Identity Cards

Created 3 May 2004/ last updated 7 May 2004

Introduction

For many years, UK governments have been thinking up problems to which Identity Cards are the solution. The public has been told that ID cards will help in the war on terrorism, in the fight against crime, to prevent illegal immigration, to combat paedophilia, to verify one's identity when accessing the Welfare State, etc. etc. The more virtues are claimed for ID cards now, the more disappointment will presently ensue.

Some links

• Sean Gabb's lengthy Libertarian Alliance paper Against Identity Cards dates from the time of the Conservative proposals in the mid 1990s.
• Libertarian Alliance news release on ID cards, from 2002
• Ross Anderson's "Commonsense in the Crisis", a discussion of systems and security problems, genuine and phoney, posed by the War on Terror -- includes comments on ID cards. Professor Anderson, a technology security specialist at Cambridge University, spoke at the Privacy International conference day held at the LSE in December 2002. His book "Security Engineering" (Wiley: 2001) is a interesting and comprehensive guide to all these matters. www.ross-anderson.com takes you to the index page of Professor Anderson's website. House of Commons Minutes of Evidence to the Home Affairs Committee's Inquiry into Identity Cards contains, inter alia, Ross Anderson's evidence, given on 24 February 2004.
• LIBERTY's ID cards page
• The Home Office's ID cards page. Arguments against ID cards on grounds of civil liberties or practical feasibility are misrepresented, downplayed or ignored here.
• The Register's "Guide to ID cards for Technologically-challenged Prime Ministers". Explains the practical drawbacks as well as one or two philosophical drawbacks related to the concept of personal identity.
• The Register's "Everything you never wanted to know about the UK ID card". A lengthy article about how the ID card could work in practice.
• STAND's response to the Government consultation (Jan 2003). The thousands of critical individual responses collected by STAND were dismissed by the Home Office as an organised campaign.
• Privacy International's Frequently Asked Questions on ID cards.