London, Wednesday the 6th February 2002
For Immediate Use
Contact Details: Dr Sean Gabb, 07956 472 199, sean@libertarian.co.uk
“IDENTITY CARDS: ASSAULT ON CIVIL LIBERTIES AND WASTE
OF TAXPAYERS’ MONEY”, SAYS FREE MARKET AND
CIVIL LIBERTIES THINK TANK
The Government’s proposed “Entitlement
Card” is a closet identity card scheme, and is a
threat to both civil liberties and the taxpayers’
pockets. So claims the Libertarian Alliance,
Britain’s most radical free market and civil
liberties think tank.
Libertarian Alliance spokesman, Dr Sean Gabb, said:
“Entitlement Card, Identity Card - call it what you
will - this is a solution looking for a problem. The
Government’s scheme will do nothing to cut street
crime or benefit fraud or illegal immigration, or anything
else they claim to worry about. All experience from abroad
shows that identity cards at best slightly raise the costs
of committing a crime. At worst, they reduce the cost -
when being able to produce a forged or stolen card often
puts suspicion to sleep.”
He added that every 20th century dictatorship had used
identity cards to know which people to kill or imprison,
what they looked like, and where they lived.
Just some of the countries where identity cards have been
used to enable mass-murder:
∙ Nazi Germany
∙ Soviet Russia
∙ Castroist Cuba
∙ Rwanda in 1994
Other countries where they have been used to facilitate
petty oppression:
∙ Germany (homosexuals and
nudists)
∙ Belgium (black people)
∙ Socialist Czechoslovakia
(religious pilgrims)
Here in Britain, said Dr Gabb, “identity cards would
be used to single out and discriminate against smokers,
drinkers, members of unpopular religious movements, and the
politically incorrect.”
They would also be an embarrassing failure. “We all
know that the data stored on us by the State is riddled
with inaccuracies. Join all that up and make it available
via an identity card scheme, and every scenario becomes a
certainty from the comic to the downright
sinister.”
They would also be horribly expensive. “£1
billion set up costs, they tell us? Anyone who believes
that will believe the Millennium Dome was a success and
that aliens landed at Roswell.
“We are told these ‘Entitlement Cards’
will be voluntary. This is an insult to our intelligence.
The Government would use the money laundering rules to get
the banks to make production necessary for all
transactions. Other bodies would be pressed into doing the
Government’s dirty work, while the politicians stood
back insisting that their identity cards were
voluntary.”
ENDS
Note to Editors
1) Dr Sean Gabb sits on the Executive Committee of the
Libertarian Alliance and edits its journal “Free
Life”. His latest book, “Dispatches from a
Dying Country: Reflections on Modern England”, is
available from Politico’s.
Dr Gabb can be contacted by mobile on 07956 472 199, or at
sean@libertarian.co.uk
2) Dr Gabb has written and broadcast extensively on the
identity card issue. His submission to the Home Office on
behalf of the Libertarian Alliance the last time identity
cards were proposed is added to this release as an
appendix.
3) Further publications against identity cards can be found
on the Libertarian Alliance web site:
http://www.libertarian.co.uk
4) Answers Given to the Home Office in 1994 regarding
identity cards,
drafted by Dr Sean Gabb for the Libertarian Alliance
Question: Would an identity card costing less than a
full passport be regarded as a convenient travel document
for use within Europe and possibly elsewhere?
Answer: It might, but this is no reason in itself for
introducing one.
Question: To what extent would an identity card be of
added value in providing proof of age?
Answer: It might be of some. However, in the
first place, most identity cards so far introduced have
been easy to forge. On the other, age is indicated
well enough by general appearance to allow any reasonable
distinctions to be made between children and adults.
Question: To what extent would an identity card be
helpful to individuals in banking and retail
transactions?
Answer: Of great value, assuming the rightness of the
present money laundering regulations and general
disapproval of cash transactions. The Libertarian Alliance,
however, denounces all efforts to restrict adult access to
any substance of his or her choice; and it regards all
banking regulations made pursuant to, or in the spirit of,
the Vienna Convention of 1988 as a sinister intrusion into
areas where the State has no legitimate function.
Question: Would it be useful to provide space on an
identity card to allow the optional addition of emergency
medical information or organ donor details?
Answer: No. Anyone who wants to carry such
information can do so already. The question is
analogous to asking whether tattooing our names on our
foreheads would help us to remember each other's
names. The only new use of having medical information
so available will be the persecution of unpopular
minorities. Already, smokers are often denied access
to medical treatment. Give the doctors better access
to lifestyle information, and they will use it to enforce
whatever regimen takes their current fancy.
Question: To what extent would an identity card
scheme be seen as a useful way of preventing crime and of
reducing the fear of crime in certain areas?
Answer: We cannot comment how it might be seen by
others. But we fail to see how identity cards can
prevent crime to any significant degree. The repeated
experience of those countries which have them is that the
cost of committing much crime is simply raised by the cost
of obtaining forged identification. The only crimes
likely to be reduced are those pseudo-crimes that
respectable people commit when they try to do things
legitimate or indifferent in themselves but disapproved by
the State - eg, taking drugs, buying pornography, using
prostitutes, evading business regulations, hiding their
assets from grasping tax collectors, and so forth.
Question: Views are invited on the implications for
privacy and data protection of an identity card scheme.
