Identity Card Uk

a)    The UK Government announced the scheme in 2005 and the Identity Card Act was introduced in 2006.  The intended approach is for each citizen to be issued with an identity card, which will include a photograph and a smart chip that will contain personal information, and some biometric data obtained from the holder of the card.  The Identity card will be linked to a national identity register database and the national identity service.  Biometric registration will ensure that cards cannot be illegally obtained and enable the irrefutable identification of the cardholder.

There are ethical concerns about how an what the personal information stored on the national database will be used for, the public are concerned about there privacy, will data protection rules apply, could the information be used to discriminate between different users or used for commercial or controlling purposes. Registration raises many social issues such as affordability, can recipients afford to pay for the registration, are the registration centers easily accessible and what provision has been made for registering citizens with severe learning and physical disabilities. Finally there are the political issues, the overall cost to the UK Government to introduce the Identity card and the identity register database has been the subject of much debate. Roll out costs and ongoing costs are still very much speculative.  

b)   Henry Porter, (2010) ‘An ID card nation by Stealth’, Henry Porter & Afua Hirsch Liberty Central Blog, 18 March 2010, Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/mar/18/id-cards-meg-hillier  (Accessed 21 April 2010)

Response
           

I think it was always the case that the physical deployment of a national ID card would be the most difficult and most problematic. In the early years of the project the discussions and debate on the national ID card centered on the functionality of the technology and the cost of deploying the technology. The debate appears to have moved shifted more towards the ethical, social and political issues.   
Unless ID cards are mandated then the Government has no other choice other than to “sell the benefits” of carrying an ID card.  There are already private and seemingly unregulated bodies providing identity card services. Citizencard currently provides identity cards to 1.8million young people; Citizencard is allegedly a non-profit organization, whose sponsors happen to include ASDA, Gamestation, William Hill and many more notable high street stores. Their website has vague claims about how they manage and protect their subscribers personal details citing the data protection laws and a secure data center somewhere in London. Their terms and conditions of business actually point out that information will be used for “marketing and market research analysis” and “conducting market research”. If I were a young person or parent or guardian of a young person I think I would much prefer to put my trust in a government-backed initiative before a commercially driven organization.   I don’t there is anything particularly subversive about how the government wants to encourage the use of ID cards nor do I think that the information gathered by the government would be used for anything else other than to protect UK citizens from the escalation of terrorism in the UK and help enforce Law and order.  ID cards instead of a bus pass, why not? We are living in an age where proof of ID is becoming increasingly common, if there isn’t central government intervention with the introduction of common platform there is a danger that UK citizens will, in the future, need to carry multiple forms of identity.

Meg Hiller is guilty of, at most, naivety and not wild fantasy and speculation as Phil Booth suggest.