-Caveat Lector-
NEWS RELEASE FROM THE LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE
London, Wednesday the 6th January 2002
For Immediate Use
Contact Details: Dr Sean Gabb, 07956 472 199, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"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
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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.
***************
--
This news release comes from The Libertarian Alliance
25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke Street, London SW1P 4NN
Director: Dr Chris R. Tame
020 7 821 5502, http://www.libertarian.co.uk
Released by Sean Gabb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--
Dr. Chris R. Tame, Director
Libertarian Alliance | "The secret of Happiness is Freedom, |
25 Chapter Chambers | and the secret of Freedom is Courage" |
Esterbrooke Street | Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration |
London SW1P 4NN
England
Tel: 020 7821 5502
Fax: 020 7834 2031
Personal Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
LA Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
LA Web Site: http://www.libertarian.co.uk
Free Life Web Site: http://www.btinternet.com/~old.whig/freelife/fl.htm
The Hampden Press Website: http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk
LA Forum: groups.yahoo.com/group/libertarian-alliance-forum
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