So, what’s the story with ID cards?
Jacqui Smith has finally announced the introduction of the proposed ID card scheme. Residents of Manchester will be the first to be able to sign up for a biometric ID card, costing £30, in the trial beginning later this year. This is the first stage of an intended national scheme. ID cards became compulsory for non-EU residents living in the UK at the end of last year and have been dolled out to individuals in ‘security-sensitive jobs’, such as workers at London City and Manchester Airports. But the Manchester pilot scheme is the first stage in the introduction of ID cards for UK citizens.
What happens after the pilot?
Current plans are to expand the scheme over the next few years. Next year students will be encouraged to sign up for an ID card when they open a bank account, and from 2011 ID cards will be offered to all UK Passport applicants on a voluntary basis. By 2015 the government wants the majority of non-UK citizens resident in the UK to have ID cards, and the majority of UK citizens to have ID cards by 2017.
What information will ID cards hold?
ID cards will have a photo of the individual carrier and list basic details such as name, date and place of birth, gender, and immigration status. Each card will have a microchip linking that basic information to centralised databases containing biometric information – what the Home Office calls a ‘biometric footprint’ – such as fingerprints and face recognition data or an iris pattern scan.
What’s the point of having ID cards?
ID cards will have a photo of the individual carrier and list basic details such as name, date and place of birth, gender, and immigration status. Each card will have a microchip linking that basic information to centralised databases containing biometric information – what the Home Office calls a ‘biometric footprint’ – such as fingerprints and face recognition data or an iris pattern scan.
How will they do this, exactly?
Police, immigration officers, and other state functionaries will be issued with scanners to check an individual’s identity. Shops, banks, pubs and other businesses will not, but they will be given access to a ‘special helpline’ to call if they get suspicious about an individual’s identity.
Then what’s the harm?
Thanks to opposition from campaign groups like No2ID, and attacks from the opposition and government backbenchers, the ID card proposals remain controversial. One bone of contention is that the estimated £5bn cost of the scheme has been challenged by economists, who reckon the scheme will cost more than double that sum. Another concern that has galvanised public opposition is the potential for state and individual incompetence; especially given the tendency of civil servants to leave laptops on trains and HM Customs’ recent loss of two computer disks containing 25 million people’s personal data. However, the biggest problem with the introduction of ID cards is that they represent a further and profound erosion of freedom and privacy – in particular, the right to live our lives beyond the glare and scrutiny of the state.
But surely if you’ve nothing to hide, there’s nothing to fear?
This mantra underpins the growing state impulse to regulate, intervene and certify almost every aspect of our lives in contemporary society. It assumes that we are all potential miscreants until a state sponsored certificate or biometric ID proves otherwise. This idea only makes sense if we think other individuals are at best untrustworthy, at worse a constant threat to the stability and security of our individual and social lives. ID cards, and the interventionist ideology which underpins it, are much more an expression of a government’s sense of insecurity and isolation from the public than a real solution to the risks and uncertainties of our everyday lives.
The Manifesto Club is running a series of events under the title ‘Freedom Summer’. For more information, go to
www.manifestoclub.com
