Among the many things I object to about ID cards is the prospect of being stopped in the street and asked by a Policeman to show my papers, when I might have done absolutely nothing wrong. It's the sort of thing which happens in authoritarian and despotic countries and is thoroughly un-British. I was therefore rather horrified to learn of this remark by Home Office Minister Megg
Munn Hillier in front of a parliamentary committee last week.
"You should see an ID card like a passport in-country."
Like South African passbooks? Like Soviet internal passports? No doubt she has learned all she knows at the feet of the Castro-admiring Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.
UPDATE: I was told it was Meg Munn. It was apparently Meg Hillier. Apologies to Ms Munn!
42 comments:
Iain,
The only way of doing justice to a remark like that would be to use the sort of language you do not tolerate but Guido's contributors excel at. I hope "Stanislav" has a go over there!
Quite agree Ian it really is an awful prospect.
Have they said if joggers, cyclists, mountaineers etc will have to carry the ID card?
Will the card, especially the chip be weather proof?
Have they said if there will be a minimum age to carry an ID card?
Have they said if there will be a minimum age to acquire an ID card?
Have they said how much it will cost if the card is lost?
Have they said if the card will go through the wash?
Have they said what the fine will be for not carrying an ID card?
Will they distinguish between forgetfulness and bloody mindedness?
Have they said how they will make people pay, who can't pay, for an ID card/replacement card?
Have they said why I must have an ID card to legally live in the country I was born in?
Will I go to prison for not having an ID card or refusing to give my Biometrix to the State?
The list of questions is almost endless and I have not seen one real reason why I should be forced to carry an ID card and even worse have all my private and physical details put on the State database hiding behind the card.
From 1980 – 2002 I spent the majority of my time living outside the UK – in Europe, the Far East and the Middle East. In all of the countries in which I lived, whatever their political systems, I was required to have and to carry an Identity Card. At no point did I think that this was an infringement of my privacy or my rights – on the contrary I believe that it enhanced them. The ID was my proof, as a foreigner, that I had a right to live in the country of which I was resident. Nationals of the countries had similar cards and these showed their rights as a citizen of the country – which in some cases were somewhat different from my rights as an alien resident. The ID cards were also useful in a variety of situations when I need to prove who I was. They carried a photograph which was very helpful when a Photo ID was needed (e.g. for some air travel) or in support when I was buying a product or a service.
The ID card system that I was part of abroad obviously had information about me stored in it. This varied from country to country – for example in the Middle East it carried information about my health (that I had “passed” an AIDS test, for example) whereas this was not required in Hong Kong or in The Netherlands.
To me the debate about ID cards has been dreadfully skewed to an inane debate about whether or not we should have them in the UK not what they will contain. My experience is that there are real benefits to individuals to the carrying of an ID card and I take the view that to object to them “in principle” as an infringement of civil liberties is absurd. If a country as liberal as The Netherlands has ID cards for all residents why then should we not have them in the UK? The issue is not about the principle but should be about the content of the ID card. We should not be arguing about whether we have them but about what is stored on them. That’s a real debate about civil liberties not the specious and facile debate that is currently underway.
I don't know what you are worried about. You My parents had ID cards in this country for 13 years and not once were they asked by the police to produce them.
Megg Munn, who spells Megg with two 'g's for some reason, joined the Labour Party at age 15.
She's "a trained social worker". I think that tells us all we need to know about Megg Munn.
Did she explain why people would need a passport in their own country?
Forget all this rubbish about ID Cards etc. Just start inserting microchips(similar to those inserted in pets) to all newborns with immediate effect - problem solved in a generation.
"Job done, Minister.
Now on to the next item on your agenda - Gulags !"
I was in Netherlands recently - as I sat having a beer in a cafe, I could help thinking that it was all so terribly authoritarian and despotic. Frankly, I was glad to leave.
Stop being so melodramatic, Iain. Many EU countries have identity cards and they are not despotic or authoritarian in any way. The best grounds for arguing against ID cards is the cost of them and the government's proven incompetence when it comes to handling data. Melodrama like this will not win arguments.
Let's hope the Tories seize on this and similar remarks. They should remind voters that the government wants us all to carry ID cards, 'just like South Africa in the days of apartheid.' That might rattle a few cages on the left.
