Stop the ID Card bill

Stop the ID Card bill Is this not dead yet? I read it is still slouching towards Bethlehem and returns to Parliament this month.

The best reasons offered for it are practical. The potential for abuse of civil liberties is to be outweighed by protection from bank and benefit fraud. But the best reasons for rejecting this bill are also practical, and they are much stronger.

The proposed system is too complex. The best benefits could be had from a simple database that just associates an ID number with biometric markers. But the proposed scheme will record—and get wrong— all kinds of information about us. The government has repeatedly demonstrated it is miserably bad at implementing new IT systems. Systems we urgently need are years late and overrun their budgets by frightening amounts. The proposed ID system is complex and unproven; and worryingly expensive as budgeted. The chances of getting it at anything like budget are negligible.

Nor should we want it. A simple scheme might succeed. The complex and unreliable system proposed will open more opportunities for error and fraud than it closes.

But concerns about liberty should stop even a simple scheme. The government has repeatedly justified restrictions on liberty as emergency measures to combat terrorism. It has then followed centuries of precedent by using them whenever they seem handy. It agreed an unreciprocated “fast track” extradition arrangement to whisk terrorist suspects off to American courts; so far these powers have been used only to extend the reach of US commerce laws. The recent detention of 82-year old Walter Wolfgang by a police officer citing anti-terrorist legislation reminds us just how quickly emergency powers are assimilated into everyday police work.

Every official and commercial transaction will depend upon the ID card and its database: that is the point of it. It should become difficult to go anywhere, buy anything or get any public service without it. Our lives will become unprecedentedly vulnerable to errors appearing in the ID database information, errors that the government’s IT record lets us forecast with confidence. How long do you think it will take us to get those fixed?

And any police officer will be able to bring your life to a sudden halt by demanding and retaining your ID card, a convenient alternative to arrest without charge. This bill needs stopping.

» www.no2id.org.uk
» www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk