ID cards by the backdoor?

The following article is a guest post written by Ian Dunt - the Editor of leading specialist UK politics news website, Politics.co.uk. Having read this article when it went up on his site on Sunday; we thought it was important that Big Brother Watch readers also had the chance to digest the details, and it is reproduced here with Ian's kind permission.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. When the coalition government said it would cancel ID cards most media outlets didn't pay much attention to the fact the cards would remain for foreign nationals. According to most of the British press, foreign nationals are, at best, an after thought.

No one wants to touch this one. When I contacted the Home Office, they insisted they can't get rid of the cards because of a piece of European legislation requiring biometric residency permits for third-party nationals residing in the EU. On June 13th, Britain signed up to Council Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002. In 2008 the law went a step further, with Council Regulation (EC) No 380/2008 banning the use of vignettes - little stickers you can put in a passport - as a means of satisfying the permit requirement. Now the permits had to be standalone card in 'ID-1' or 'ID-2' format. Britain went for ID-1 in line with its plans for ID cards.

The truth is, the government was only ever following EU law when it made foreign nationals part of the first phase of ID cards' roll-out. It merely seized on the requirements to fit its populist, xenophobic rhetoric, in a sad attempt to wring as much political capital as it could out of what was already an unethical EU regulation.

Remember that Crewe and Nantwich by-election in 2008? Back then, the controversy was all about how Labour tried to paint the Tory candidate as posh. But those same Labour leaflets had something else interesting in them. "Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?" they read, in a mock-up Tory MP application form. In actual fact, the Conservatives opposed ID cards for everyone. This was desperate, ugly prejudice, the vain attempt to press that racist button in the British electorate. The media thought prejudice against rich people was more important, as is fairly typical. Labour seized the opportunities offered it by the EU law and ran with it in the most irresponsible way possible.

The legislation for foreign nationals was never even in the ID Cards Act - it was completely different legislation. The only similarity was that the government tagged the two things together and tried to pretend it was all one problem. And now its an entirely different problem. The ID Cards Act is being repealed, but that won't stop ID cards for foreign nationals. The legislation for this is in the UK Borders Act 2007 and the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009.

So far, the coalition's hands are clean. It's the EU's fault that foreign nationals are required to have cards. It's Labour's fault it seized on that requirement to promote its unique brand of political barbarism. What could the coalition do? Well, it could scrap the National Biometric Identity Service (NBIS) for starters.

Cards were only after half the problem. The systemic cancer comes in the form of databases, where countless details are kept and cross-referenced, without any thought for privacy, in an endless bid to organise the population of Great Britain. There is simply no need for the NBIS. The only database we need is one detailing which cards have been sent out to foreign nationals under the EU requirement. It should cost pennies, rather than the reported £265 million given to IBM to set it up and run it.

We now have a visa database, an asylum registration card, of which there are half a million already in circulation, and the continued existence of NBIS. The predicted cross-referencing with criminal records - the first step in a process which treats the population as criminal suspects by default, has already began. A Freedom of Information request by campaign group No2ID recently came back with all the redacted sections still present (you live for those little moments). One of the sections seen by politics.co.uk talks of the linking between the BRP (biometric residence permit) and police and security services' fingerprint databases.

Even with the promised dismantling of the national identity register, there is enough infrastructure here for the database system to be easily resurrected by a latter government. If any of this were affecting British citizens the press would complain. Instead, the government just maintains the database state for foreigners. That's morally problematic in and of itself, but it also allows a future government to expand a pre-exiting biometric system, rather than having to create a new one. There are practical considerations to that fact, and political ones too. It's a lesser thing to expand a pre-existing system than it is to justify creating one from the bottom up.

The infrastructure must be destroyed now, while we have a government which feels obliged to fulfil its pledges on ID cards.

Given the money we're paying IBM over the next seven years for the NBIS database one might consider it sensible to scrap it on financial grounds. Indeed it would be, but this isn't just about money, or even civil liberties. This is about taking a rational, compassionate view of immigration - an unpopular view at present.

By attaching all these irritations and inconveniences on the exact group of immigrants who follow the rules, we simply encourage others to go down the illegitimate path of illegal immigration. We are making life so hard for those here in the UK legitimately, in our bid to look 'tough' on immigration, that we're affirming the decision of those who work here illegally to maintain their underground status. We're making our immigration problems worse with foolishness, authoritarianism and bureaucracy. And we're in danger of creating a two-tier society where citizens have separate rights and requirements to those who we invite to come live here.

ID cards are dead. We won that battle and should celebrate our victory. But the NBIS is a pernicious remnant of the database state - one that shames us. It's next on civil libertarians' list of demands. 

To read the original article please click here: ID cards by the backdoor?

Comments

[Krista]

I'm an American citizen studying in the UK and I was forced to apply for the ID card last year. The whole process makes you feel like you're a suspect, and UKBA has started to introduce mandatory fingerprinting at Heathrow: it took the immigration officer two minutes to get the fingerprint reader to work, only for her to tell me 'why yes, you ARE indeed the person who applied for this card'. As if it would be anything else, with my picture on the card matching the one in my passport matching my face! We're made to feel unwelcome. I'd definitely like to see how the mass exodus of the people actually bringing in the monies for UK universities affects them: I am definitely leaving when I'm done, that's for sure.

[Gareth]

" It's the EU's fault that foreign nationals are required to have cards."

Is it?

The EU can recommend all they want, it still requires our Parliament to legislate the EU 'law' into being in the UK - that is why the appropriate parts of the UK Borders Act 2007 and the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 are there.

Westminster could undo that too if they wanted to.

[blastproof]

Krista, I quite understand: you get the same kind of rigmarole I get from Homeland Security when I go to the USA; I've been going there every year for several months for several years and it is true that as a British citizen I feel unwelcome when I arrive there to spend my money in an economy which is teetering on the brink. The fingerprinting etc and the interrogation on arrival are particularly disagreeable. I am back in the UK now and have no plans to return to the States any time soon. Having said that, I was not required to obtain an ID card and in that respect the UK outdoes the US for intrusiveness.

[FaustiesBlog]

Gareth, sadly, that's not the case.
As usual, the EU (and therefore, the UN) is responsible for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRADO_-_Public_Register_of_Travel_and_Identity_Documents_Online

[Elisabeth R.]

I am a Swedish born national and have lived / been based in UK for 40 years or so; I am also married to a British born national for more than 30 years. If Sweden allowed dual nationality (which it doesn't) I would also have applied for British citizenship many years ago. But having spent a lot of my life travelling in countries in either Eastern Euirope or the Middle East, my Swedish citizenship and passport has always stood me in good stead.

I also like my privacy and wonder now in my 60's how the ID-card will affect me.
It's bad enough coping with the NHS data-base fiasco......
Any ideas??