Via the NO2ID newsblog; this from Henry Porter writing on the Grauniad’s comment is free:
You can well imagine the army of snoopers, informers and bureaucratic bullies that will grow up around ID cards. And lest you have any doubt about the will to enforce the scheme, just look at the scale of fines proposed. The failure to register will be punished by a maximum fine of £2,500. The failure to apply in a manner prescribed (whatever that means) to renew your ID, or to inform the national identity register of a change of your details, or to surrender the ID card, or to notify the register of an invalid card, will all incur a maximum fine of £1,000.
Hold these rules in your mind and ask yourself whether a government that was merely interested in your being able to identify yourself would enforce ID cards with these enormous fines. Of course it would not. The fines are a measure of the government’s terrifying determination to make your identity its property.
It’s nice to see the mainstream picking up on the civil liberties aspect of this insidious scheme and recognising the authoritarian agenda for what it is. NO2ID has seemed all too often like a lone voice in the wilderness this past couple of years. The British public has appeared unaware and disinterested in the issue. Some, like the taxi driver I rode with in Lincoln last year vaguely think it will be a good idea because it will keep out immigrants, or stop benefit fraud – whatever the bogeyman du jour happens to be. He, like the bumbling Burnham, doesn’t seem to realise that illegals will either slip in under the radar and won’t bother, or the people traffickers will simply supply them with forged cards – an extra service at extra cost, of course. No, they won’t stop illegal immigration, if anything they will enable it. Neither will they, as the cretinous numskulls from the home office would have us believe; improve security, or combat terrorism. No rational person in their right mind would believe such absurdity. Nor, for that matter, would a rational person put so much valuable information in one place, and, in the hands of an agency so notoriously unreliable. You don’t believe that government departments are reliable, do you? :dry: Make no mistake; this bill is all about control and social engineering. Henry Porter makes that point extremely well. Then, too, this:
You only have to consider how easy it will be for a local official to remove your name from electoral roll because of ID card irregularities to understand the truly terrifying potential of the scheme. For one of the many facts that the government has chosen not to publicise about this scheme is that despite the huge costs, both direct and indirect, to the British citizen, the card remains government property and may be withdrawn by the home secretary. Without the card, a person will not be able to function as a citizen of this society.
The state is not your friend. And, if that was not bad enough, think about private enterprise having access to the data. As a comment on the NO2ID entry states:
ID cards will not only be abused by the government; take a look at this article† for an example of how ID cards will be abused in the UK should they become law:
ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their driver’s licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through.
But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are registered.
“You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone’s whole life as we know it pops up in front of you,” said Paul Barclay, the bar’s owner. “It’s almost voyeuristic.”
Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID’s. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing. “It’s not just an ID check,” he said. “It’s a tool.…”
Any suggestion that this enables citizens to take control of their identities is mere newspeak, where war is peace and slavery is freedom. At one end of the scale we will have the authoritarian state imposing sanctions on refuseniks or “troublemakers”* and at the mundane level, private business will be using the data as a marketing tool – data that otherwise you would probably not willingly volunteer.
† The NYT requires a subscription, but the salient points are reproduced here.
*People like Brian Haw, for example.