FIGHTING LABOUR'S IDENTITY CARD AND DATABASE PLANS
The Labour Party has steamed ahead with its national identity scheme and anyone concerned about threats to our freedom from an increasingly authoritarian state should be worried by the Identity Cards Act, which has been passed with little change from what the government wanted in spite of all the 'write to your MP' lobbying by No2ID and optimistic hopes of House of Lords amendments.
The so-called electronic identity, eID, is just one part of European and American efforts to impose national identity schemes across the western world. Bush has already pushed this through the US Senate as an enhanced driving license known as RealID, tacked on to a military spending bill that was unlikely to get voted down in the middle of a war, and is demanding biometric passports for non-visa entry to the country. This side of the atlantic, European paranoia about borders is helping to drive EU-wide developments of passports, ID cards and databases.
Creeping compulsion
In Britain, Labour was determined to get compulsory cards in place within the next few years, starting off by forcing you to have an ID card when you apply for a passport. This will now be the case from 2010. Until then applicants will be able to 'opt out' of having an actual card, but from 2008-9 personal information will still be placed in the National Identity Register, which is in many ways worse than being made to have a card. Plus, it's not only about one government Act. State officials have taken advice from their industry partners that they will need to tread carefully and bring this in step-by-step. Plans are already in place to create a 'co-ordinated online role of electors' (CORE) and to encourage payment of council tax through an internet scheme called Government Connect. These will both involve gathering local lists into national ones, ideal for building the National Identity Register which is a core part of Labour's ID scheme. Moreover, the new Children Act allows creation of separate databases for all children, that could easily turn into ID cards for everyone as this generation ages – one estimate is 50% of the population could be covered within 20 years! Plus, mandatory fingerprinting as well as facial biometrics (which will start to be gathered later this year in UK) are looking more likely for all passport and travel documents within the EU.
Although ID is coming through in an incremental manner, the time to start fighting is now. The Poll Tax came in and was still defeated here from taking notice and learning from opposition to the initial trials in Scotland, and applying them to build a countrywide campaign. ID schemes have already been defeated in Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere. We would do well to look at how these examples of opposition worked before, since an international effort may well be needed. If it is to succeed, the campaign now needs to move beyond complaining what is bad about ID and prepare for concerted refusal and outright revolt.
Standing up and not being counted
Unfortunately the situation is not exactly like the Poll Tax of 15 years ago, when there was a clear benefit to individuals refusing to pay, because the government has strongly linked the scheme to national security as well as to the emotive threat of ‘identity theft’. They hope they will convince many law-abiding citizens it will be a price worth paying. The high cost to individuals may well help convince a lot of people to fight the scheme, but to beat ID we really need to win the argument that the state cannot provide security or any bogus idea of respect, whether by ID cards, cameras or ASBOs. Society has been made rotten by the growing inequalities that are permitted by the system called capitalism that allows a small minority of people to own most of the resources and organise our lives.
ID is a class issue – the rich will ensure their anonymity by their limited need for the welfare state. We must preserve ours by downright refusal to accept ID, not because it’s too expensive and not because it won’t work, but simply because we won’t let the state invade every part of our lives. Out of struggle, as we have done before, we can strengthen our own idea of community that one day will overthrow the dominant systems of state and capitalism.
Common arguments against ID, and their limitations
For anarchists, opposition to ID cards might feel so obvious that it’s beyond discussion, a ‘no brainer’. But the number of dodgy anti-ID arguments coming out have only served to confuse matters.
ID cards will cost loads, even more than a passport, and hurt those of us who can least afford it
The ID database and card scheme will cost many billions of pounds. Much of this will end up lining the pockets of the private companies who will set up and run the computers and card-reading technology, and to pay the personnel involved in running the scheme. A figure of £300 per person has been determined by dividing the likely cost of the scheme by the population, and it it likely that a lot of this cost will be passed to individuals when we are asked to register for a card or make changes to our records - a kind of tax to pay for the fear and insecurity created by our scaremongering rulers. But it’s important to remember the principle that we wouldn’t want it even if it was free. Neither should the large fines scare us into registering. One of the strongest weapons against the Poll Tax was the campaign of mass non-registration by the public burning of forms or simply by ignoring council letters.
ID card and database technology won’t work
There are huge technical problems with making ID work - no government has attempted a database scheme on the scale of the one proposed for ID in Britain. The story of public/private Information Technology projects has generally been one of massive delay and many additional years of expensive tinkering which have mostly benefitted only the companies that have the contracts. Home Office sponsored trials by Atos Origin showed unbelievably bad results for biometric registration and validation that would clearly discriminate against disabled, black and older people. A Dutch trial involving RFID passports showed that encrypted personal information could be read and the codes cracked in a very short time. These might seem like a good basis for opposing ID, but it's really not our problem. Let’s not get drawn into arguing for a ‘fair’ or 'secure' system. We need to stand together and be clear we don’t want any system, and try to use government incompetence to our advantage. Registration booths could become an important focus for direct action against the scheme, as could the companies involved.
ID cards won’t solve crime or terrorism
The government has been sneaky to lump terrorism and organised crime in with any kind of credit card and welfare benefits fraud. But why should we care if a few of us are working the system when corporations and rich individuals continue to benefit from massive tax-avoidance and the government is spending millions on arms? A lot of us depend on ‘petty’ crime to overcome poverty in our class-divided society. Organised crime and the terror threat are mainly diversions to scare us into believing we need the state to be secure when it’s state-imposed social inequality, warmongering and religious bigotry that are the problems. Many of the people who threaten us most through fear of poverty or violence, whether they are fraudsters, terrorists, bosses or generals, are rich people who can buy anonymity and freedom of movement. So the bleatings of Liberty and others in the ‘It won’t work’ brigade end up just adding to the confusion, because the very act of going on about crime or terrorism just propagates fear of each other. This is another form of ‘divide and rule’, keeping us down when we should be fostering solidarity amongst ourselves to fight oppression together. Anarchists refuse to be drawn into worrying about a state initiative from the state’s own perspective.
