ID Cards - Political theatre at its most transparent...

I see that the ID card legislation is being debated (sic) in parliament again. Unfortunately I don’t hold out much hope for the democratic process with this one as the government have stated that they intend to introduce ID cards as a matter of urgency. I guess that with a 3-line whip and the parliament act to fall back on, ID cards can’t possibly fail to become law!

I’ll say at this point that I am not in favour of compulsory ID cards in the UK. It’s not because I have anything to hide, it’s just that I can’t see what benefit there is in introducing them.

I used to object to them on civil liberties grounds, as I believe that they will provide a very powerful tool that could enable the state to keep track of its citizens, regardless of what politicians say to the contrary. Lets face it; the current government hardly inspire trust, do they?

I then realised that this is a pretty poor reason for objecting to ID cards. After all, what can possibly be wrong with carrying a card that you can use to prove who you are at a moments notice? After all, the politicians have assured us that we will not have to produce the ID cards in order to do tasks we currently do without ID and if we are asked to produce it by the boys in blue and we don’t have it on us, we’ll be given time to produce it at the local police station (as is the case with driving licences and insurance details at present).

When all said and done, we all know that anyone with a mobile phone has their position monitored 24/7 by the phone companies. We also know that text messages and e-mails are routinely scanned for keywords and that anything we buy on plastic is monitored to look for unusual activity. And you would have to be very naïve not to think that this information is shared!

So why do I really object to ID cards? Quite simply its because I fail to see what benefit we will get for the astronomical cost we will be forced to foot in order to introduce them. I would even go further and say that the ONLY effect will be to criminalise previously law-abiding citizens.

So why do I say this? Well if you listen to the rhetoric on the subject of ID cards (and by that I don’t mean President Blare telling us that he thinks ID cards are a good idea, so there), then they will help in the fight against terrorism, identity fraud, misuse of services, social security fraud, the fight against crime, etc. etc. But will they really make a blind bit of difference? How can they make a difference when we will not be expected to produce the cards routinely?

Unfortunately, I have to say that I fail to see how they can help in the fight against any of these…

Lets start with terrorism… Most terrorists are ordinary citizens until they commit their atrocities at which point they become known to the authorities. Now if said terrorists are British citizens then they will already have an arrest warrant out for them (if the authorities know about them) and so why bother to apply for an ID card? If you apply you get arrested and if you don’t you possibly get arrested further down the line… nothing to lose there!

If the terrorist is a foreign national then they will be picked up at the port of entry as once in the country they will be using their own ID as is currently the case. As we seem unable to pick up foreign terrorists at entry ports at the moment it’s difficult to see how issuing ID cards will change that.

Unfortunately ID cards have failed to stop terrorism in Spain for a number of years now and I fail to see how things will be any different here!

But ID cards offer so much more. They will stop identity fraud… not sure how this will work however, as the documents we will have to produce to prove who we are can still be stolen or forged! And then with us not producing ID routinely, what difference will it make?

Misuse of services??? Again I fail to see how ID cards will help. If someone staggers in to a hospital bleeding all over the place, are we really going to turn the person away if they can’t produce and ID card? I think not.

Social Security fraud... Aren’t all payments made into the recipient’s bank account there days? If so, surely they can only be received by the person making the claim and any mistake is made by the DHSS (or whatever they are called this week)?

Crime? How will this work if you are going to be given a grace period to produce your documents at a police station? Anyone who has been involved in an accident will know how well this one works! If the police can be bothered to follow up a failure to produce they generally come unstuck when they find out it’s a false name or address they have been given.

If you are intent of committing a crime, you get your story straight to start with so that you don’t raise any suspicions at the scene (a mate of mine used to get all his drivers to memorise his name, address and DOB so that he could produce the insurance documents when they were stopped). Once you walk away with your producer in your pocket you are home free (so to speak).

The only way ID cards can have any sort of effect on our lives is to demand their production on a regular basis, be it by the police, employers, shops, banks, post offices (remember them?) or anywhere else we go regularly. But the politicians have said that this will not be the case and so how can they have any affect?

The trouble with this situation is that you end up criminalizing the poor sap who rushes out of the house without his wallet and then can’t produce his ID card when asked to.

What you will end up is with a huge database that will be impossible to make secure so peoples ID information will become even more easily obtained by those inclined to misuse it.

Innocent citizens will be prosecuted by kangaroo courts for not applying for their ID cards in time (as this will prove a point). Then citizens will be prosecuted for failing to produce their ID cards when told to do so by the police. There will be prosecutions for damaged cards (when the chip falls out or fails) as this will be deemed to be tampering, or of people caught with a second ID card on them.

Will it stop the terrorists or crims in our society? Of course it won’t, as they will remain one-step ahead of the security services, just as they have always been. Within months new forms of ID crime will appear and forged cards wills tart to appear on the streets.

So will it be worth the billions it will cost? Of course it will not. You could do much more to tackle the problems ID cards are supposed to tackle for very little expense. The money you save could then be better used to build more hospitals or to employ more police…

But it looks like the current government are forging on with the more expensive, less effective solution regardless. So I do find myself wondering why? Do the government really believe their own rhetoric about ID cards? Do they think ID cards are a vote winner? Surely you only believe this if you are really naïve…

Or are there more sinister motives behind the introduction of ID cards?…