Now where did I hear that before?
In one Middle Eastern police state it wasn't,"Your papers, please..", it was "Hey Mister..."
Will there be "No GO" areas for the under classes?
The past use and experience of ID cards is not really any predictor of future use. Technology has changed dramatically what with databases, the Internet and so on.
If a full fledged ID card system is implemented there's no theoretical limit to what it could eventually include. Example, swipe at the off-licence - gov't can monitor your consumption, swipe at grocers, gov't can monitor your diet, swipe at the chemist .. and so on. The only limits will be legal, do you trust a government with such easily evaded safeguards ? Do you think the government competent to safeguard the privacy of the stored data ?
I most certainly don't.
The saving grace, at present, is that this lot's incompetence in implementing any IT project of any size is well demonstrated so the whole thing is a long way off.
By the way, how much of this push for the cards is coming from the EU ? Most European countries have them now.
It's yet another attack by HMG on the assumption of innocence. It should be assumed that unless there is reasonable suspicion against the assumption that we are all going about our daily business in a legal manner. The idea of preventing criminal behaviour by treating all citizens as suspects is abhorrent, and all too typically New Labour.
As has been said so many times before: 1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual!
You spelt her name incorrectly - it's Meg not Megg.
Will you indicate which committee she made these remarks to please. The House of Commons index does not produce any committee minutes for Meg Munn only questions in the Chamber on 19th Feb.
Shocking isn't it? You only have to hop across the channel to see how the burden of having to carry ID bears down on the population. The poor buggers are reduced to relaxing at corner cafés, playing the odd game of boules or soaking up some rays in the park or on the beach. How can anyone live under such repression?
Paddy Briggs tells us in detail why we should be happy to live with what many of us see as the beginning of a slippery slope towards a Police State. I can remember the great delight when our war-time ID cards were abolished, we used to be quite keen on the idea that we had freedoms othe countries did not.
Since those days petty officialdom has flourished here too and ID cards would be heaven for jobsworths and busybodies without doing anything to control subversives.
Like Paddy I've lived in a variety of States which were/are keen on ID cards. I can't recall feeling any safer as a result.
This proposal is just hugely expensive displacement activity.
A Number of wee points:
1. HMG was not going to require us to carry one and produce it on demand. This of course rather undermines the point in having cards in the first place.
2. The European Commission of Human Rights has held - and there is no reason to think the Court would differ - that no issues arise under the ECHR when a citizen is asked to produce an ID card X v. France 1982. Arguably that's wrong but it is the current interpretation.
3. For me the cards are not the issue. Its the database that powers the system is. Where will it be connected to? How secure will it be? And who will have access to it? None of those questions has been adequately answered. And HMG's track record here is dire. Poor procurement policies and poor data security. The HMRC fiasco just took my breath away. Who the hell - apart from them - posts unsecure, unencrypted CDs about the place? Bonkers. But even if the practicalities could be addressed in principle I remained opposed to there being one central database with info on every citizen - which is what we will end up with.
The country is beginning to bear a remarkable resemblance to Nazi Germany.
Well, if Paddy Briggs thinks they are OK, I'm reassured. I've no idea why I was so concerned.
But Iain, Brown's lot (and Blair's` lot before him) ADMIRE totalitarian regimes, and think communism was a jolly good thing
ausweis Exactly, socialist governments are by definition controlling and authoritarian whether they're communists or Nazis - not forgetting that Nazi is an abbreviation for "National Socialist German Workers' Party"
(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
I think, as someone said above, this is a directive from the nomenklatura of the EUSSR.
Read the bill. The UK identity system is not about an ID card. People might accept that. It is about a system that, at the whim of a home secretary, without recourse to parliament, can decide to record what library books you read, what medicines you use, what car you drive and where you go, to sell this information to companies, decide if at some stage in the future this will be retrospectively illegal, make you a criminal (up to snd including imprisonment) for not telling the ID directorate about over 70 items of information that might change, from your address to your doctor's name, your marital status, passport number, religion, etc. It is not about an ID card at all. No country in the world has the powers this government wants over your lives.
