So, I go away on holiday and come back to find that the Government's immigration policy is in crisis. This is welcome news, as it tells us that the Government actually have an immigration policy; so far it seemed they'd just been cribbing it from the pages of the Daily Express. And while the departure of Beverley Hughes -- who, apart from her crowing over having halved the number of refugees to whom we give sanctuary seems to have been relatively harmless -- is neither particularly happy or unhappy news, with any luck it'll turn out that Blunkett knew more than he said about the present cock-up, and he'll have to go too, perhaps taking his obsession with ID cards with him. (Update: no, as John Band points out, Hughes was also responsible for lying to Parliament over the results of the ID Cards consultation. So it's good riddance to her, frankly. To have forgotten that detail is a bit embarrassing. Oh well....)
Naturally, ID cards, the government's current policy strange attractor, have popped up again in relation to the current row. In yesterday's press conference, referring to the threat of terrorism, Tony Blair told us that,
The second point in relation to ID cards is that I think there is no longer a civil liberties objection to that in the vast majority of quarters. There is a series of logistical questions, of practical questions, those need to be resolved, but that in my judgment now, the logistics is the only time delay in it, otherwise I think it needs to move forward.
but others have picked up and run with the idea. For instance, otherwise-sensible Labour MP Clive Soley said this morning on Today that,
I think ID cards will help us win this argument.
-- referring to the current synthetic furore over immigration policy. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis -- who rather theatrically described the various cock-ups in Romania and Bulgaria as `disasters', as if people had actually been killed or something, rather than simply a few people who would be allowed into the UK anyway getting their visas early via some creative paperwork -- stayed off the ID cards issue, but to counter him the BBC dredged up John Denham, previously a minister at the Home Office. Now, Denham resigned in protest at the war in Iraq and presumably therefore has a certain sympathy for tyranny and the apparatus of tyranny; naturally, therefore, he's a supporter of compulsory ID cards:
James Naughtie: Do you suspect [the introduction of ID cards] might be quite close?
John Denham: Well, personally I have been a supporter of compulsory ID cards for quite a number of years, er, and I think the... to me the only obstacle now is demonstrating that we've actually got a technology that can work and be secure, because nobody wants a disaster, but I would say if... err, if we have, it would be hugely helpful in dealing with these very difficult issues.
Of course, he didn't actually explain how a card would be helpful, but that's what we've come to expect. Naturally, James Naughtie didn't press him on this point, but instead asked,
James Naughtie: Do you think it might be... I won't say a way out for the government, but it might be something that would assist the government in trying to get across the idea that it's on top of the whole issue?
John Denham: I think it would be very popular with the public. I think it would be a mistake to think that we can... if you like, say `well, we're going to do ID cards'. When you're talking about processing of visa applications, as we've had in Romania and er, Bulgaria, the government is going to need to demonstrate that those systems are working properly, and I think they must do that and it would be a mistake to think you can answer one question with another one, however much I would welcome the introduction of ID cards.
By which he means, no, they wouldn't be helpful. And you can see why. In Romania and Bulgaria the British Embassies were issuing visas on the strength of forged documents, in exactly the same way that the Home Office will find itself issuing ID cards to people with forged documents here, if the cards are brought in. And in the Sheffield cock-up, passports were being issued to people who were entitled to them anyway, but with fewer checks than would normally be applied. Such people would, presumably, have identity cards in a Blunkett future -- with even fewer checks, since the Home Office will have to issue millions of the bloody things.
Blair also seems to think that an ID card will stop terrorism. At times, Blunkett has disagreed, but since he's prepared to say one thing to Parliament and quite another to the Today programme, I don't think we should take any of his pronouncements on what the cards are to be used for any more seriously than Denham's.
Terrorism is, of course, in the news at the moment because some alleged terrorists have been arrested following the discovery of a quantity of ammonium nitrate in a lock-up garage in London. We might want to consider how ID cards might have assisted the Police in conducting an operation such as this. To start with, it is worth noting that the alleged terrorists are all British, and therefore would be given ID cards in the Future Republic of Blunkettstan. Their ID cards would, presumably, not be marked POTENTIAL TERRORIST in big letters, and anyway most policemen are perfectly able to distinguish people with dark skin without consulting their papers. (One correspondent, remarking on my piece on crime and racism, noted that when he had worked in the City of London shortly after the erection of the `ring of steel' anti-terrorist barricades the Police manning those fortifications had chiefly been stopping and searching young black men passing back and forth. This surprised him, as he had not imagined that the British Caribbean community formed part of the IRA's natural constituency. No doubt the City of London Police felt that you could never be too careful....)
