Keith Standring: No to ID Cards

Keith Standring was a regular soldier in the Grenadier Guards before working for over thirty years in British Intelligence.  He is a member of the Conservative Party, The Freedom Association and a supporter of The Bruges Group.

“The Bill is designed to print across our foreheads a human barcode. Those who do not wish to understand the seriousness of what the Bill represents in terms of the change in the culture and society in which we live are failing in their duties as representatives of the public."   
               
- Edward Garnier QC, Conservative MP for Harborough in the Standing Committee debate.

The simplistic argument that if one has nothing to hide then one has nothing to fear ignores the infringement of civil liberties that the imposition of Identity Cards would represent and totally overlooks the practical problems implicit in administering the system.

It is well known that any form of documentation from a Passport to a 100 Euro note is obtainable from counterfeiters and it is improbable that forged ID cards will not also be available, in spite of the use of ‘state of the art’ technology. On the admission of no less a person than the Secretary of State for Trade & Industry some 15 million National Insurance numbers cannot be accounted for. In the realms of agriculture the British Cattle Movement Service has lost 93,000 identities in one year alone (2003) in spite of being established only 6 years ago in purpose built accommodation equipped with the very latest in computerised systems. Examples of where Government run any service efficiently and well are difficult to identify. That they will administer ID cards any more efficiently is open to question.

Government claims that ID cards will help to stamp out illegal immigration, organised crime, terrorism and social security fraud. The reality is that the introduction of ID cards will impose a burden upon millions of bona fide law abiding British subjects (i.e. the majority) whilst failing to tackle the underlying problem which is that, for whatever reason, the army of civil servants that we are employing and which, in the main, are answerable to the Home Office and the Department of Health & Social Security, are failing to discharge their function in a satisfactory way. Instead of concentrating upon improving the performance of the departments for which it alone is responsible, Government, as always, tries to shift the spotlight elsewhere, hence ID cards as the panacea for all the ills of the public sector.

Even without ID cards it is practically inconceivable that a bona fide British subject would have difficulty establishing his or her identity (birth certificate, driving licence, passport, pension book, utility bill, National Insurance number etc). On the other hand, an illegal immigrant armed with a forged ID card would instantly acquire legitimacy to which he was not entitled and which he would not otherwise have.

There is little or no evidence to demonstrate that in countries with ID cards the incidence of offences in the categories highlighted by Government are any less. Identity cards in both countries did nothing to stop the 9/11 bombing of the Twin Towers being planned in Germany nor the explosions on passenger trains in Spain.

At the time of writing this the 3rd reading of the ID Cards Bill has only just passed through the House of Commons, even though, to try to hurry the Bill through the last parliamentary session the government had put "knives" on the Committee stage of the Bill (a method of severely restricting the amount of time the Committee had to review the Bill). The Bill has now gone to the House of Lords, but even before that, the House of Lords Constitutional Committee has roundly condemned it because amongst other things it "fundamentally alters the relationship between citizens and state" and does not contain proper safeguards.

The ID card proposals have been dubbed a "farce"; with the biometric technology unable to correctly identify such features as brown eyes and baldheads. Technologists are lining up to criticise the proposals in the Bill, from examples of how multiple "layered" biometrics increase false or failed identification, to even Microsoft saying that it will lead to "massive fraud". Yet the government still continues with the proposals, with hardly an amendment. It has even been revealed that the government has already committed to spending £17 million on consultants to assist with the preparation of the Bill and the priming of government departments.

The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is already inviting companies to consider bidding for ID card contracts, without the Bill even having become law, and has even gone so far as to advertise in the Official Journal of the European Union on August 9th. There are also reports of the close connections to New Labour from within the prospective bidding companies.

This undemocratic and arrogant behaviour flies in the face of the proposal's lack of political or public support - the latest polls show only 25% in favour of the scheme if it cost £6 billion (the latest government estimate) falling to only 10% in favour if it costs £10-£19 billion (£19.2 billion is the estimate made by the independent report from the London School of Economics) - source YouGov poll.