No, it is not true that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. The powers include retrospective legislation; the home secretary can, without reference to parliament, require you on pain of punishment, to register ANY fact, including those that have become illegal.
I will happily go to prison for not carrying any papers.
I thought that the State derived its legitimacy from the consent of its citizens rather than vice versa. Or am I being too old fashioned?
I've just been to ask my bank to transfer 280 euros to a bank in Italy. In spite of the fact that I've banked at the same branch for about 25 years they said they weren't able to make bank transfers without photographic proof of identity. An ID card would have been quite useful. Now I'll have to go back tomorrow with my passport and queue for an eternity to ask again.
I am afraid Ms. Munn is a typical and rather lamentable product of the Labour party.
Joined the party at 15 (I always worry about people who get political so young - they are wierd), and then trained to be a social worker (i.e. paid by the state to go around interfeering in the family lives of other people).
Then became a councillor (i.e. paid by the state to run people's lives for them).
Then an MP (again paid for the state to devise ever new ways of interfeering with or running the lives of people).
No wonder this women loves the idea of more power to the state - she has been living off it since she left school (and I bet for a dman site longer beofre she left school too) and is a complete insider! She is one of those who believe that the state is this benevolent creature which will uard us against the evils of reality, rather than a monolithic and unstoppable beast which eats the interest of individuals for breakfast! She genuinely believes that she knows what is best for us - bless her cotton socks!
She is therefore an ignorant women, and because of the combination of ignorance and power, profoundly dangerous!
I will never sign up for an ID card, and would rather leave the country that do so.
I would say 'rather go to prison' but there is no point, as then they have me anyway!
Wrong about Meg with two G's, Verity, and about so much else.
The statement was made in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on 26 Feb: the transcript, without corrections, is available here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/uc365-i/uc36502.htm
Scroll down to Q72 (answer to Gwyn Prosser MP)
Adrian Yalland said...
"I am afraid Ms. Munn is a typical and rather lamentable product of the Labour party. "
Try reading Iain's post in full before you jump in with your criticism of the wrong person.
Here is the actual quote:
"If you look at what has happened in the past, we have had a passport which was used for external verification of identity, a National Insurance number, which was used internally, and now 80% of British citizens have a passport and we should see an identity card, like a passport, in country, if you like, that entitles people - we are not using it as an entitlement card, but it gives people easier access to certain services."
Put's a different complexion on things.
Why the hysteria?
I wish more of you would post links properly.
Try this:
< a href="www.mong.com" > Link < /a >
only:
1. remove the space after <
2. remove the space before >
3 retain the space between a and href
4. replace www.mong.com with the correct address
5. replace the word Link with the text to be clicked.
Dear Ian,
I alerted you to this comment (& I did say that it was Meg Hillier not Munn so not sure where you got that from). I'm delighted you've picked this up: I do hope the Tories pick this up and hammer the wretched woman and Brown with it.
Carroll
This 'government of all the Comrades' admires Communism in all its forms, and is working its way towards Soviet-style oppression. For instance anybody who objects to unprecedented waves of impoverished immigrants is instantly denounced as 'racist'. And - if they are working class objectors - they are patronised by the Left as 'fearful' - as well as the obligatory 'racist'.
And one of the reasons the Comrades are advocating ID cards is because they will not control immigration, and keep importing foreign terrorists [who end up staying here under the 'Yuman Rights Act' as they cannot be deported if the poor little darlings may be in any danger back home. Never mind the danger they may pose to the indigenous population!] What a shower!
I also couldn't care a less if these very un-British ID cards are carried on the Continent [aka 'Europe'] - we haven't been subsumed into a Socialist Federal Europe - yet [but the Comrades are working on it].
As Ed says these ID cards are an inversion of this country's legal system with its presumption of innocence. Indeed, the Comrades are following French/Napoleonic Law whereby you are guilty until you are proven innocent. That alone is another erosion of this country's heritage, and laws.
The sooner we boot out the Comrades the better - and that includes Comrade Livingstone on 1 May!
