By Kable, 20 December 2004 15:45
NEWS
The government has refused to release legal advice given to cabinet ministers on whether the bill to introduce ID cards contravenes human rights legislation, it emerged on Monday.
Details of a decision to keep the advice secret were revealed ahead of an expected backbench rebellion in the House of Commons vote on the ID card scheme.
The advice covers in-depth legal arguments about the possibility of denying people access to public services and issues surrounding powers of the security services, police and authorities being able to access medical data, financial information and other personal details.
Home secretary Charles Clarke is likely to face questions from all political parties on the legal decision, along with challenges to the ID card scheme overall. Up to 30 Labour MPs could oppose the scheme during the Commons debate on Monday.
Conservative leader Michael Howard also faces a possible rebellion after his shadow cabinet moved to back the government on the plans. The Liberal Democrats oppose the scheme.
The refusal to release the ID card legal advice emerged after Dr Chris Pounder, editor of law firm Pinsent Masons' Data Protection & Privacy Practice, made an open government request for the document. He told Government Computing News that he was concerned the ID card database could hold up to 50 items of personal data accessible to a range of public authorities.
He is particularly worried that authorities will be able to access an "audit trail" which will detail records of access to specific public services, such as visits to an outpatients clinic, without obtaining a warrant.
Meanwhile, Clarke has accused critics of the ID cards scheme of "liberal woolly thinking". In a Times article he maintained that the database would not hold information on medical records, religion or political beliefs.
Comments
There are 19 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
This debate conveniently avoids the main issue which is the searchable national database of personal data.
This database must of necessity also store some details about people (including children) who died before being issued with an ID card, to avoid a forger using their birth certificate details.
2. anonymous
What will the authorities do if people refuse to be finger printed?
What if they refuse to submit to facial and eye scans?
Will they be imprisoned or deported, perhaps physically forced to provide this information?
Will UK citizens be allowed to leave the UK if they refuse? (Will they still be citizens?)
Do business people and tourists have to provide biometric information on entering the UK?
Will former UK citizens be allowed to take their possessions with them? Will these be confiscated and used to pay IT consultants building the system?
Will offshore programmers and the like working on the system need ID cards?
Just a few questions or perhaps they’re just a few minor technical issues that need resolving?
3. anonymous
My problem with the scheme is this comment that people who are opposed to it (a) have something to hide and/or (b) are 'woolly-minded liberals.' I am neither but I am opposed to identity cards because I don't see why the Government should be able to decide whether they need to know where I am/what I'm doing at any point in the future. Also any decent criminal mind will be able to find loopholes/bribe people in Goverment/steal one. I think we're looking down the abyss of a very scary future...
4. Andrew Robb
If opponents of the ID card are guilty of 'liberal wooly thinking', does that make Charles Clark a totalitarian?
5. Roger Huffadine
The government will own the encryption algorithm and will be able to store any information it likes about an individual in addition to the visible items covered in the bill.
There is no recourse to this problem - parliament might not even know that the information is being stored and encrypted onto the cards - only folk like MI6, MI5 and GCHQ would know.
In answer to the question on the penalties for refusing a ID card....
The bill sets legislation in place for a person to be fined on every occasion that they refuse to submit to the process of having an ID card made.
I seem to recall it is something like £2000 max on each occasion - clearly if the government wanted it could repeatedly ask one to have an ID card.
6. anonymous
If there is nothing to hide then where is the problem with ID cards. We dont mind photo driving license's and no one complains about passports.
Maybe those that dont want id cards are affraid it will highlight the number of illegal immigrants and other fraudsters hiding in our country.
I say go one step further and make people talk english before they can have an ID card. And stop the goverment from publish information in any language apart from english.
7. Billy Gibson
While most people are concerned as to their privacy, i'm more concerned about the cost. If someone wants to know if i've been to the doctors, i'm sure there are already means to find out. I've heard the cards themselves would cost in the region of £85 each.