We do not know exactly how the cache of ammonium nitrate in the current case was located by the Police, but since the operation was conducted with the assistance of MI5 and the Pakistani intelligence service we can assume that it involved techniques from the Usborne Book Of Spycraft such as tapping telephones and pretending to be a terrorist in order to infiltrate an Islamist cell. You cannot demand someone's ID card when you are listening to their telephone calls -- that would give the game away -- and presumably an MI5 spy, having infiltrated such a group, would not be in a position to demand `Papiere, bitte?' without arousing the suspicions of those around him. In fact, it's hard to see how ID cards could have been at all helpful in this investigation, since all the participants would have had the card (so they couldn't be thrown out of the country for failing to present it) and anyway their names were clearly known to the authorities.
So we come back to the eternal question, which is, why on earth do Blair and Blunkett want ID cards? I remain baffled, and the latest attempt to bring them in through the back door isn't any more enlightening. And it's not just me. STAND, who do actual research on this topic, have no idea either.
(It is sometimes said that nobody's really interested in the cards, but rather in the register of population which would have to accompany them. Supposedly this is a Good Thing because it would help in the provision of public services -- though it's hard to see how, since we already have a pretty good idea of the size and circumstances of the population in different parts of the country; knowing that information down to single individuals wouldn't be of much assistance. And in practical terms, such a register would have all the same problems as the card does, especially if the ID number assigned to an individual on the register is used publicly (like social security numbers are in the United States). But if that were the case, I'd have expected the Government to start by announcing a population register, then move on to the cards later, since a population register is less obviously intrusive than the cards will be and can always be sold to Daily Mail readers on the basis that it can be used to keep tabs on nasty foreigners, paedophiles, Guardian readers and threats to house prices. Why start with the cards -- unpopular and easy to understand -- first? So while this might be the explanation, it still doesn't make much sense to me.)
| Party | Position |
|---|---|
| Conservative | Opposed, at the moment. See, for instance, this press release by David Davis MP; but note that Conservative policy is subject to change as opportunity demands, and previous Conservative governments have toyed with the idea of ID cards from time to time. |
| Green Party | Opposed. See, e.g., this briefing. |
| Labour | Presently in favour of bringing them in `gradually', as announced in the last Queen's Speech. |
| Liberal Democrats | Opposed. See, for instance, this press release by Mark Oaten MP condemning ID card plans as a waste of money. |
| Plaid Cymru | Opposed. See, for instance, this press release by Simon Thomas MP, condemning ID card plans as useless and a waste of money. |
| Scottish National Party | Opposed. See, for instance, this press release by Anabelle Ewing MP, condemning Blunkett's ID card plans as interfering with areas which are the prerogative of the Scottish Parliament, and this one by Roseanna Cunningham MSP pointing out that ID cards will be of no use in fighting crime or terrorism. |
So that was another long rant on ID cards. You're probably bored of those by now, so here are some holiday photos to cheer you up:
Comments
Posted by James Graham, Saturday, 3 April 2004 01:41 (link):
The reason the government is so keen on ID cards is classic New Labour, the dictum of which is "Being seen to tackle an issue is more important than actually tackling an issue." ID cards are great in that respect because everyone will have them - you can't get more concrete than that, it has something to do with the white heat of technology, and we have this great meme buzzing around that "ID cards help tackle terrorism". As you correctly identify, that meme doesn't actually mean anything, but it gives people a warm fuzzy feeling inside. It feels right, and that's the important thing.
In ten year's time we'll have the same old cock ups as we do now, except then it will be because of people cocking up the ID card system, rather than all the other systems. Note that it will always be people that get the blame. Once the system is in place, it has its own built-in scapegoat. It will only take one lazy official to screw things up, but you can always blame the lazy official. In a zany kind of way, it's pure genius.
Posted by Martin Lucas-Smith, Cambridge Green Party, Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:44 (link):
The Green Party, arguably the fourth largest political party in the UK, also has a view. (Inexplicably they seem to have been left out of your list; they are a "serious part[y], not fascists or nutters like the BNP and UKIP".)
Quoted from Green Party response to the Government's plans to introduce ID cards:
"In their proposed form, there is no convincing argument for ID cards: whilst they definitely cost the public £3 billion, there is no proof at all that they will solve any of the problems they are purported to deal with. In fact the only way ID cards can have any purpose is by expanding the data on them and the power attributed to them. This can be the only logic behind introducing such a costly scheme."
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Sunday, 4 April 2004 18:48 (link):
Thanks -- I've now corrected the omission.
