A group of anarchists took to the streets of Glasgow today to celebrate the annual International Worker's Day, or May Day, holiday with banners, flags, tents and music. The gathering, which took place in Buchanan Street, was a peaceful event consisting of music, dancing and leaflet distribution, and was overseen over by almost as many police officers as there were participants.
The Anarchist Party, which is ironically well organised, protest on a number of issues. They issue leaflets and booklets on their opinions of identity cards, the BNP, the stress of work, teachers strikes and police brutality. They are, of course, absolutely entitled and right to voice their opinions.
Much of the narrative of their publications is hard to argue with from the liberal left perspective. It is, however, difficult to sympathise with an article which celebrates the hounding of one political group and the destruction of their publicity material by others. The political group in question is the BNP and any right-thinking (or correct thinking) person may well wonder why anyone would defend the rights of these people to air their opinions in public, but the question is less about what they are trying to say than the fact that they were prevented from saying it. In a country where freedom of speech is increasingly under threat and where political, religious or social opinions which deviate from the accepted norm are viewed with increasing suspicion, it is even less acceptable for left wing groups, who advocate liberty and freedom in their anti-capitalist, anti ID card literature, to oppress another group.
The problem arises with the right of free speech. This right does not apply only to those with whom we agree. It has to apply to everyone, otherwise anyone with the facility to take control can oppress the voice of anyone they disapprove of. On this occasion, the group with the facility to take control was the anarchists and they did oppress the freedom of another group with whom they disagreed.
The anarchists celebrate their right to demonstrate and distribute literature and they are right to take full notice of the privilege. In the resistance anarchist bulletin of April – May 2008, the article which describes the hounding of the BNP stall talks of the coming together of various different groups to remove the unwanted element and certainly the anarchists cannot take full responsibility, or credit, for removing that unwanted element. It is certainly a testament to how unpopular the views of the BNP are among the politically active members of the community.
The anarchists have, however, overlooked a glaring contradiction in their position and that is that it cannot be acceptable for them to demonstrate and for those whose opinions they agree with to demonstrate, but not acceptable for anyone they deem unfit to demonstrate. Freedom of expression means freedom for all, not just for some, and unfortunately that means acknowledging that some people have fascist, right wing, ill-conceived, or plain small-minded opinions based on what they've heard from their parents or read in the Sun, rather than what they have deliberately and conscientiously determined is the just position and to accept that these people are also entitled to their opinion. Unfortunately, the anarchists have done themselves no favours on this occasion and it can only be hoped that by highlighting the need for those activist groups within the community to thoroughly examine their own prejudices, the right of freedom of expression will be upheld through these politically invidious times.
ID cards and the National Identity Register – Storage and Security Problems. 18 Feb 2008 - Valerie Evans
There has been a lot of talk about the government's National Identity Register in recent times, and it is difficult to go out into a city centre on a weekend without falling over a trestle table full of pamphlets declaring 'NO2ID'. But are these activists just a bunch of anti-government, conspiracy theorist trouble makers or are they making a valid and urgent point which every single one of us should be concerned about?
The information coming out of the Home Office on the issue of ID cards and the NIR is confused, to say the least. Biometric information will be included, but fingerprints will or may not be, for example. Other issues over how the cards will be used and who will be able to read them are equally as hazy, subject to revision and frequently unpublished. Given that the Identity Cards Act 2006 is now law, if we are to understand the arguments over the adoption of ID cards in Great Britain, there are a number of issues we should be paying attention to and all of them are valid, but one which has received less attention than it perhaps should is the issue of storage.
Can we trust the government to keep our information secure? The capacity of the government to keep our data safe and secure is of paramount importance in relation to ID cards and the NIR. The government's recent track record on securely storing personal details is not pleasant reading for any British citizen:
3 November 2007 - 15,000 Standard Life customers' details are lost by HM Revenue and Customs. The information was on a CD which was lost in the post in September, but not reported for a month.
17 December 2007 - 3 million driving theory test candidates details go missing.
January 18, 2008 – It is reported that the personal details of 600,000 people who had applied to join or had joined the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force were lost when the laptop on which they were held are stolen on January 9th.
18 January 2008 - Hundreds of documents containing sensitive personal information are found on a roundabout in Devon. This is the second time this had happened, the first being on 6 November 2007.
21 January 2008 – It is reported that there have been two thefts similar to the incident reported on 18th January since 2005.
23 January 2008 - Four CDs containing personal details from English court cases go missing in the post.
26 January 2008 - 1,000 students details go missing in the post.
This list is by no means exhaustive and represents only those events which made the national press between November 2007 and January 2008. The loss of security code numbers to the lock boxes for house keys provided by social services to allow care workers access to the homes of elderly patients in Renfrewshire was not nearly as widely publicised and there are likely to be many more examples of that sort around the country.
What should be at the forefront of the minds of every citizen when considering ID cards is the government's poor history of successfully implementing new systems. Gerard Batten, MEP, UK Independent Party, published a paper in 2005 entitled 'Identity Cards – The Creation of a Police State'. In that paper, he stated that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had warned that the system could be a 'large scale debacle'. Mr Batten sites the Child Support Agency, The Passport Agency, HM Revenue and Customs, The Court Service, National Air Traffic Services, The Criminal Records Bureau, The Home Office and the Prison Service as examples of systems which failed on implementation. Each one of them provoked a headache of massive proportions both for the agencies trying to use them and the individuals involved.
