TOMORROW the ID cards Bill returns to Parliament for its report stage. It is surprising that this profoundly ill-conceived measure has got this far, so unanimous has been the opposition to it from every qualified organisation in the country, apart from the police and the biometric data companies who stand to make billions of pounds if it becomes law — anything from £5 billion (the Government’s estimate) to £18 billion (
The Financial Times’s estimate), all to be borne by the public.
The evidence given to MPs during the Home Affairs Committee’s consideration of the proposals overwhelmingly demonstrated that ID cards would be ineffective, costly and a gross violation of civil liberties, yet the Home Secretary insists on pressing ahead. It is startling to read the transcript of that evidence and to see how completely its careful and serious objections have been disregarded by Charles Clarke.
Arguments against the scheme relate both to practical matter, and to principle. Consider the practicalities first. At various times since David Blunkett first introduced the idea, different reasons for ID cards have been suggested: chiefly, that they will help to catch illegal immigrants, that they will reduce identity fraud, and that in some unspecified way they will reduce crime and prevent terrorism. This last claim has since been dropped by the Government, which acknowledges that ID cards would not have stopped either the 9/11 or 7/7 atrocities.
Rather than reducing crime, the scheme will generate a new criminal industry devoted to stealing and forging ID cards, rather as Prohibition created a huge criminal bootlegging fraternity; for criminals are entrepreneurs and as soon as something is turned into a marketable commodity — in this case, identities — they will seek to profit from it. Forged cards might not fool forensic experts, but in most cases they will not be recognised by bank clerks and shop assistants, so their effect on fraud will be minor.
ID cards might help to catch illegal immigrants if it becomes necessary to produce a card in order to get, say, hospital treatment (an idea strongly opposed by the BMA), but they will not deter illegals from anything other than seeking services for which a card is needed. To put the entire population to the necessity of paying for an ID card in order to catch a small number of illegal immigrants is like killing flies with bombs.
The objection of principle, which is that ID cards are a gross violation of civil liberties, is related to the lazy argument that people use when they say, “I have credit cards, store cards, a passport, a driving licence — why would one more card make any difference?” But the difference is great. All those other documents are voluntary; you do not have to have them, even though they are very convenient. Moreover, they each represent a relationship with just one other body — your bank, a retail outlet, or the vehicle licensing authority.
ID cards are wholly different. They carry comprehensive information about you, stored on a microchip connected to an Orwellianly-named “National Identity Register”. This changes your relationship with the State entirely. You are no longer a private citizen, but in effect a number-plated unit who can be monitored by the authorities for any purpose. In fact, ID cards would be better named “surveillance cards”, because they provide central authority with a means for monitoring all your activities, and give it permanent access to all your personal details.
This aspect of ID cards has prompted vigorous opposition from the Law Society, Liberty, Privacy International (which monitors the effect of new technologies on civil liberties), Justice and even Whitehall’s own Information Commissioner. They point out not only that all information about you can be pooled and accessed across government agencies, but that there is a risk of information about everything from your health to your bank account and beyond leaking to unauthorised parties.
To the permanent loss of privacy and universal surveillance is added an opposite problem. Technical experts point out that one in six people will not be able to get ID cards because their biometric data (iris patterns, fingerprints, facial patterns) may not be recordable on the card’s implanted computer chip. They will therefore find it hard to access the services such as healthcare and pensions that ID cards are intended to give “entitlement” to. Since ID cards will be expensive to buy, “entitlement” to public services will therefore come to be something that we pay extra for, in addition to our taxes.
ID cards were temporarily introduced in the UK when the German Army was massing on the French coast in 1940, and were abandoned after the Second World War because — as the Government stated — they interfered with civil liberties. Now, in a time of much less serious threat, the Government is proposing to introduce not temporary but permanent ID cards of a much more privacy-invading kind. What can possibly justify this? There are no justifications, only explanations. One is that the security services, having no interest in civil liberties, want each member of the population to have a personal number plate so that they are easy to monitor.
The other is that the biometric data companies see huge profits in ID cards. The cards, their chips, card readers, a central computing system (doubtless privately outsourced), all have to be started up; and then every year people will be born, others will lose their cards, have them stolen, or change address, ensuring a large, steady revenue stream for years to come.
In light of the ineffectiveness of ID cards for any of the purposes that the Government has variously mooted for them, as shown by the expert testimony to the Home Affairs Committee, this will mean that some of our most fundamental civil liberties, won slowly and painfully over centuries, will be lost in the interests of an expensive white elephant.
AC Grayling is the author of In Freedom’s Name: the Case Against Identity Cards, published by Liberty