Even with the hollow promise of a fixed £30 cost for a stand-alone ID card, to bribe wavering Labour MPs, the Home Secretary has yet to produce any figures for the government's costing of the proposals. Figures in the region of £3bn centrally + £72 per person have been bandied about and the view might reasonably be taken that this money would be better spent strengthening the forces of law and order rather than on a project of dubious benefit. The strong suspicion remains that the real reason why the Home Secretary is pushing for ID cards is to satisfy the European Union.

Meanwhile thanks to the growing efforts of many, opposition continues to be built to this authoritarian Bill.

"Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local communities".                           

- Tony Blair, at the 1995 Labour Party conference in Brighton.

Comments

[Alex Deane]

Great article.
A couple more arguments from me, along the same lines:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1672_286/ai_n14816923

[Editor]

A good case against ID cards, Keith, thank you.

My worry, however, with the current direction of Conservative thinking/ campaigning is that we seem to be putting much more energy into protecting civil liberties than fighting terrorism.

We're against ID cards. We're against 90 days. Many Tories (although, fortunately, not our next leader) are increasingly critical of the war in Iraq.

Protecting civil liberties is all well and good but most Britons are also interested in being safe. Where are the loud Tory campaigns for better homeland security?

There needs to be more balance in the Tory appeal.

[Keith Standring]

Protecting civil liberties and defence against terrorism are indivisible. It is a serious error that has been made frequently in the past to sacrifice civil liberties on the altar of 'Defence of the Realm'. The hard-won democratic, legal and cultural traditions of the UK are being progressively strangled in favour of EU-inspired policies.

Put broadly the generally agreed criteria for a functioning democracy are:

1. Freedom of expression, including freedom of the media.
2. Freedom of association.
3. Equality before the law and due process under the rule of law.

What we face now is one of the greatest challenges to the defence of our liberal democratic traditions - and it is not the terrorists in London, or elsewhere providing this threat. (All rational people have and will always despise those who murder ordinary people going about their business, and we have always seen those who wish to carry out such indiscriminate acts as having no place in democratic society and they should have no leniency afforded to them.) Unfortunately, British citizens now find themselves faced with a government that is stripping their democratic rights away. Tony Blair and his government, along with the collusion of many of the other political parties have built a country where we are now unable to get within one kilometre of Parliament to voice our opposition (Serious Organised Crime and Police Act - Designated Area Order 2005); where our every activity and movement will be tracked (ID Cards Bill - National Identification Register); where trial by jury is being eroded as it doesn't conform to the government's ideas of justice; and if the government gets its way and passes the new Prevention of Terrorism Law, we may be faced with the prospect of not even being allowed to talk about the very issue it seeks to prevent. How far away do these type of measures take us from the criteria for a democratic society?

A democratic society is not one that rushes to repression, state surveillance and draconian police powers as soon as any part of it is threatened; real democracy is able to engage the people in debate on how society should be governed, without fear and recrimination; a real democracy is one where whatever threats we face, we are strong enough to resist them.

The irony, of course, is that while stripping away the democratic rights of UK citizens, this government wages war in the name of freedom and purports to be spreading democracy.

[Martin Smith]

There is no mutual exclusivity between protecting civil liberties and fighting terrorism.

By succumbing to government demands for ID cards which force law-abiding citizens to submit to the state's right to track their every move before they can have a life, or their demands for people to be locked up for 90 days with no trial or charge, be locked up in their own homes, have no trial by jury or presumption of innocence, and banning demonstrations outside parliament, we would effectively be giving up in the fight against terrorism, announcing our surrender without any negotiation or undertaking from the other side to stop the bombing. We would be giving up our free society and giving them the society they want, without fighting for our way of life.