Potential weaknesses The question which needs to be answered is – should the government be allowed to, and can it be trusted to, securely keep a detailed and exhaustive list of our personal details, including biometric information, when they obviously cannot manage the security and organisation of their existing systems or the implementation of new systems? Furthermore, can they be trusted not to misuse or allow to be misused, the data which is contained in the card? Other countries with an ID card system have tight regulations in place to prevent data sharing, but the UK government is proposing to encourage data sharing. Not only does data sharing increase the risk of an individual's information falling into the wrong hands, it is also likely to put a lot more strain on the database which will hold the information.
According to the NO2ID website; 'IT providers find that identity systems work best when limited in design. The Home Office scheme combines untested technologies on an unparalleled scale. Its many inchoate purposes create innumerable points for failure. The government record with computer projects is poor, and the ID system is likely to end up a broken mess.'
Specifically on the issue of biometrics, NO2ID state that; 'Not all biometrics will work for all people. Plenty are missing digits, or eyes, or have physical conditions that render one or more biometrics unstable or hard to read. All systems have error. Deployment on a vast scale, with variably trained operators and variably maintained and calibrated equipment, will produce vast numbers of mismatches, leading to potentially gross inconvenience to millions.' (http://www.NO2ID.net/IDschemes/whynot.php)
Confusion and failure Passports and National Insurance numbers between them do the job of identifying us and our legal status and contain much the same information as the ID card will but without the risk of one document being able to provide a fraudster with all the information they need to effectively steal an identity in its entirety. To compensate for this potential catastrophe, we have the inclusion of biometric information, supposedly unique features of our physical persons which cannot be duplicated. The scanning process for biometrics, at this point, has something approaching a 35% failure rate on facial scans and a 20% failure rate with fingerprints, according to NO2ID.
The 'National Identity Scheme Options Analysis – Outcome' report states that fingerprinting for some groups is to be dropped. This means that, if we are to believe the government's stand, effectively that group's information will be less secure because it will be less thoroughly protected by supposedly unique biometric information. It may also mean that the group without fingerprint biometrics enjoy less scrutiny, or alternatively, find themselves unable to carry out day to day activities because they are not properly registered.
Biometric information is, to a large extent, already present on our passports in the form of our photograph, which identifies race, gender and possibly ethnicity and religion. There must, therefore, be a significant amount of scepticism towards the government's motives for driving through the inclusion of biometric information in a form which is by no means failsafe, but nevertheless repeats a significant amount of information already available on existing documentation.
Biometric data storage The big problem with biometric data storage is that no normal database can hold that sort of information. Specialist software is required to store biometric information and that comes at a price for the government and ultimately, the citizen who is required to pay £30 for a stand alone card, or £93 for a passport from 2010, even if they opt out of the ID card scheme. Even if an individual does opt out, their details may still be included in the National Identity Register without their permission, making them every bit as vulnerable to system failures or fraud as someone holding a card.
The government has scrapped the plan to hold all ID card information on one central database and will instead be held over three, existing databases and monitored by a new independent watchdog, although it is not clear how biometric data will be stored, or on which database. Kevin Calder, solicitor at Mills & Reeve in Cambridge, stated in an article in February 2004 that in relation to biometric information storage, 'local storage is generally sufficient for authentication purposes', but 'where biometrics is used to identify an unknown individual this can usually only be achieved by comparing data taken from that individual with data stored on a central database.' Calder also highlights difficulties in interpreting the Data Protection Act 1998, which must govern the use of ID card data storage, by both Humberside Police, which deleted allegations of sex-crimes made against Ian Huntley and British Gas, who failed to notify social services when an elderly couple's gas supply was disconnected because of confusion over the interpretation of the Act. The difficulty in interpreting the Data Protection Act 1998, even ten years after its implementation, means that there can be no guarantees that data holders will handle the information appropriately.
ID cards will be voluntary, initially, however, may be made compulsory depending on the success of the voluntary scheme. There are no plans to make it compulsory to carry the card, however, those wishing to opt out will still be charged £93 for a new passport from 2010, but will not get the ID card, which means if the card thereafter becomes compulsory, they may, theoretically, be charged another £30 to get one.
Personal information as government property The card itself , however, is a distraction, states Gerard Batten, MEP. He argues that the real objective of the scheme is the National Identity Register which will enable the personal details of every citizen to be known, to become the property of the government, and to be exchangeable between EU member states.
The major problem with the storage of personal data by way of the National Identity Register is that there is potentially no limit to the amount of information stored or the agencies or companies who may have access to it and no control by the individual over what information is included and its factual accuracy. A storage failure may well apply a criminal conviction to an individual's record which is not theirs and there will be nothing the individual can do about it. Additionally, once such a system is in place, then any incoming government to the UK or any European country, will have access to it, thanks to this government's data sharing policy.
We all hope that there will never be another Hitler or Stalin. Once this system is in place, we will have to hope a lot more fervently.
