IDENTITY CARDS

The Queens Speech will probably have in it the Bill paving the way for ID Cards. This Bill may have little to say about the cards themselves but instead legislate to build the national database, or National Identity Register, necessary for the cards to be used. The register is the key, because in the end it isn’t so much the actual card, as the database behind it, and who has access to the database, which could have the most dangerous implications.

David Blunkett described the cards as enabling us to deal with ‘the growing threats to the security and prosperity of Britain, from identity theft, fraud and illegal migration’. Apart from financial fraud he obviously believes that ID cards would help to combat terrorism. Claims like this are frequently made, but with very little hard evidence to substantiate them.

Opinion polls show that many people say that they favour the use of ID cards, but I suspect without being aware of all the implications. How many would still say they were in favour if they thought they might have to carry the card at all times, or knew how much information could be stored about them and how many different agencies might have access? If the question were posed in those terms very different answers would certainly emerge.

There are both practical and principled objections to ID cards. Anyone who has seen the history of major Government IT projects has to be sceptical about the capacity of any Government Department, and especially the Home Office, to deliver a system which works and is secure. Security of the data would be essential. Once a card became seen as the absolute proof of identity and entitlement to services any breaches of the database would have major repercussions for those people whose records had been accessed and perhaps altered.

The technical difficulties should not be underestimated. People often think in terms of a one to one check of identity; that if I present my card at, say an airport, and a machine checks that my iris image or fingerprint matches those on the card, this is all that is needed. All that such a check really proves is that I am the person whose biometrics are on the card. It doesn’t prove that I am who I say I am. To do this my details have to be checked against every other set of details on the database.

For the cards to be of any use in dealing with financial fraud, or impersonation, would need online checks, from airports, hospitals, jobcentres, and from commercial institutions such as banks. This would require massive infrastructure at huge cost. Even supposing such a system could be made to work, the gains are highly unlikely to match the costs. Benefit fraud, for example, is much more likely to be someone misrepresenting their circumstances, and giving false information, than pretending to be another person. A great deal of what is sometimes described as ‘identity fraud’ wouldn’t be stopped by ID cards. If my credit cards is stolen or cloned that’s the real problem, not that someone is pretending to be me in a way that an ID card could help to prevent.

But apart from the practical objections there are fundamental objections of principle. Do we believe that a single compulsory identifier, held by the state, is acceptable? Do we want a system where information including personal biometric data has to be registered with the state? Do we want a system where it might be compulsory to inform the state when you changed address?

Once such a system was in place it would grow, so that the database stored more and more information about us. Who would have access to that data and the power to add to it or amend it? What links would be set up to other existing databases? We are told that medical records, for example, would not be on the database, but who can guarantee that at some future date they would not be linked. These are critical questions which have not been answered.

Some of those arguing for ID cards point to other countries where they are already in use, and ask what problems they have caused there. The question they never try to answer is what benefits they have brought where they have been used. In any case problems do exist, largely to do with the people who are most likely to be asked to produce their card, those from ethnic minority communities. The powers are used in a discriminatory way.

I believe it is absolutely inevitable that at some point in the future it would become compulsory not just to have the card, but to carry it at all times. One can easily foresee how a Government could use a terrorist incident, where a person had used a false identity, to rush through a law to require the card to be carried.

These proposals represent a fundamental change in the nature of our personal privacy, and must be opposed.

May 2005

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