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From the letters page in the Times some voices of concern.

This ID card infringes fundamental freedoms

Sir, Most unusually, you have allowed yourself to be misled by the Government’s spin and misrepresentations concerning the ID Card Bill — principally by swallowing its contention that the privacy concerns of many people in the UK are “in contemporary, card-carrying Britain, entirely irrelevant”. (leading article, Feb 13, and letter, Feb 14).

Those concerns are not in relation to the simple carrying of a card, which is merely the physical expression of the system the Government proposes to impose upon us. My deep anxiety, shared by many others, is the national identity register (NIR) — the database behind the cards — which has been too little debated and which appears to be widely misunderstood.

Leave aside for the moment the questions of overall cost, of the level of charge to be paid by the citizen, of the reliability of the biometric technology to be used, of the burden placed on those whose iris or facial scans do not readily “fit” (such as people with some disabilities and from certain ethnic groups) or of the Government’s abysmal record in implementing any project involving computer technology on time and within budget.

My principal objection is that the Government cannot make up its mind what the ID card and NIR are supposed to accomplish and cannot produce convincing evidence that any of its aims will be achieved by the scheme as outlined in the Bill. We have been told at various times that ID cards and the NIR will help to reduce benefit fraud, cut illegal immigration, combat identity theft, become a vital tool in the war on terror or be a major aid to the police in fighting crime. Yet each of these supposed benefits has been challenged, often by those best able to judge.

I remain deeply sceptical that ID cards and the NIR will achieve any of their stated aims. Against this, I balance the fundamental shift in the relationship between individual and State, the scope for error and maladministration, the horrendous costs of setting up and running the scheme and have come to the inescapable conclusion that the whole concept is flawed and must be resisted by every legal means.
JON MILES
Newton Abbot, Devon

Sir, I feel that I am sensible enough to look after my own identity and take necessary measures to that effect, which is my responsibility.
Now I am being forced to put my identity, along with various measurements of parts of my body, on to a national database where I have little control over the access, use or security of my identity.
MATTHEW HALL
Newcastle upon Tyne

Sir, The decision taken by members of parliament shows them to be as unworthy as representatives of the people as were their predecessors whom Cromwell was compelled to remove in the 17th century.

Is it not obvious that the growing certainty of compulsory ID cards and its associated database, together with the surveillance state represented by more CCTV cameras than are used by Communist China, has placed us well down the road to the nightmare world of 1984? Who can doubt that the distortion of language embodied in political correctness is a precursor to the imposition of a form of Newspeak.

It beggars belief that the British people, at the behest of the lobby fodder within the Commons, are to be forced to submit their fingerprints and iris patterns for inclusion in a state-run archive and to become accountable to those who for so many centuries have been accountable to us.

What foreign dictators have failed to do we are now doing to ourselves.
COLIN BULLEN
Tonbridge, Kent

Sir, It was William Pitt the Younger who said: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

What Britons never, never shall be, they have become. A fundamental freedom was lost when compulsory ID cards were voted for.
DÓNAL THOMPSON
Madrid

Slaves we are certainly becoming, this Statewatch report shows that at an EU level this is being driven by the British government, directly from Tony Blair`s sofa cabinet. Even the EUites are concerned about “the legal bases for such action”
According to Statewatch

“At the end of January the Commission published its 128-page work programme for 200
6: European Commission work programme for 2006: Justice and home affairs issues. Hidden in the detail is the following:

“Adoption par la Commission d’une décision établissant des normes pour les éléments de sécurité à intégrer dans les cartes d’identité (Comité Article 6)”

That is to adopt a Commission Decision to establish standards for security in ID cards. The “Brief description” attached is more explicit:

“Brief Description: According to The Hague Action Plan, travel documents both for third country nationals and EU citizens should be better secured in particular via the integration of biometric identifiers. Also Identity Cards have been explicitly mentioned even if there are doubts about the legal bases for such an action. This proposal responds to this request and will harmonise the security features for ID cards issued by Member States” (emphasis added)

There is, of course, a big difference between simply “harmonising” security features in national ID cards and “the integration of biometric identifiers” (see, below for objections to this approach).

Two other aspects are extraordinary about this proposal. First, the open admission that there are doubts about: “the legal bases for such action”. Not surprising as Article 18.3 TEC (Nice) expressly excludes provisions on national ID cards.

Second, because the Commission does not appear to be intending to draft a proposal for consideration by the Council and European Parliament but rather to take this momentous decision in secret committee - the Article 6 Committee, referred to as a “Technical Committee”.

The Commission’s intention is all the more surprising as exactly this issue was the subject of heated discussion in the Council prior to the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 1 December 2005.

“The story starts back in July when the UK Presidency presented a Note on “Minimum common standards for national identity cards” to SCIFA (Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum) (EU doc no: 11092/05). The Note called on SCIFA to ask the Article 6 Committee to draft standards including the “use of biometrics”. This “Article 6 Committee” is a technical committee set up by the Commission to work out the implementation of the uniform visa format in 1995 - but what powers are there to extend the Committee’s remit first to residence permits for third country nationals, then to EU passports and now to EU ID cards? As the original purpose of the Committee was to deal with the uniform visa format, on the the European Parliament was only “consulted”, it appears the parliament has no right to see what is happening on all the other issues too. See: EU: Biometrics - from visas to passports to ID cards.

The proposal surfaced again in November 2005 when the UK Presidency sent another Note to SCIFA on 11 November (EU doc no: 14351/05). The Article 6 Committee had “considered” physical security features and produced “interim conclusions” and in parallel “an ad-hoc group of experts from Member States” produced its “conclusions”. SCIFA was “invited” to agree “Conclusions” with a view to their adoption “in the margins” (as an A Point - adopted without discussion) at the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA Council) on 1 December 2005.