I will have to shell out for 5 of these things should the plans be approved and the cards made mandatory as I have a wife and 3 kids.
£425 is a lot of money when I cant currently see the benefits of having one of these cards.
8. Duane Phillips
People seem to forget that the government is here to serve us not the other way round.
How many members of the public actually went their MP's and said "I think having an ID card and wasting billions on a ID database is a really great idea."?
What next? Scrap cash and use a smart card. You would have total control over the population. You know who they are,where they are and what they're doing. No more tax evasion, black marketeering, working for cash in hand. I seem to remember a quote which went some "none shall buy or sell... etc".
It sounds extremist but I think George Orwell was only about 30 years out.
9. Richard
The danger comes from 'wooly minded reactionaries' like Blunkett, Clark et al.
There is no doubting their commitment to security, law and order etc but their thinking is muddled by high (some would say, low) ideals.
It is time for clear-thinking, hard-nosed, patriotic liberals to stand up and expose the muddle-headed illiberalism that underlies the governmant's ID card bill.
Once more, for the record:
1) ID cards do not prevent terrorism.
2) They do, however, work to the advantage to those who are sophisticated enough to forge an identity.
3) They can be a tool of oppression if misused.
4) They may help police crack down on non-terror related crime but will need a new form of suss law to be effective....
5) They will cost you a fortune both directly and indirectly.
6) Your privacy cannot be guaranteed.
10. Karen Challinor
I may be wrong here but this card and its associated database of a persons life history seems to shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defense.
Currently you are assumed innocent until proven guilty
This scheme assumes you have something to hide and forces you to prove you haven't on demand i.e. guilty until you prove yourself innocent, further you won't have access to the evidence so if the evidence is in error what will you do ?
After all the secretary of state is the only person allowed to make changes and he may be a busy correcting mistakes in say 0.1 percent of the other 6 and a half billion records, which should keep him busy for most of his term of office.
11. Stuart Wilson
I am not a believer in the shallow theory that if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't object to ID cards. That remark is made only by naive people with little real awareness of the society and control they live under.
What they should remember is that the criminal element in this world will find a way to capitalise on the naive and innocent before they target the better equipped - its an obvious target. So if they think their identity will be safe with the issuing of ID cards they need to wake up because it will come as more of a shock to them than the more cynical amongst us!
The problem will not be immediate but will creep up over a period of time until one day those idiots finally realise that they have lost the control of their lives to successive Governments and criminals …but it will be too late. And who’s to say the next Government (whoever it is) won’t change/extend the rules to suit ‘their’ own ideals and erode our privacy even more?
Our rights are being eroded on a daily basis by the Government and we are living more like Communists every day. We aren’t being allowed to take responsibility for our actions or make our own decisions on how we choose to live our lives any more. Only the Government knows what’s best for us …apparently?
Anyway, when I refuse to turn up to be finger printed, DNA sampled or Iris scanned and when I don't pay for my ID card, I expect the Government will enforce a fine upon me. Whatever happens, whether through taxes, fines or by diverting some of the cost of ID cards via the increased cost of passports (very sneeky), it will be us that pays for it ‘all the way’ from consultation to receiving that small piece of plastic.
Rant over.
12. Karen Challinor
And another minor detail, according to the Home Offices own summary of consultation on the legislation of identity cards ( pdf file at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/id_summary_doc_3.pdf ) a little over 2000 responses were evaluated and only about 760 of those were asked directly. Roughly as many as could be stopped by a man with a clipboard standing on the home office steps in a couple of days for example.
I make that approximately 0.00003 percent of the population, do you not think that as this will affect us all a slightly larger group should have been asked ?
13. Jerrold Baldwin
Charles Clarke suggests that ID card opponents have "liberal woolly thinking". 3 points.
1. My father, at times a Tory activist, used to quote the lack of ID cards in this country as evidence of the freedoms enjoyed by the British people under their constitutional monarchy.
