Good reasons to reject ID Cards

Even if it can get the samples, why should we believe the government can maintain a database more complex and (in the UK’s case) 120 times larger than the fingerprinting one that it currently fails to run properly? Think of the consequences if someone hacks in to the database. There’s a massive marketing potential - although in the UK a two year imprisonment is proposed for such abuse - someone will reckon it is worth the risk: and once on the market, it’s there, and probably can’t be taken back.

What if it breaks down?

Cost

The declared cost of the UK scheme is £50 billion. Think of the opportunity cost. That could pay for x hospitals, x schools, x nurses. If I had that money lying around, as the government seems to think it does, I'd rather use it to pay down the national debt. I think it's criminally irresponsible to pass on escalating debt to our children and our children's children. If terror is such a concern then think of the extra police and special forces and intelligence research that money could pay for - for more police and better security at airports, for counterintelligence – in other words, for proper, solid methods of stopping terrorism.

It also constitutes an unjust cost to the citizen with the tax to administer, the cost to buy the card and the proposed fine of £2,500 if you don't register.

So the rich, or those who particularly value their privacy - for whatever reason - can just weather a fine and opt out of the system. With enough holes like this it’s nothing but an expensive nuisance to those of us obedient enough to participate.

An overarching principle

Finally, the scheme skews the relationship between citizen and state. The introduction of ID cards devastates personal freedom and privacy. When every citizen is obliged to surrender DNA and a finger or retina print to a national database, it suggests that the state has some proprietary right over that information and the citizen’s identity.

The information is stored with personal data such as race, age and residential status, and a photograph: the government will compile a dossier on each person in the country. This isn’t scaremongering or paranoid fear of the state - it’s the explicitly declared proposal of the government.

Every time a crime is committed, your information will be accessed to check your DNA and or fingerprints against those found. In principle, you are a suspect for every crime until discounted - rather than being untainted by investigation until good reason emerges to suspect you (as exists for those who actually emerge as suspects in an investigation, or have committed crimes in the past).

The card will permit the linking of information between all government departments. Your card and the number you’re allocated by the state will allow government to share information about you with itself - and with others, if it chooses to.

Do we want government to have that power? Is that the form our relationship with the state should take? Even if we trust this government, can we trust the governments to follow, of whom we currently know nothing?

Presume that you don’t accept the possibility that a government may one day wilfully misuse this information. Presume you believe that government will always have nothing but goodwill to all its citizens; presume that a future government would never want to exploit potential benefits of monitoring - say - supporters of particular parties, or participants in particular activities.

Even if you had this faith, why should we have the scheme? It has no security benefit. The risk exists that even with eternally beneficent government never tempted by the powers such a resource gives it, individuals will be tempted by the enormous marketing capabilities it offers to abuse it.

The only way to be safe from the abuse of this pool of information being misused is never to assemble it at all.