Posted by Alan Little, Monday, 5 April 2004 09:44 (link):
There's no "n" in "Papiere".
Otherwise I completely agree with your views on this issue - particularly having seen my girlfriend arrested in Red Square for being a Russian citizen, in her own country, but without a Moscow residence permit. This wasn't back in soviet days either, it was two years ago. Apparently there was a new law that nobody - even Russian citizens - could stay in Moscow for more than a week without registering with the police. This was supposed to make it easier for the police to harrass Chechen terrorists (notice how there have been almost no big, spectacular Chechen terrorist attacks in Moscow in the last two years. Well, no that many. Well, just think how many more there might have been if ...) It's also good for police morale, in that it gives them a chance to arrest attractive women in tourist areas (I'm sure Chechen terrorists spend lots of time taking photographs in Red Square) and make them pay fines which quite possibly go directly into the police benevolent fund.
I remember at the time thinking I was so glad to be British and not have to put up with that sort of bullshit. Oops.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Monday, 5 April 2004 11:54 (link):
-- thanks for the correction; I've now fixed the typo. (That's the last time that I pretend to know any German....)
Posted by Chris Williams, Wednesday, 7 April 2004 19:18 (link):
Hi Chris and co. Here's the killer argument against ID cards - the Vienna 1938 one. Pass it on:
In 1938 the Gestapo were presented with a glittering prize. The Anschluss- the unity of hitherto democratic Austria and Nazi Germany - put them in charge of the Vienna headquarters of the ICPC, the forerunner to Interpol. Thus, they had access to thousands of files on convicted or suspected criminals and their associates. Since many of the files on suspects dealt with politically-motivated crime, they were a godsend to an organisation that was about to take over most of Europe. ICPC knowledge helped them compile arrest lists. Even more useful for repression, deportation and terror were the captured police files of the conquered governments.
Why is this historical fact important? Because it’s a warning about the dangers that lurk in the scheme now being proposed by the government to create a national database and an ID card system. This might solve some crimes: it will certainly hand a weapon to any future ill-intentioned regime. Rather than being a move to increase safety and get rid of risk, it is a huge gamble. To adopt it would be to bet that nothing as nasty as Nazism will ever get close to state power again. It’s also to bet that nothing as nasty as Al Quaida or pIRA never gets its hands on a copy of the database. Forever is a long time.
The government seems far keener to draw touchy-feely lessons from the past than to reach concrete conclusions. The past is old, says New Labour, and its lessons should not change the way that we do things. But, to any historian, the complacency and short-termism of the solutions to crime touted by the modern centralising state show that governments have not appreciated the long-term lessons of history. The message of the past is that political stability is the exception, not the rule. Europe has a history of wars and political upheavals. Even the Swiss had a civil war just 150 years ago.
The ‘liberal democracies’, some of which have more than two hundred years (just three lifetimes) of political continuity, have from time to time pursued highly illiberal and undemocratic policies, as members of racial minorities (such as ethnically Japanese US citizens) or victims of Cold War paranoia will testify. A national database would enable the government and its successors to keep track of everyone, all the time, for ever. If this measure ever gets passed, we’d better hope that, against all the evidence, Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation of ‘the end of history’ was right. Or do we not care about our grandchildren?
Posted by PooterGeek, Saturday, 24 April 2004 13:01 (link):
I don't understand why the proprietor considers this such a powerful argument. Call me a clumsy materialist, but the possibility of a hypothetical, future, dodgy regime obtaining access to nuclear weapons is rather more worrying to me than that of them seizing my personal records. The danger that WMD might fall into such hands isn't a good reason for a real, current, respectable regime to give up The Bomb, so why is it a good reason for them to reject ID cards?
Now you might well argue that the acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities and the acquisition of information about citizens (actually subjects) serve completely different security purposes and that government possession of a system for the former is more desirable than one for the latter, so the risks of their misuse must be weighed differently. But you didn't. Instead you just said that there was something inherently bad about introducing ID cards because at some unspecified time hence they could be used by an imaginary administration to do bad things.
The people are wiser than you think. The only solid arguments against ID cards are the practical ones: their introduction will be an almighty balls-up because most ministers and civil servants scarcely know how to manage their email, let alone oversee multi-billion pound IT projects, and---even if by some miracle it is implemented well---it will cost a bomb (pun intended). All the other arguments I've heard against are little more than incantations muttered to accompany hand-waving before the phoney idols of "human rights".
