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ID cards - compulsory or not?

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

By David Meyer | It’s not going to be compulsory to carry around ID cards. Honestly. So said Stephen Harrison, policy director at the ID & Passport Service, when asked today at the Westminster eForum on ID cards, surveillance and data protection.

Further questioning elicited more explanation: no, you won’t have to carry it around all the time, only when you want to use public services. Then: it’s “not a tool for police to demand your papers”, but if you are suspected of committing a crime, police can ask you to prove your identity, as before. Eh? This brings us back to “what’s the point then?” - in a system that’s supposed to stop terrorism/whatever, there’s no benefit to having ID cards unless everyone has to carry them around all the time. Stop Joe Criminal and give him the option of popping along to the police station later to bring in his ID card, and you think he’ll show up?

In any case, you’ll automatically register for an ID card if you renew or apply for a passport, so pretending that it’s not compulsory in any way is frankly a joke. Some honesty on such matters would go a long way to convincing people that the system is not malevolent - if that is indeed the case - and hobbling one of the key bodies that’s scrutinising the scheme’s introduction is not exactly helping matters.

Oh hang on [looks through notes from today's eForum]… “The government has said it will look at further legislation for compulsory registration in the future” (Harrison again). That’s more like it. Call a spade a spade.

Have Your Say: ID cards - compulsory or not?
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4 Responses to “ID cards - compulsory or not?”

Just-Me
Posted: Jul 19th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

Just a fact we must live with!
If not Labour then the Tories will U-Turn and compulsory they will be .. just a matter of time.

Maybe have another war to detract from the issue :/

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3 year old kid
Posted: Jul 20th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

Forcing to have an ID card IS a declaration of WAR on the UK public.

Remember the poll tax?

We won that and we will win this.

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Jo
Posted: Jul 20th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

Yep, it’ll be no help at all. Ever. In any circumstance. I mean, why do we need something as unique as fingerprints and face scans to identify ourselves when all we really need to take out an enormous loan on our house is to prove who we are with a gas bill, a phone bill and a paper birth certificate. It was good enough for my parents, so it’s good enough for me. No way on earth bits of paper like that could have been forged by a 19 year old chimp with a cheap laptop and an inkjet printer, nosiree!

And that attitude is, of course, why identity theft is going through the roof. And why we need something a tiny little bit more unique than three bits of paper and an honest face in the wired world. Don’t believe me though. No, no, I might be bias. Ask Experion.

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Stuart
Posted: Jul 20th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

Oh, Jo. The thing about the ID card is not that it will prove your ID more securely than other, more traditional ways, it is that it will become your ID. Once your details are on the National Identity Register, you will have to prove that you are that person.

Eh? - well… Any random IT errors that question your identity will make you wrong, because the database will be the only valid point of reference. therefore, over time, first tens, then thousands of people will have no valid ID. That is before organised criminal gangs start to ammend the data base to switch their biometrics for someone elses…

Remember - the database is the problem, not the card.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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