Whether or not you believe any of the conspiracy theories about our western governments surrounding us with fear and immobilising our populations with dread, there is something extremely sinister about how keen New Labour are to introduce identity cards to the U.K. As I've previously mentioned, an eager British government is an unusual beast and should be treated with the utmost suspicion.
I've had conversations with friends about this subject and the overall consensus appears to be that, while nobody really believes the party line about I.D. cards increasing security and foiling terrorists (Name: Mohammed Al-Faruq. Occupation: Career Terrorist.), equally nobody could see any harm in them being introduced anyway. Indeed, some actually thought that the system would increase the efficiency of governmental administration. Are these people correct in thinking this way?
It's rather complicated for me, because when one actually assesses the information that will be collected for the database, it doesn't seem like there is anything on there that isn't in some official file anyway. Most of us carry a National Insurance card, a driving licence, a pension book or a young person's I.D. The government has access to your finances (in theory!) when you declare taxable income, has knowledge of your geographical whereabouts when you move house and more and more employers now insist on background checks when taking on staff using information that is collected largely without your consent or awareness.
The liberties that can be taken by governmental offices are quite astonishing already. Did you know, for example, that the DVLA (or whatever it is called now) was criticised recently when it was discovered that it was revealing licence-holders details to 'unsavoury companies'? The firms revealed in the subsequent investigation were car-clampers, but further prodding showed a regular pattern of identity supply to insurance companies, loan sharks, motoring organisations and vehicle repair centres. Never mind about the type of companies involved, did you even know that government departments were allowed to give such details away? Did you, like me, believe that your details were sanctified by the Data Protection Act? This divulgence of information is completely legal and is still happening. At least you now know how all these junk-mail mountains appear on your doorstep.
All this serves to highlight a disturbing data-phenomenon: your personal details are quite literally winging their way through databases around the world, whether you have asked for this to happen or not. The assumption, when confronted with an unwanted call, or solicitation, is to think that you ticked the wrong box in a competition, or replied to the wrong email, but the fact is that even the most diligent of practitioners is subject to a deluge of unwanted correspondence.
Is this a worrying development? For me, not yet. But when New Labour begins to piece together all my most saleable info-assets into one master file (for their convenience), I will be terrified. You see, I have no choice in the matter. Preliminary details regarding the actual extraction of said information included 'Processing Centres' to which reluctant citizens like myself could be forcibly sent. Fines and prison sentences ultimately follow if information is not forthcoming or is intentionally corrupted. If all this sounds rather dramatic, that's because it is. The government wants these details and intends to get them whether we like it or not.
And when it has possession of them? Well, try to think of a national computer database that the government has introduced in the last fifty years that has come in on budget, worked satisfactorily and been operated without reasonable loss of integrity. You can't. There are none. Tales of laptops left in black cabs, CDs lost in the post and USB keys falling through holes in pockets are not just tabloid scare-mongering. It's happening, and on a much larger scale than anybody really knows. Why? Simple carelessness accounts for a certain percentage, but the main reason for all this leakage takes me straight to the reason New Labour wants the cards in the first place.
Money.
Your details are worth a lot of money and you will never see a penny of it. Now that Britain no longer actually produces anything to sell, we trade on what economists like to call the 'Service Industry', otherwise known as Scotch Mist. For a Service Industry-based ecomomy to really thrive, it needs an industry to serve and since we don't have one of our own, we have specialised in serving those of more productive countries with greater resources. History repeats, however and just as British industry leeched to the East and beyond, so have cheaper, outsourced alternatives appeared to take our call centres, I.T. consultancy and creative accountancy away (like a huge Mechanical Turk, one might say!). The U.K. needs more and more injections of capital to sustain her through to a brighter age.
£18* per person, per company. Around 35 million adults, multiplied by an infinite amount of Chinese, Indian and U.S. companies. That, I am afraid is all you are worth. It may not be strictly legal for the government to sell you at the moment, but that is what governments are best at; changing laws or finding DVLA-style loopholes to leap through. And if the choices of companies are as careless as have been so far; if gambling addicts begin to be bombarded by internet casino offers, impotent couples preyed upon by charlatan Chinese fertility clinics, or our children targeted by professional scam-artists who will know why? Who will argue? Have you, so far?
This is only the tip of the iceberg. I.D. cards are only as useful as the database that serves them and the database is vulnerable to the information fed into it. I don't think that even the government sees I.D. cards as an ongoing agenda. A system whereby citizens can be observed and monitored to the minute and second would not only provide valuable information on buying habits for foreign retailers, but would also have the added benefit of letting the government know exactly what services and benefits their populace are using and enabling them to tax them accordingly (always upward, never down, of course!).
This system has already been initiated. The U.K. already has the deepest penetration of publicly assigned CCTV in the world and 'stealth-taxes'; speed cameras, refuse inspection and the like have increased the average Britons' payoff by a substantial amount each year. But the most ominous development is happening in New Mexico (with increasing interest from various U.S. states), where a technology known as RFID 'Radio Frequency Identification' has reportedly been implanted into around 180 government staff to monitor access to restricted areas. You probably know where I'm going with this.........
It may seem ridiculous to think that wholesale chip-implants could ever be enforced in this country. You might even be confident enough to bet that it will never happen.
£18?
The author of this blog worked in data storage, recovery and retrieval for and in retail lead generation. He had no reason to question the Data Protection Act for all that time (having attempted to circumvent it for most of his career!) until he read a report about the DVLAs practices on the BBC website last year.
*Based on average cost to U.K. retail for gold standard leads. Subject to wholesale discounts and reduction for notorious governmental magic-bean negotiation skills.
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