ID cards will lead us into a police state
Well maybe, since the police will have access to the database and will have powers to demand to see ID cards, but even this sort of misses the point. The ID scheme is much more than information to help the police know who we are. If you’re being denied healthcare or a driving license because you’re not on the national register, is it not really enforcement that’s the problem, it’s the whole system. The real issue is the government’s original idea of entitlement and its flipside - economic discrimination. The global capitalist economy relies on inequality so our governments are lying every time they say they don’t want migrants working in Britain. They want cheap goods and labour from wherever they can get it and always have done, whether from the spoils of colonial rule, raw materials or sweatshop products feeding multinationals, from migration of workers with lower wage expectations, or by the driving down of wages in general.
Running this kind of capitalist system involves managing production and consumption for the mass of us. An electronic ID database will help to parcel up the majority of people in our 21st century society into economic units whose wages or welfare benefits, and the way these are spent, are tightly controlled. Plus, many workers are already being tagged and tracked in the workplace - a national ID could help extend this capability to all of us. All this is going on whilst the rich and higher-earning middle classes, especially those benefiting from the property boom or stock market income, can afford private healthcare and pensions along with the relative anonymity that goes with those privileges. That leaves those of us who depend on resources like state or low-paid occupational pensions and the NHS to have our entire life history put under detailed scrutiny from government bean-counters and private companies.
ID cards also take away our ability to create our own social and economic sphere. Labour (and some of the socialist Left who traditionally love social planning) hate the ‘Grey Market’ they can’t track and tax, and so roll out the usual scare-stories of organised crime and terrorism. No surprise then that we are now seeing adverts telling us that buying cheap DVDs will buy guns for terrorists! They want us to feel guilty about everything from biodiesel, media piracy and cheap booze, while at the same time are promoting free-market policies for the rest of the world and helping companies make millions from the poverty of the majority of people on earth.
Ways to fight ID
Like the Tories' poll tax, ID cards are Labour's own version of a 'tax on being alive'. We can scupper ID cards as soon as they try and force us to register, but only if we start preparing now. Once the scheme is in place it will be harder, although certainly not impossible, to beat it. We cannot allow the state to get away with becoming more authoritarian than it already is.
Get involved
One way to fight the national identity scheme is to get involved with a local anti-ID group (or set one up) and help get the message out by producing and distributing information against ID in community & social centres, libraries, health centres and door-to-door. There is still a lot to do to explain the basic facts of the scheme, as well as its likely effects, and to work out effective forms of direct action.
Get informed
ID will affect different groups in society in many different ways. We know that applications to the Student Loans Company will be linked to ID, probably so they can keep tabs on any address changes, and university students may even need to have an ID card to get a loan. Charles Clarke also wants to gather ID information on other students and school leavers through the Connexions Card scheme for 13-19 years olds. There are likely be big changes in levels of police harassment for minority groups, and ID records could easily be used to control access to benefits or healthcare.
Get the inside information
Those in work can try and find out about any ID-related developments there. Anti-ID groups will be pleased to hear from any council workers or anyone else who can help the campaign find out when ID data collection starts to happen locally, especially in areas that may be chosen as a trial area for ID registration. A word of warning: local councils, who are likely to be involved with collecting additional personal data from the electoral role or council tax registers, are in general very authoritarian against anyone taking autonomous action. They also hate local people turning up in their cosy council houses to protest, especially when they would rather maintain the illusion that they are victims of a scheme instead of an integral part of it. Workers in companies implementing the scheme, like Experian, may know details about how their employer is planning to operate their part of it.
Get your passport
Personal information from passport applications will be used to build the National Identity Register from 2008-9 although you can 'opt out' of having an actual card until 2010. Some data collection has already started, taking face dimensions from passport photos. Later on, applicants will have to attend in person to get fingerprints or eyes scanned. So, for anyone who needs a new passport, it would be a good idea to get one now before the new systems are up and running properly, making sure the photo is not too clear so it is harder for the Passport Office to extract facial data. One Post Office service for the newer photo ID driving licence has your photo pre-checked so you can see what you can get away with (postage is also included which can work out cheaper than paying for this separately) - this may also be the case for passports. There must be lots of individual ways to confound the ID scheme and these can be shared in anti-ID groups, and even better, by telling friends and neighbours. This will help build a mass refusal campaign, because a scheme like this won't be prevented by small numbers of individuals helping themselves.
Get angry
Remember that local politicians of whatever colour cannot be trusted. Under the Tories, Labour councils leaders enthusiastically issued poll tax demands and court orders, sent in the bailiffs and condemned local and national demonstrations as mindless riots. But as local people, we supported each other, we defied the court and saw off bailiffs. We were angry and we fought back. Many of us disappeared off the registers for good. There may be a local MP against ID in some areas, but lobbying has been shown to be useless. We know that governments do not listen and that ID will be beaten on the streets or not at all.
Read the second edition of the AF's pamphlet
Defending Anonymity-thoughts for struggle against identity cards,
available on our website or for free (with SAE) from our usual address.