Anonymous: your quote does not change things. Ms Hillier does not explain why we need an internal passport, given that we've got a perfectly good passport already and NI cards. She does not explain why ID cards would give us "easier" access to services. Nor does she explain why it is necessary to have the enormous database behind it with more than 70 pieces of our personal information on it, all of it available to every state employee and, judging by the Government's lamentable record, every crook in the world. Nor does she explain why it will be necessary to force us to provide this information to the state not just once but every single time it changes on pain of fines etc. As for those who claim this is just like the ID cards used on the Continent, that's rubbish. None of them has the same database; none of them require this level of private information; none of them give the State this enormous level of knowledge and power over our personal lives. This proposal effectively destroys any concept of real privacy and changes the balance of power between the state and individuals in the state's favour. It is the perfect emblem for a government which thinks that it is our master and not our servant
Does this stupid bint anticipate setting up internal borders then? Unbelievable garbage.
And the Briggs seems to think that this debate is about what information should be carried on these cards, rather than whether cards should be carried at all. If he's so desperate to have a card then let him have one, they're quite easy to make as the crims have already discovered - but he shouldn't be so bleeding arrogant as to demand that everyone else should carry one too. Why don't we have a referendum on this, too?
What hasn't been revealed is just how many hundred thousands of people would legally have access to such information. Security my arse. Liberty my arse.
I received an interesting letter today, entitled "Theft of Ministry of Defence Recruitment Data". It was a copy of my database extract from the MoD "stolen" (for that read "left unsecured") laptop.
There were nearly 200 fields in the extract, containing information such as NHS number, NI number, whether subject to a care or supervision order, doctor's details...thankfully, many of these were blank in my case but you get the picture.
There is no way whatsoever I will be participating in the ID card or database scheme, particularly gien my recent experience of government databases! I do not care whether it is a criminal offence or not. When enough of us defy the system it will collapse.
The data that will be required will constitute a gross invasion of privacy, even if it is not lost used to misidentify someone. It is a tool of control, and the next step will be to "profile" people based on their habits and behaviours. You can imagine where it will go from there....
In 1979 I was travelling from Zambia to Malawi. We were stopped by soldiers who asked for papers. We assumed it was our passports they wanted to see, so we got them out. But no, it wasn't the passports they wanted. We were the first people to travel along the Great East Road that day and they were bored and wanted the newspapers...
According to the UK Passport website, you will NOT be required to carry your ID card. However, I can easily see how if you were stopped, it could quickly become "You don't happen to have your ID card on you Sir do you? Just routine, you understand......"
Personally, I am anti-state and am not registered to vote....
@ Paddy Briggs:
"If a country as liberal as The Netherlands has ID cards for all residents why then should we not have them in the UK?"
Actually they don't. What the Netherlands has (since only 2005, on the usual rubbish terrorism/immigration pretext) is a requirement for all over 14 to carry some form of state recognised identification in public. That's much the same as the French law - ID cards are also notionally voluntary in France. It *has* resulted in much resentment and fines for tens of thousands of people, wasting much court and police time. There is no evidence it has had any other effect.
If you want facts about the ID scheme then contact NO2ID. Unlike ministers we will also say, "We don't know," when we don't.
Like David Blake, I too travelled regularly on the horrendously pot-holed Great East Road in the 1980s and everytime I did so, I ensured that I had all the papers from the previous week plus a box of sweets and chewing gum for the (uually very friendly) soldiers on road block duties. Traffic was very light and the poor guys must have been bored out of their minds. The papers were as dull as ditchwater and full of the local politics, but at least the troopers got to read the football reports and the cartoons.
Thanks to Brigss to explaining it all to me. Now I realise it's just that the fascists want to help me. That's ok then.
I currently live in Russia, where everyone has to carry ID. Except of course, it's not mandatory. It's just that if the police don't believe them when you tell them who you are, they can take you to jail while they find out. A perfectly sophistic policy for the socialists to nick for the European Soviets. Russians don't believe me when I tell them that no Briton has to get a passport unless they want to leave the country. I've seen the reality of what Labour are planning for us, and believe me when I say this is one policy which it is worth being prosecuted for opposing in its earlier stages. By the way, I have twice been stopped by policemen in broad daylight and had their mates come up swinging truncheons, had them making sarcastic comments at my answers to 'find out my lies'. I am a young man, there is nothing out of the ordinary about my appearance or demeanour; they probably thought my face looked a bit annoying. If I may be so blunt: f**k that.
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