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to hide some sharp scissors from children I might have in a few years time.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Sunday, 25 April 2004 19:24 (link):
Firstly, the term `WMD' is bollocks. If you mean `nuclear bombs' -- as apparently you do -- say so. They have nothing in common with chemical and biological weapons.
Secondly, I don't think that there's a useful analogy between nuclear bombs and registers of population. In particular, a dodgy régime -- or even a small group within one -- can make nuclear bombs more-or-less in private; a register of population requires the cooperation of the whole population. A dodgy régime can build a bomb in private just as easily as can a democratic state; but it might find it harder to get hold of records for the entire population without protest. Further, the register of population may not stay within the UK (there are already mutterings about shipping it offshore in order to do processing which would be illegal under the DPA here), and on that basis we have to worry about foreign countries getting hold of the data -- something they certainly wouldn't be able to do otherwise, and something that doesn't apply to a bomb, since nuclear powers are usually reasonably careful about not letting nuclear bombs get into the hands of other powers.
Thirdly, if other countries have a nuclear bomb (or threaten to acquire one) it is rational to obtain a nuclear bomb to deter them. Since lots of dodgy régimes either had the bomb (e.g. the Soviet Union) or looked like they might obtain one (e.g. Germany during the Second World War) it was rational to acquire a bomb, even if there was legitimate fear of how a future government might use it. The same doesn't apply to a national population register: you can't use it to deter other people, and there's no reason to have one -- even if other countries do.
No, in fact -- we are now citizens, since the British Nationality Act from the early 1980s, I believe.
The argument is a bit stronger than that. The point is that, for all of recorded history, periods of stability do not last long, and they are separated by periods of instability which bring oppression. A national population register enables such repression to be more effective and more vicious. It is more reasonable to predict that such periods of instability will occur in the future than that they will not; indeed, to predict that they will not is an extraordinary piece of hubris.
It's no different from the question (say), `Should we store nuclear waste next to this here geological fault?', and receiving the answer, `Why not? There hasn't been an earthquake there for 200 years' -- but knowing full well that earthquakes occur there every five hundred or so years.
Good idea. Don't run while you're carrying them....
(Oh, and as an aside, I draw your attention to the second bullet point in the comments policy.)
Posted by Damian Counsell, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 22:37 (link):
You're right. I was being ironic. But my argument does apply to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
This is another reason why your government acquiring nuclear weapons should worry you more than your government keeping records about you: as an ordinary citizen there isn't much you can do to stop the former.
This is true, but irrelevant to the substantive question of whether we should refuse to adopt a dangerous technology because a "good" government acquiring it on our behalf might subsequently be replaced with a bad government. The question is not: "Is there something bad or good about ID cards falling into the hands of bad people?" but: "Is there something bad or good about ID cards". You have answered that question by telling me that there is something good about nuclear weapons.
I don't accept the pro-ID card argument that their adoption will improve security, but that's not what I was posting about. A person who did accept that argument, however, would contend that, as a terrorist seeking to establish a global, theocratic, feudal empire, you might preferentially operate in a country with a more "relaxed" approach to identification. In that sense a national population register would be a deterrent against acts of war. If you don't believe that ID cards will actually deter terrorists, then fine: argue against that contention. That would be an argument worth making. Chris Williams's is not.
You are right. I am wrong. And it says so on my passport.
No. It's completely different. You brought up history first and second; I never did. My argument isn't about the past or the future; it's about reason.
It is, and that straw man over there might have done so, but I didn't. I don't have to. You have to show that your hypothetical, future situation has any bearing on a real, current question if you are to support successfully the "potential for abuse" argument.
My original post implicitly conceded that that an evil dictatorship might one day rule Britain, and that they might one day exploit an national population register. I just don't think these combined prospects are valid considerations in our decision about ID cards now---and you have yet to demonstrate otherwise.
I have just listened to a debate between various senior English legal types on Radio 4 about the potential for the abuse of our (absence of a) constitution by future unsound governments. They see the dangers, but also recognize that it's very difficult to get anything genuinely nasty past the British people, no matter how little codified protection our system offers. (I wasn't offering that as an argument myself, by the way, just as a pertinent and topical observation.)
Sorry about that. It won't happen again. I should have read the house rules first.
I must say, I admire your choice of allowable HTML. It's far more sensible than the usual 'Blog standard.
Posted by Andrew, Sunday, 11 April 2004 14:55 (link):
There has been suprisingly little discussion of Chris's point about the potential abuse of information gathered via an identify card system, although it's a point I recall from similar debates years ago. It's all to easy to imagine the circumstances in which an extremist political party could grab power.
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