Comment Articles

Are ID cards a game of blind man's bluff?

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 13 Nov 2003 11:10 GMT

Imagine the fun you'll have when you lose the card. Imagine the joy when the chip gets fried by a blast of static electricity. Or when the reader the bloke in the post office is using to identify the parcel you're sending can't talk to the central database because the network's down. Didn't know there were plans to make the senders of all posted items identifiable, did you? There are in the US. A universal system of identification will inevitably become inextricably interwoven with everyday life, a national grid of authorisation, and like the real National Grid it will be more than an inconvenience when it stops working.

Blunkett's attitude to civil liberties seems to be limited to the old saw: if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about. There are two major problems with this, of course. First, it assumes that people with the power to use your ID are infallible and incorruptible -- an assumption that the law has never made in the past. There are reasons why policemen need search warrants to enter your house without your permission, and nobody suggests that these are no longer necessary because only criminals need fear the police. Second, it assumes that no government will ever misuse its powers to define what's wrong and what's right. That may be true of our current happy band of pilgrims, but I would submit that history is full of governments who abuse their positions. When Blunkett can guarantee that all people are perfect and the impossibility of future governmental abuse, then no, there'll be no civil liberty issues.

As for reducing crime: well, sure. For those criminals too stupid, poor, badly connected or bold to bother getting a fake ID, they'll be nabbed if they use their own and they can be traced thereafter. Some people will just not bother to break laws because they suspect they'll be caught, and that's good. But nobody, not even Blunkett, is saying how much crime will be reduced and why such a massive, intrusive scheme is the best way of doing it. As for the often quoted idea that it will reduce terrorism -- there are few groups of people more adept at misdirecting and avoiding official scrutiny. An ID card will present few problems to the committed.

But that's not the point. The point is that on every aspect of the argument made by Blunkett -- technical, legal, commercial and criminal -- is at best open to question and at worst verifiably wrong. Whatever's driving his conviction, it's not what he's telling us. Until we find out what's actually going on, the only sane response is deep suspicion and a resolute determination to be told the truth. We must not become the most monitored people on earth without being told why.