Tuesday, 19 November, 2002, 10:59 GMT 

ID cards: civic dream or Orwellian nightmare?  

By Jon Silverman  
Home affairs analyst         

When's an ID card not an ID card? Perhaps when it's an "entitlement 
card". Are we stepping closer to a Big Brother-style society?   

What's in a name? If you call a piece of plastic with your photo and 
personal details on it an ID card, you are halfway to summoning up the 
Orwellian image of Big Brother.  

On the other hand, if you call it an entitlement card, you are in tune 
with the vision of Tony rather than Eric Blair - an advocate of a society 
based on rights and responsibilities. So, who wants the cards to be  
introduced and why?

Last July, the government issued a consultation paper on entitlement 
cards and invited responses to be submitted by 10 January 2003.  

So far, around 1,200 replies have been received at the Home Office. 
Of those who support entitlement cards, the majority see the biggest 
advantage as the ability to access heath-related services without 
having to produce a hundred different documents.  

This enthusiasm appears to be linked to a belief that many recipients 
of services are getting benefits to which they are not entitled. No 
prizes for guessing that the finger is pointed most frequently at 
immigrants.  

Police checks

Clearly there are vested interests rooting for cards to be introduced. 
Even though the carrying of a card would not be compulsory, the police 
believe it would make their job easier if they could check a person's 
identity in the street, say, using a hand-held reader.  

The banks - mindful that identity fraud costs the economy more than 
[Pounds] 1.3 billion a year - would like to see a more uniform means 
of identification so long as it is totally secure.

And, of course, immigration officials would have a more robust weapon 
against illegal working if they had the right to check a universal 
entitlement card.  

Under much the same pressures, the last Conservative government 
came close to introducing ID cards. The 1996 Queen's Speech 
promised a draft bill on a voluntary card based on the photo 
driving licence.  

The 1997 general election scuppered that plan though, in truth, 
the cost implications might well have done for it in any case.  

The Home Office says the cost of introducing an entitlement card would 
be between [Pounds] 1.3 and 3 billion - the higher estimate would be 
for a card incorporating state-of-the-art iris or fingerprint recognition.  

Picking up the cost

But since the scheme would be self-financing, we would all have to fork 
out up to [Pounds] 15 more for a driving licence or passport, for example. 
Since the cost of a passport has only just risen, would we consider it 
money well spent ?  

You don't have to swallow the premise of the Steven Spielberg/Tom 
Cruise movie, Minority Report, to know that chip-based technology is 
developing at such a rate that things which were impossible even five  
years ago are now within grasp.

However, many of the respondents to the government's consultation 
paper are imbued with a healthy dose of British scepticism and wonder, 
in the light of a string of Whitehall computer fiascos, whether the Home 
Office is up to the job of introducing around 40 million entitlement cards. 

It's a fair point, though the success of electronic tagging and the 
introduction of terminals in around 40 prisons linking them to the Police 
National Computer prove that not everything technological is a disaster 
as soon as the bureaucrats get their hands on it.  

Home Secretary David Blunkett - a fervent advocate - says entitlement 
cards will help the needy access services from which some are wrongly 
excluded at the moment.  

Opposition parties and civil libertarians believe they will divide 
further an already fractured society and make us all - in the words 
of Liberty - "suspects not citizens". You have until 10 January 2003 
to have your say.  

You can send your views to: Entitlement Cards Unit, 
Home Office, 50 Queen Anne's Gate, London SW1H 9AT; 
or by e-mail: entitlementcardsunit{at}homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk  

                     -==-

Source: BBC - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2491101.stm


Cheers, Steve..

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