The government's policy in Northern Ireland has been characterised by deals with terrorists, to stop bombings in the UK at the expense of beatings and criminality on the other side of the Irish Sea. On Islamofascist terrorism, it is to unilaterally give in without any such deal.

And in fact none of these things, which give terrorists ideological success, would stop terrorist success in its other form - its body count. What would stop terrorism might be to improve living conditions in Arab nations - for this we need to help create free societies in those countries. This, however, just looks like hypocrisy if we do not have a free society in our own country, where we would imprison Muslims who have never committed any crime, and so it wouldn't work.

Terrorism is stopped by winning the battle of ideas against it to stop people joining it, and by better intelligence. Not by giving in to its demands and making criminals out of innocent people. This will only create more terrorists.

To win this debate we need to dismantle the myth of a choice between freedom and security, between freedom and success in the war on terror. The preservation of our freedom should be the very definition of success in the war on terror.

View an article by me on the subject at
http://www.conservativefuture.com/issues/issue.cfm?obj_id=125748

[Keith Standring]

Well done Martin. I'm delighted you have grasped the importance that protecting civil liberties and fighting terrorism are indivisible. We need thousands more to support this view. I shall play my part in that development and I'm sure you will too!

[malcolm]

It's simplistic I know but if I thought ID cards would protect us from terrorism or illegal immigration,crime etc I would support them.Sadly no one has been able to make a remotely credible case that this would be so.
With our borders currently so porous potential terrorists could probably enter the country with ease carry out their foul deeds and get away without any need to have an ID Card forged or otherwise.
For home grown terrorists,Charles Clarke has already admitted that ID Cards would have offered no protection from the July 7th bombers.

[Frank Webster]

ID Cards are not the answer to fighting terrorism: why can't New Labour get this into their heads?

[Martin Smith]

"ID Cards are not the answer to fighting terrorism: why can't New Labour get this into their heads?"

They can. They never believed ID cards were the answer to terrorism. This government never believes its own spin. The justification for cards keeps changing, first it was terrorism, then illegal immigration, then crime, then welfare cheating. The simple truth is that they are fumbling around for a pretend justification of a scheme which will allow them to spy on every individual as if we were all Big Brother contestants.

[Phil Hendren]

What is certainly worrying in the ID Card "debate" (if one can call the apparent railroading of the legislation that), is the issue of data integrity and information security in terms of database administration. I'm yet to see how any of this data is going to protected in terms of human intervention. Additionally, the proposals (as I understand them) are that ID cards could supplement financial card transactions as a means of identification. Whilst large businesses would (I assume) use fixed line connectivity to carry this action out, small businesses would no doubt have to use some sort reader that access things across the public telephone network. Without getting unnecessarily techie that is going to be wide open to abuse. Under any circumstances that is a bad thing, but when it comes down to data that will essentially "prove you exist" it is not exactly sensible.

Personally, I don't want the, but I acknowledge that we will probably get them. As such we should be arguing that the systems not be extended for use in such reckless ways as to risk the integrity of data that they may hold.

[Tom Odell]

The government looks to be moving towards a computerised central national register of voters.

(http://www.dca.gov.uk/consult/core/cp2905.
htm).

Will the government tie it in with ID cards?

[Adrian Peirson]

ID cards are a Tax Scam, Some industrialist got together with some MP's and thought up a Great money Making Scheme...for fining people for not carrying their ID cards...
Its the same with Speed Cameras....
Can you just Imagine the Beauriocratic nightmare this scheme is giong to because....the money would be far better spent putting more Inteligence operatives on the streets who can adapt and learn rather than a peice of plastic....Lets just suppose by some miracle of Miracles that ID cards start catching terrorists criminals fraudsters and illegal aliebs...Does anyone seriously think they will not change their tactics so that the success is short lived....
It is a scam made up between industrialists and Politicians....the Emperor is Naked...

[Fidel]

COMMENT OVERWRITTEN.