UK NATIONAL ID CARD SCHEME: FARCE OR BIG BROTHER?
CARDS NOT ONLY SURRENDER MASSIVE AMOUNT OF INTIMATE DATA TO STATE, THEY ARE SHOWN TO BE SEVERELY INSECURE
18 October 2005

The British government's plan to implement a national biometric identification system by 2007 is seen by some as a farcical if dubious exercise in futility. For others, it heralds the final phase in technocracy's closing its grip on the open society.

The plan as currently envisioned will use 13 biometric features, registering, measuring and comparing physical traits of individual citizens, to match human beings to their ID cards, thus, in theory, proving their identity. By the year 2013, Parliament is required to vote on whether all people in the UK should be required to carry some form of biometric identification.

The first major concern of opponents is that the system as planned would strip people of crucial rights to freedom from government interference. In the US, for instance, various of the fundamental rights included in the earliest amendments to the Constitution would seem to prohibit making any such system mandatory.

Another major concern is that, in theory, the laws bringing this system about render human beings as they naturally are an offense against the law, illegal entities, because everyone would be required to provide technologically complex biometric proof of identification in order to be considered on the right side of the law.

Still other concerns go to the reliability of the system. What would it be used for? What aims achieve? If it were used to hunt for criminals, fugitives or suspected terrorists, would the system falsely identify innocent people, creating bureaucratic chaos, general inefficiency or even a handful of judicial travesties? All of these are possible outcomes.

New rounds of testing apparently show that the system is fundamentally flawed. Men who go bald, pianists and manual laborers, anyone who types regularly, or anyone with brown eyes, dark skin or a physical disability may be frequently misidentified. Not exactly a small subsection of the population.

The new system could pose a genuine identity crisis for democratic societies, as governments seek to secure their territory against random terrorist incidents, and citizens seek to remain secure in their liberties, secure in the notion that their governments work for them, not against them. [For more: BBC]