ID Cards for Britain

This was written originally by Francis Stonor Saunders the former arts editor of The New Statesman, author of The Cultural Cold War, Diabolical Englishman and The Devil's Broker. She was awarded the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize. She lives in London.

"You may have heard that legislation creating compulsory ID cards passed a crucial stage in the House of Commons. You may feel that ID cards are not something to worry about, since we already have photo ID for our passport and driving licence and an ID card will be no different to that. What you have not been told is the full scope of this proposed ID card, and what it will mean to you personally.

The proposed ID card will be different from any card you now hold. It will be connected to a database called the NIR, (National Identity Register), where all of your personal details will be stored. This will include the unique number that will be issued to you, your fingerprints, a scan of the back of your eye, and your photograph. Your name, address and date of birth will also obviously be stored there.

There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.

By itself, you might think that this register is harmless, but you would be wrong to come to this conclusion. This new card will be used to check your identity against your entry in the register in real time, whenever you present it to 'prove who you are'.

Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every bank will have an NIR card terminal, (very much like the chip and pin readers that are everywhere now) into which your card can be 'swiped' to check your identity. Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the card was presented. This means for example, that there will be a government record of every time you withdraw more than £99 at your branch of NatWest, who now demand ID for these transactions. Every time you have to prove that you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off licenses will demand that your card is swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.

Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Oyster Card, or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license you will have to present your ID card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account.

Oyster, DVLA, BT and Nectar (for example) all run very detailed databases of their own. They will be allowed access to the NIR, just as every other business will be. This means that each of these entities will be able to store your unique number in their database, and place all your travel, phone records, driving activities and detailed shopping habits under your unique NIR number. These databases, which can easily fit on a storage device the size of your hand, will be sold to third parties either legally or illegally. It will then be possible for a non-governmental entity to create a detailed dossier of all your activities. Certainly, the government will have clandestine access to all of them, meaning that they will have a complete record of all your movements, from how much and when you withdraw from your bank account to what medications you are taking, down to the level of what sort of bread you eat - all accessible via a single unique number in a central database.

This is quite a significant leap from a simple ID card that shows your name and face.
Most people do not know that this is the true character and scope of the proposed ID card. Whenever the details of how it will work are explained to them, they quickly change from being ambivalent towards it.

The Government is going to COMPEL you to enter your details into the NIR and to carry this card. If you and your children want to obtain or renew your passports, you will be forced to have your fingerprints taken and your eyes scanned for the NIR, and an ID card will be issued to you whether you want one or not. If you refuse to be fingerprinted and eye scanned, you will not be able to get a passport. Your ID card will, just like your passport, not be your property. The Home Secretary will have the right to revoke or suspend your ID at any time, meaning that you will not be able to withdraw money from your Bank Account, for example, or do anything that requires you to present your government issued ID card.

The arguments that have been put forwarded in favour of ID cards can be easily disproved. ID cards WILL NOT stop terrorists; every Spaniard has a compulsory ID card as did the Madrid Bombers. ID cards will not 'eliminate benefit fraud', which in comparison, is small compared to the astronomical cost of this proposal, which will be measured in billions according to the LSE (London School of Economics). This scheme exists solely to exert total surveillance and control over the ordinary free British citizen, and it will line the pockets of the companies that will create the computer systems at the expense of your freedom, privacy and money.

If you did not know the full scope of the proposed ID card scheme before and are as unsettled as I am at what it really means to you, to this country and its way of life, I urge you to email or photocopy this and give it to your friends and colleagues and everyone else you think should know and who cares. The Bill has proceeded to this stage due to the lack of accurate and complete information on this proposal being made public. Together, hand in hand, we can inform the entire nation if everyone who receives this passes it on."

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: Forget Orwell, I don't have to get into what this would mean in the realm of health, or rather the opposite of it. A 'bad citizen's register' for vaccination non-compliants; 'psychiatric' profiles on citizens; drug-prescribing registers; child-smacking registers; non-payment of health insurance rosters. Apart from anything, this is very un-British. Smacks of a multiplication of those ferrety little jobsworths who come around to see if your lawn-sprinkler's been running. Let's get active or suffer what we must suffer. No to cockroaches. Sign up 'No2ID' today.