Answer: With a modern identity card scheme, there
will be no privacy. Access to data will inevitably be
expanded by the bureaucrats and special interest groups
until everything is open to inspection by almost
everyone. For example, if they can be included on a
card - as is certainly now possible - why should banking
and employment details not be available to a social
security official? Why should purchase and library
borrowing records not be available to police
officers? Whatever data protection might be given at
first, it would soon wither away.
Question: Views are invited on whether there should
be a unique identification number and, if so, whether it
should be incorporated in an identity card.
Answer: With modern technology, unique identification
numbers are irrelevant. With or without them, an identity
card would give access to all our personal data. The
question is like asking whether the entries in a database
should be given consecutive numbers to assist
searches. But so far as they might be useful before a
fully digital system can be implemented, we are against
them.
Question: Views are invited on the acceptability of
an identity card which contained data information about the
cardholder in machine readable form and the
possibility that this data could be used for biometric
tests.
Answer: Our answers are wholly based on the
assumption that identity cards would be of this kind.
But we will confirm that the suggestion is unacceptable to
us. Identity cards are bad. Anything that adds
to their efficiency only makes them worse.
Question: Comments are invited on the lessons to be
learnt from experience in other countries.
Answer: Try Nazi Germany, where the Jews were
usefully marked out by identity cards that carried details
of religion. Try Turkey, where political and social
dissidents have special holes punched in their cards.
Try Rwanda, where the Tutsi and Hutu butchers could only
decide whom and whom not to kill by checking their identity
cards. Try France, where identity cards checks are used to
harass racial minorities. Try modern Germany, where
they are used to frighten homosexuals. Where there
are identity cards, there is also a persecuting
state: the persecutions differ only in their objects
and intensity.
Question: Views are invited on the case for
introduction of a separate voluntary identity card/travel
card.
Answer: Since passports already exist - not, by the
way, that we endorse these - there is no need for a new
travel card. As for "voluntary" identity
cards, these are a nonsense. The more people have
them, the harder it will be for others to do without
them. Identity cards will be seized on by banks,
insurance companies, shops, public libraries, and every
branch of the State administration that has contact with
the public. Voluntary or not, life without one will
soon become hard. As for the banks and so on just
mentioned, their interest will be determined partly by the
need to enforce the money laundering regulations mentioned
above, and partly by a desire to avoid the costs of
securing themselves from fraud. These costs should
not be borne by the taxpayers.
Question: Would a photographic driving licence make a
useful de facto identity card?
Answer: Yes - and that is why we are against these
also. As for any separate arguments in their favour,
we will note that the absence till now of photographs from
driving licences has caused no problems that are
significantly greater than in countries where they are
standard.
Question: Views are invited on the case for
introducing a dual-function card in particular one serving
the purpose of driving licence and identity card.
Answer: Except we are opposed to identity cards in
any form, and to any waste of the taxpayers' money, we
have no views on this matter.
Question: Views are invited on the possibility,
perhaps in the medium or longer term, of introducing, a
multi-function Government card which would serve as an
identity card and could provide extra convenience to the
citizen.
Answer: We are against it. So long as we
respect the life, liberty and property of others, no
authority has any right to know who we are, where we live,
or what we may be doing at any moment. The only
"convenience" of this kind of card would be for
dealing with a government that consistently exceeded its
legitimate authority. We once hoped that a
Conservative Government - committed to economic freedom and
the generally free traditions of this country - would
rather reduce the number of contacts between citizen and
state than find ways to make them easier, and therefore
still more frequent.
Question: Views are invited on the possibility of
introducing a compulsory identity card based on either a
simple or multi-purpose identity card and the level of
enforcement necessary.
Answer: Either of these is possible. We only
deny the need and morality of both. Yet, this being
said, we will note that the estimated costs - of £2-4
billion to start up, plus anything up to £1 billion
per year thereafter - are enormous. And these costs
probably take no account of the waste and extravagance that
attend all government efforts.
Turning to the level of enforcement necessary, we say
this: Any scheme that stops short of total
surveillance of the whole population, and that fails to
incorporate fairly secure identification protocols - retina
patterns, DNA sampling, or whatever - will have little
effect on criminal activity. Any scheme that does not
stop short will take us straight into the world of
dystopian science fiction.
These are our summarised grounds of opposition to any
identity card scheme.
Extended Contact Details:
The Libertarian Alliance is Britain’s most radical
free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has
published over 700 articles, pamphlets and books in support
of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are
freely available at
http://www.libertarian.co.uk
Our postal address is
The Libertarian Alliance
Suite 35
2 Lansdowne Row
Mayfair
London
W1J 6HL
Tel: 07956 472 199
Associated Organisations
The Libertarian International - http://www.libertarian.to -
is a sister organisation to the Libertarian Alliance. Its
mission is to coordinate various initiatives in the defence
of individual liberty throughout the world.
Sean Gabb's personal website - http://www.seangabb.co.uk -
contains about 800,000 words of writings on themes
interesting to libertarians and conservatives
Candidlist - http://www.candidlist.com -
owned and maintained by LA Executive member Sean Gabb, it
lists Conservative MPs and candidates according to their
views on European integration. It had a major effect before
the 2001 general election, and remains an important
resource.
Liberalia - http://www.liberalia.com -
maintained by by LA Executive member Christian Michel,
Liberalia publishes in-depth papers in French and English
on libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and the free market.
It is a prime source of documentation on these issues for
students and scholars.
Libertarian Samizdata - http://www.samizdata.blogspot.com
- works in association with the Libertarian Alliance and
has an ever larger following. Check it out.