK last week when there were like 20 firehose submissions on it, but oh well, I suppose we should be glad now that at least the fact a tiny miniscule portion of the goings on over here has been posted, albeit a week late.
They're getting rid of the ID *CARDS*, not the database.
Yes, they are; the database will be deleted.
The coalition programme says "We will scrap the ID card scheme,
the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports." (http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/05/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/coalition-programme.ashx?dl=true)
The BBC reports: "Once the cards are illegal, the National Identity Register will be "physically destroyed", say ministers." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8707355.stm)
That would be the monster debt that Labour inherited from the previous Conservative government that presided over the three day week. Most serious historians blame the mess at the end of the 1970's on the Heaths government and the oil crisis.
I would also point out that the last Labour government presided over the longest period of sustained economic growth in the history of the United Kingdom, and even going back further to include the history of Great Britain. Now you might claim that was the legacy of the Major government, but I would point out most western economies had a recession when the dot com bubble burst, but the UK *DID NOT*. Not only that we where last of the western economies to enter the recession this time around. Further it looks like we are coming out of it in better shape than most of the rest of Europe. This is not even the worst defect, it was over 200% of GDP back in 1815, at the moment it is around the 65% mark.
Oh, and in case you think I am a Labour supporter, I am have been a life long member of the Liberal Democrats. It just really peaves me when people spout incorrect rubbish.
However, the main driver for the change in this policy seems to be the 800-million-pound
Gorilla? Please be gorilla. That's a big gorilla.
cost.
Disappointing close to that sentence.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
For all the problems of Blair and Brown, I think a lot of the lasting damage done by the Labour administration was caused by a succession of bad Home Secretaries, each more authoritarian, more fear-mongering, and less connected with real life than the last, whose distorted world views could direct affect everyone. Smith followed Straw, Blunkett, Clarke, and Reid, remember.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
So they are getting rid of the database too, which is the more important thing, but the combination of card and database was the really bad news.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
Because governments provide funding for thousands of different causes and projects, EVERY individual project, when taken in percentage terms of the total, will appear to be tiny and trivial. The argument 'why cancel it when it saves so little money' is therefore a fallacy. See also: Standard CO2 Reduction Counter-argument ("$activity only produces $smallpercentage of total CO2 emissions therefore why bother trying to reduce it further").
(PS: Got my data from World Bank / ukpublicspending.co.uk / HMRC statistics / other reliable sources).
I work for a research science group and I so, so wish I could cite reliable source when writing up!
Hang on, try reading TFA. It says:
That's considerably more than 800 million quid.
One thing that often gets missed is the fact that the ID Cards legislation allows for:
- fines for not keeping the database up to date with your details, roughly £1000 un UK money
- logging details of every occasion that the ID card is used to access the National Identity Register, e.g. id you get carded at a political event, open a bank account, details get logged.
The other issue was the spiralling costs of the system, and yet another issue was the complete ineptitude of the UK Government in keeping the data safe and secure. They have already lost personal details (names, addresses, details of children etc) of 2.5 million benefits claimants on DVD-roms they left on a train.
In addition to all these issues, was the simple fact that the cards provided almost no benefit at all to the average citizen. Kidz wanting to buy Booze already have ID cards that cost far less via private schemes (and that don't keep details of every transaction on a database either).
It really is a hugely extensive population tracking device, completely at odds with the ideas of privacy and freedom, and with little real benefit for anyone except a bloated State that wants to extend its tendrils into every aspect of our lives.
If you still really think that this massive Orwellian/Kafkaesque system is a good idea, then check out Terry Gilliam's excellent film 'Brazil'... :)
I always found this strange as we'd been fighting terrorism for some decades before the ID card scheme was started and had managed without them. This is especially impressive as for most of those decades the terrorists were well funded, well organised, well equipped professionals that came within a hair's breadth of killing the Prime Minister and cabinet. Modern day "terrorists" are nothing but a random assortment of malcontent God botherers and yet they will, apparently, destroy British society if not tamed with the leash of identity cards.