Taking liberties
30 May 2008
The proposed British ‘identity management scheme’ is the most complex in the world. It’s not just about carrying an ID card, but about a national database: the national identity register.
The register will hold a huge number of details about you under your personal identifying number, including 50 categories of ‘registrable fact’, personal biometrics (fingerprints, iris scan, facial scan), and a constantly updated stream of information as you use your card. The amount of information the government will have on us will effectively be infinite.
However, you won’t own your data. All our information, once on the database, will be the legal property of the home secretary, who may effectively share it with any organisation or individual she or he wishes, without asking us. In law, we’ll have very limited rights of access to see who’s had our data and we won’t be allowed to change it if we think it’s wrong.
You stay on the database all your life, during which you’ll have to notify the authorities of any change in ‘registrable facts’, buying a holiday cottage, say. Loss of, or damage to your card will result in a civil penalty (like a parking fine, payable immediately) of £1,000. For the first time ever in history, we will have no idea who’s watching us, what they’re finding out, and why.
What we’re building is a ‘surveillance state’. The government’s new policy of data sharing between departments is all part of creating a pool of ever widening information about all of us. And the more data you share, the more it leaks.
Experts tell us that no database can be fully secure. Data theft worldwide is a lucrative crime. The US and Australia, who have tried much smaller systems of databases accessible by identifying number, found that they increased identity theft. The scheme won’t stop terrorists, the Madrid bombers all had valid ID, and it won’t increase security. Nor will it cut benefit fraud.
What the system will do is put everyone under the eye of the authorities in their personal and private lives; it will make us more vulnerable to various forms of crime, including blackmail, fraud and theft; and it will cost an enormous amount of money (between £5.6 billion and £19 billion, depending on which estimates you accept), with unlimited further costs.
PCS passed a motion opposing the scheme four years ago. Since then, members have found that the scheme has not brought the promised increase in jobs – quite the opposite in fact – and IPS staff are finding that their roles must change, from serving the public to enforcing a surveillance system. None of this has been subject to public debate.
Once on the national identity register, you’re on it for life. You can’t come off it if you change jobs or retire. The airside workers at airports – including PCS members who work for BAA – who must register on the scheme as early as 2009 if they want to keep their jobs will be just the guinea pigs for the biggest automated state identity management scheme ever known.
No one knows what might happen. The system is untried, untested and invasive – and it will be permanent. You can’t destroy this data.
This scheme will turn inside out the principles, work and private lives of many PCS members. It’s time it was stopped.
Say ‘no’ to the national identity scheme
It’s up to us. If you want to do something about it: Complain to your elected representative, Join NO2ID (www.no2id.net), Most important, tell other people.
Most people have no idea what this ID scheme is all about. They don’t know how it will change their lives. They have no idea it means that anyone can watch us at any time. And they don’t know that we’ll have no say in it.
These are the views of NO2ID. Share yours on sharon.breen@pcs.org.uk
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