Comment by cstross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cstross | Hacker News Reader

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The National ID Card controversy wasn't simply about a photo-ID card (as noted, UK driving licenses are biometric photo-ID cards—and have been since before the NID was mooted). The real problem was the integration of a National Identity Register, a universal biometric ID database storing numerous non-essential items that was to act as a central authentication point for access to all government (and many corporate) services. Failure to register was to be a criminal offense (in US terms, a felony); failure to update within a week of changing address, ditto (don't ask how this would work for the homeless, or for students and workers living away from home part-time): it was to be carried at all times on pain of a hefty fine: changes to your address had to be reflected in a new physical card (which would be charged for): and a whole bunch more stuff.

Let's just say that it wasn't just a picture ID card; it was the camel's nose under the tent flap for a massively intrusive national database system with huge potential for misuse, abuse, and creeping changes of scope.

Today the UK has a de-facto biometric authentication system in the shape of the Identity and Passport Office database and the DVLA driing license database: between these, there's roughly 90% coverage of the adult population. But because it's opt-in and voluntary, and the police can't at any moment challenge you to produce a card and arrest you instantly if you're not carrying it, it hasn't produced the same push-back.

(As for those CCTV cameras? Most of them are in private premises, subject to GDPR data sharing restrictions. It's actually illegal for a shop CCTV system to cover the pavement outside, for example. The police only have access to them when a crime has been reported and half of them aren't working, as my wife discovered when her bicycle was stolen from right under a cluster of them …)

Funny old world.

There was a popular campaign against the government keeping around the hand written, cardboard ww2 National ID cards on civil liberties grounds. They didn't even all have photos, and were super easy to forge! Attlee had kept them around throughout the Labour administration and proposed using them, and this will sound oh so familiar to anyone who remembers the Blair attempts at an ID card and database, as a "a key that could be used to access all the benefits of the state, from rationing to voting to NHS services". The chief Law Lord in the final appeal said of requiring "all and sundry" to produce ID cards that it "inclines them to obstruct the police instead of to assist them".

It was ultimately Churchill's second term that repealed them in the early 50s. The same decade a Conservative politician and lawyer drafted the first European Convention on Human Rights.

Same old arguments, 70 years on. I'm not sure those Tories would recognise today's bunch though. :)

It's actually illegal for a shop CCTV system to cover the pavement outside, for example.

Do you have a source for that, please? I've been wondering about this kind of issue for a long time, as a lot of private premises now have cameras obviously overlooking public space outside or even more private areas like the gardens of neighbouring properties. Personally I find that quite intrusive in terms of the public spaces and rather inappropriate in terms of neighbouring private spaces, but given the many ambiguities in our data protection and privacy laws, it's not obvious to me what would make it illegal in black and white. Both the UK government web site and the ICO do have specific guidance about domestic CCTV systems that clearly allows the possibility of and provides guidance for systems that overlook areas outside the operator's own property.

Where the hell are all these Brexit loons when you need them? ID card protests for window dressing only - as long as it's Her Majesty's surveillance state instead of the EUSSR Bob's your uncle?

Because the one thing that old people fear more than Brussels is the teenagers down the block. If you truly believe that you are "good" and that only other people are "bad" then things like picture ID seem warm and friendly.

I was a campaigner against ID cards back then, and this is basically spot on: even back then, the people on the street who supported ID cards mentioned immigration. What happened? The biometric residence permits. ID cards are mandatory if you're a non-EU immigrant. The rest of the "hostile environment" made proof of immigration status mandatory for employment and renting a house. We got all the pieces of a surveillance state except the ID cards - because that's what the public wanted.

All of the Windrush fiasco and other Home Office outrages show that the UK is pretty comfortable with bureaucratic authoritarianism so long as they think it only applies to immigrants.

Excuse me if I have a simplistic view of this, but wouldn't an ID card have helped Windrush citizens prove their citizenship?

Indeed it would have. I think the worst kinds of surveillance mechanisms are the ones that can cause a lot of suspicion and false positives, but don't allow those affected to refute any allegations. Identity documents are not like that at all. On the contrary.

Perhaps - assuming they could get one in the first place. Alternatively the application process could have simply accelerated their deportation. Things might have gone better under the Blair government, but the whole point of ID cards is to impose the state's view on everyone's status.

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