2. The ultra-right American President G. W. Bush thinks that ID cards are too much to stomach for freedom-loving people.
3. A lot of people just think ID cards will be a waste of money as they will not provide protection from organised-crime or terrorism.
We have just got rid of one vindictive and unpleasant Home Secretary, bent on scaring the electorate into keeping these self-serving apologies for Labour politicians in office. Now it seems we have another.
14. anonymous
'Anonymous British citizen' unless your comment is meant to be satirical, you will not be eligible for one of your own ID cards.
Obviously, the product of Charles Clark's tenure as Secretary of State for Education:
"photo driving license's"
"I say go one step further and make people talk english before they can have an ID card. And stop the goverment from publish information in any language apart from english."
Personally, I am against ID cards.
15. anonymous
Recall a Eurasian Card Index tempted Austro-Hungary/Germany to conquer the world? Besides WWI, it so constricted thinking that any group off the map had such superior operating options so as to prevail by force of arms. (T.E. Lawrence? Airmen? Post-plague Huns?)
2. Openly declare all digitized data already moves (covertly) from data bases to users, like Governments, NGO's, and OCO's. Who will resolve information? Individuals? Hierarchs? Both? People see threat in social predators getting maps of their identities, assets, actions, and vulnerabilities. People know individual/corporate ignorance and dependence on fallible others.
3. How may a free people's government act toward such information maps? Create? Compete? Use? Exempt? (Self-)Censor? Oppose? How may a state protect, assist, and defend its citizens from the users of such maps? Secure privacy? How to act against Identity Theft, and then Decision Engineering? Targeting relationships revealed, or decisions an individual makes? Is each case, is hardening every local target's mystery singly superior to any centrally organized policy?
16. Ken Hall
Andrew Robb, you are correct, and considering that the infrastructure and hardware/sofware will be provided and run by corporate interests. This means that, under the classical definition of the word 'fascism', eg corporate government, Clarke is a totalitarian fascist.
Believe me, I am deadly serious about the words. They are studied and considered VERY carefully.
Totalitarion fascism does not come about suddenly in a democracy unless there is a military coup. More often, as in Nazi Germany (the Nazis were democratically elected remember), totalitarian fascism happens slowly, step by step, the totalitarian tip toe, until the totalitarian toolkit is complete. By then it is too late.
"All that is required for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing"
"Liberty shall not of itself flourish but for the careful vigilance of determined souls."
We face totalitarian fascism after 2012. We must alert the nation in order to prevent it.
17. Ken Hall
Jerrold Baldwin, Sorry but you are wrong on GW Bush. He knows Americans will never stomach ID cards and the phrase "Citizen, can I see your papers" is extremely offensive to our colonial cousins. However, he has just signed the intelligence reform bill, which had an ammendment added at the last moment which requires that drivers licences data must be centralised through the office of homeland security, this will include social security number and other id. this will also be the only accepted form of ID by the federal government. In order to interact with the governemnt you will have to have this centrally controlled ID.
It's an ID card by the back door.
18. Marvin Willson
WTF? Are we missing the point? IS THIS A VIOLATION OF OUR HUMAN RIGHTS? I think so. The mere fact that we may submit to such a infringement of our civil liberties under the "what have you got to hide" banner, itself, borders on insanity.
Can Passports be forged? Can credit cards be forged? WOW! These ID cards will REALLY give us the heads up on the illegal immigrant/terrorist/criminal element(sic).
The whole thing STINKS of the start of a "Big Brother" scenario. George Orwell truly was an enlightened man.
But then again, who was it that said "Ignorance is bliss"?
19. Adrian Hall
The issue is change of ownership of the person.
Once the government demands that we go down to a local centre to have our biometrics taken, once we lose the right to refuse, then we become like slaves - owned by the government.
They will set the precedent that they have the right to determine our future without any input from us.
We lose our freedom TOTALLY at the point that this becomes law.