WRITTEN ON January 6th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?
‘We shouldn’t rule out a way to protect people’s identities’The prime minister on ID cards
Interview by Nicholas Watt
Sunday January 6, 2008
The ObserverID cards are seen as a tool for dealing with terrorism but there is a debate about whether they are an encroachment on civil liberties. Are you still committed to pressing ahead with them?
I think this debate has to be one where people can see where there’s agreement as well as where there’s been a debate that’s led to disagreement. If someone said to you that I’m going to give you a better form of passport with biometrics and I’m going to include the current passport information in that; if someone said to you … that if someone comes to this country as a foreign national, given the worries about illegal immigration, they should carry some form of identity, I think most people would agree.
Well think again matey.
And I think we’ve got to get the debate about, if you like the management, the identity management to a reasonable level.But people seem confused as to what they are for. Is it specifically to guard against foreign nationals working and living illegally here? Or is it aimed at domestic security?
There are two things. One is, when it comes to foreign nationals coming in and the danger of illegal immigration. I think most people would support there being some form of identification that people are asked to produce.
Right. So you’re asked to produce your ID to show you’re an illegal alien. But if you’re not, ie if you’re a British jobs for British people type of good guy, you’re not asked for your ID in the first place. Just how does this work, exactly? With X-Ray specs so you can see people’s union jack underpants?
Is that the principal reason for ID cards?
As far as the individual is concerned, the danger for me and you in the modern world is that our identity is easily stolen.
Indeed. The private sector is especially agrressive about seking unnecessary details, and the public sector unbelievably careless and sloppy about leaking it. Lack of ID cards is not the problem here.
And people feel worried when information that is personal to them is lost, and rightly so. And I think if we were giving a better means by which people could protect their identity, then in the private as well as the public sector people are looking at biometrics. I mean maybe in a few years’ time on your computer you will need biometrics rather than a password.
Fingerprints have soled crimes for a century. But we didnt keep a central encyclopedia of everyone’s dabs
Maybe when you go to a supermarket, as happens in some parts of the States and Europe, you are going to be safer, instead of carrying a credit card which can easily be stolen, to use your biometrics to shop. Maybe in relation to banking to use biometrics or fingerprint biometrics, you might find that you are safer in your banking transaction than if you carried a card and a number. But the very fact that you’ve got biometrics now in a way that you didn’t have two centuries ago gives you opportunities to protect people’s identity and I don’t think we should rule out the use of that. In fact, I don’t actually think most of the general public think that the use of biometrics is in itself wrong, either for private transactions or for passports or whatever.So are you committed to ID cards?
We’re committed to the proposals we put forward which are essentially that the information you now use to get your passport, linked to the biometrics now available, give you a better form of protection. But I’m happy that this debate continues, because I believe that over the course of it some preconceptions will be dealt with.
So it looks set to continue to be a “you can talk about it but we won’t even pretend to listen because we’re going to do it anyway” sort of “debate”
So would it be that British citizens and non-British citizens would need them?
Yes, but under our proposals there is no compulsion for existing British citizens.
Yes, so try to look British so nobody hassles you in the first place……submitted in the freezing cold outside the splendid wifi-enabled Hambledon village shop because we have no phone or ADSL at home for THREE WEEKS – that’s 50 households (les the two pensioners wh complained to our MP and were reconnected in three days)…cheers BT
6 Responses to “Gordon Brown current thinking on ID cards”
With regard to the question of compulsion, Gordon should read the Top 10 FAQs on the Identity & Passport Service’s website.
Aside from that, ID card opponents are also concerned about information to be stored on the National Register, and who will have access to it, on which it is compulsory to be enrolled if you want to have a passport.
I don’t think we should blame Gordon Brown. He hasn’t got a clue about any of this stuff and relies on advisors — presumably at IPS — to tell him about the technology. What was odd about his remarks, though, was that they were so, well, last century. The only biometric shopping scheme I can think of — apart from a pilot at one store in Germany — is PayByTouch in the USA. For more information, see for example
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2007/11/12/story1.html
Funny old eGov monitor has a pretty effective No2ID deconstruction of the Brown interview – see http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/16568 … can’t see it the no2ID site.
I’ve been thinking about the issue of whether or not we should blame Gordon Brown if he hasn’t a clue.
WIBBI, when he didn’t have a clue, that he didn’t act as if he did.
Of course, that presumes he is aware of being clueless. If that is not the case, WIIBI he reads this paper (500 Kb PDF).
Smoke and Mirrors. We are all being let into `their vision`. If you don’t know what I’m talking about read up on David Rockefeller and the works of Professor Carroll Quigley (and I quote)
“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interest of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists ‘ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”(5)
David Rockefeller, David Rockefeller: Memoirs, Published by Random House, October 15, 2002 . The following quote is found on pg. 405
We “live in interesting times. Our mainstream leaders have sold us out. Society has slipped the moorings of truth and is steered by megalomaniacs. All we can do is continue to man the lifeboats of truth.”(120)
Brown is being extremely disingenuous. Until the next election, there will be no compulsion for UK citizens to get cards – unless that is they want to renew a passport. And if Labour wins the next election, how long are they likely to wait before making the cards mandatory for everyone?