The opening Recitals in the Conclusions plainly show the lack of a legal basis. No legally binding standards or timetables could be “imposed” on member states - “Conclusions” are anyway “soft”, non-binding law which have to be agreed unanimously. This is followed by “without prejudging the issue of the possible legal basis” to “harmonise” security standards for national identity cards - in plain language this means that there is no legal basis but if common standards including biometrics are adopted by member states one-by-one (independently as it were) then “harmonisation” can follow later (a common tactic for controversial measures).

The Conclusions contained two elements, first, standards related to the “issuing process” (eg: applicants should appear in person, security of data and storage). Second, the introduction of biometrics identifiers (”face and two fingerprints”) incorporated into a radio frequency chip (RFID) which should follow the specifications for passports “without modification” - this proved to be controversial. Also by the back-door the Conclusions set standards for checking applicants data “against existing databases” for example, “civil registers, passport and identity cards databases or driving licence registers”.

A week later (18 November) a Note (EU doc no: 14622/05) from the UK Presidency to COREPER (the permanent committee based in Brussels of high-level officials from the 25 governments) said SCIFA “had reached agreement on most of the issues” and it was invited to:

“examine the only outstanding issue, which concerns a reservation by Belgium”

The final version, dated 25 November 2005 (EU doc no: 15000/05), had highly significant changes concerning biometrics. Member states could choose whether they wanted to have biometrics on national ID cards and the passport biometric standards were now only a “reference point” or “starting point”. All references to fingerprints and RFID chips were deleted.

“Belgium and the Czech Republic consider that the introduction of biometric data into national identity cards cannot be examined only from the technical angle. The question requires a wide-ranging debate, which includes the protection of the private life [privacy], budgetary and organisational aspects”

It is interesting to note that while the Conclusions were published in the official press release of the JHA Council on 1 December the statement by Belgium and the Czech Republic was not JHA press release, 1 December 2005.

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments:

“This is no way to try to bring in such a far-reaching policy, one which will affect millions of people. It is particularly objectionable that the Commission appears to be proposing that the introduction of biometrics on national ID cards should be considered as a “technical” issue by a committee whose actions cannot be scrutinised. By-passing national and European parliamentary scrutiny, let alone civil society, has no place in a democracy”

In our own parliament the real culprits for the decimation of our constitution, have been debating ID Cards again before the vote later this week.

First, on the so called voluntary introduction of the system; is seems that the government proposes to initially allow a “voluntary” take up of the cards, at some point to be determined later, it is proposed to bring in compulsion. The idea being that if enough of the people prove to be open to the system by taking out the cards on a voluntary basis then the government would make it compulsory.

In fact in the Labour manifesto states “We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.”

The problem is that the government want to make it a condition that you must take the ID Card when you apply for a new or to renew your passport. This clause was removed by the House of Lords but has been put back into the bill by the government.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury put the matter nicely when he moved the amendment in the Lords. He stated:
“We seek to replace compulsion by voluntarism. Citizens should not be forced to have ID cards. Compulsion is far too often resorted to by the modern state. That comes from an intensely managerial culture in which regulation rules. That sits uneasily with fundamental rights such as privacy and voluntarism. This Bill is an authentic clash between such rights and managerial efficiency.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 January 2006; Vol. 677, c. 957.]

Baroness Scotland, speaking on behalf of the Government, tried to claim that passports are voluntary. Well they are but by the government linking the card scheme to passports means that to avoid being compelled to take an ID card you become a prisoner in this country with no opportunity to travel on business or for pleasure. Also as over 80% of us do carry a passport the governments chosen trigger for compulsion would soon be reached.

David Davis made points about the national register;

There are many good reasons for not wanting to be on the national identity register, which involves a large number of pieces of data about each individual being put on a single Government database, many of them the access keys for other Government databases. That is the important point: it is a central database with access keys effectively to all the other Government databases.

It is disingenuous of the Home Secretary to say, “We’ve already got all those.” One of the transitions that has taken place over the past several years under the Government, and to a small extent under the previous Government too, is the removal of barriers to the transfer of information around Government. Those barriers were a protection of the liberties of the individual, and now they have gone. Many have gone for good reason—to make the Child Support Agency work, to stop terrorism, and so on—and the Bill will accelerate that process.

Finally, there is the most important question about the whole issue—the insecurity of the system. The Government have made, in a way properly, much of the issue of identity theft, particularly with regard to terrorism. Yet their proposal—a point I referred to earlier—is to gather the access keys to virtually every Government database in the national identity register, put them on one large computer and then create many thousands of direct access points to that computer. They will have created the most attractive possible target for every fraudster, terrorist, confidence trickster and hacker on the planet. Those people will be able to lift data out and put viruses and false data in.

If the Pentagon and Microsoft cannot keep hackers from penetrating their mainframes, what chance the Home Office? Speaking about the scheme, Microsoft’s national technology officer has said that a central identity database could worsen the very problems that it was intended to prevent, such as terrorism and identity theft. He said that

“ministers should not be building systems that allow hackers to mine information so easily.”

So, far from protecting the public, the Government will put the individual citizen at risk by creating a culture of complacency that is based on an ill-designed and ill-thought-out scheme.

Incidentally, this is yet another area where the Government mounted a mendacious attack on the independent LSE report. I will deal with that in detail because it is rather important. The section of the report that highlights the very serious security flaws in the proposed system was written not by an antagonist of the identity card system, but by somebody who favours identity cards, Dr. Brian Gladman, the ex-technical director of NATO, who had an eminent career in the British military ensuring the security of our military computer systems. He himself has said:

“the UK ID cards programme as now envisaged will create safety and security risks for those whose details are entered into the system.”—

that from an avowed supporter of ID cards.