From Free Life No 24, December 1995

Of all the Home Secretaries there have been since 1782, Michael Howard is by far the worst. He is unmatched in his hatred of the Common Law and his worship of absolute, arbitrary power. Indeed, to find his equal, we might have to go all the way back to the corrupted traitors who fawned on James II.

The document now before us is further proof of his infamy. From the slimy, signed Foreword, to the biased and often ungrammatical questions at the end, his mark is plain. Identity cards are his idea. He revived it. He pushed it in Cabinet. He raised it at the 1994 Tory Conference. He set up the consultation procedure that this Green Paper is supposed to start. If this country ever becomes the sort of place from which his parents once had to run for their lives, he will bear the greatest single responsibility.

This being said, we include below an edited version of our replies to the questions set out in the Green Paper. These were sent off on the 29th September 1994, together with two longer publications on the subject by Sean Gabb, and were acknowledged about a fortnight later.

We do not suppose that Mr Howard will be swayed by them - only opinion polls matter to him. We do not even suppose that he will read them. But they express our belief - a belief we once imagined a Conservative Government might share - that to be made to carry and produce on demand any form of identification is a violation of rights; and that the violation is all the greater in proportion to the amount of information that can be included, or given access to, by the means of identification.

Question: Would an identity card costing less than a full passport be regarded as a convenient travel document for use within Europe and possibly elsewhere?

Answer: It might, but this is no reason in itself for introducing one.

Question: To what extent would an identity card be of added value in providing proof of age?

Answer: It might be of some. However, in the first place, most identity cards so far introduced have been easy to forge. On the other, age is indicated well enough by general appearance to allow any reasonable distinctions to be made between children and adults.

Question: To what extent would an identity card be helpful to individuals in banking and retail transactions?

Answer: Of great value, assuming the rightness of the present money laundering regulations and general disapproval of cash transactions. The Libertarian Alliance, however, denounces all efforts to restrict adult access to any substance of his or her choice; and it regards all banking regulations made pursuant to, or in the spirit of, the Vienna Convention of 1988 as a sinister intrusion into areas where the State has no legitimate function.

Question: Would it be useful to provide space on an identity card to allow the optional addition of emergency medical information or organ donor details?

Answer: No. Anyone who wants to carry such information can do so already. The question is analogous to asking whether tattooing our names on our foreheads would help us to remember each other's names. The only new use of having medical information so available will be the persecution of unpopular minorities. Already, smokers are often denied access to medical treatment. Give the doctors better access to lifestyle information, and they will use it to enforce whatever regimen takes their current fancy.

Question: To what extent would an identity card scheme be seen as a useful way of preventing crime and of reducing the fear of crime in certain areas?

Answer: We cannot comment how it might be seen by others. But we fail to see how identity cards can prevent crime to any significant degree. The repeated experience of those countries which have them is that the cost of committing much crime is simply raised by the cost of obtaining forged identification. The only crimes likely to be reduced are those pseudo-crimes that respectable people commit when they try to do things legitimate or indifferent in themselves but disapproved by the State - eg, taking drugs, buying pornography, using prostitutes, evading business regulations, hiding their assets from grasping tax collectors, and so forth.

Question: Views are invited on the implications for privacy and data protection of an identity card scheme.

Answer: With a modern identity card scheme, there will be no privacy. Access to data will inevitably be expanded by the bureaucrats and special interest groups until everything is open to inspection by almost everyone. For example, if they can be included on a card - as is certainly now possible - why should banking and employment details not be available to a social security official? Why should purchase and library borrowing records not be available to police officers? Whatever data protection might be given at first, it would soon wither away.

Question: Views are invited on whether there should be a unique identification number and, if so, whether it should be incorporated in an identity card.

Answer: With modern technology, unique identification numbers are irrelevant. With or without them, an identity card would give access to all our personal data. The question is like asking whether the entries in a database should be given consecutive numbers to assist searches. But so far as they might be useful before a fully digital system can be implemented, we are against them.

Question: Views are invited on the acceptability of an identity card which contained data information about the cardholder in machine readable form and the possibility that this data could be used for biometric tests.

Answer: Our answers are wholly based on the assumption that identity cards would be of this kind. But we will confirm that the suggestion is unacceptable to us. Identity cards are bad. Anything that adds to their efficiency only makes them worse.

Question: Comments are invited on the lessons to be learnt from experience in other countries.

Answer: Try Nazi Germany, where the Jews were usefully marked out by identity cards that carried details of religion. Try Turkey, where political and social dissidents have special holes punched in their cards. Try Rwanda, where the Tutsi and Hutu butchers could only decide whom and whom not to kill by checking their identity cards. Try France, where identity cards checks are used to harass racial minorities. Try modern Germany, where they are used to frighten homosexuals. Where there are identity cards, there is also a persecuting state: the persecutions differ only in their objects and intensity.

Question: Views are invited on the case for introduction of a separate voluntary identity card/travel card.

Answer: Since passports already exist - not, by the way, that we endorse these - there is no need for a new travel card. As for "voluntary" identity cards, these are a nonsense. The more people have them, the harder it will be for others to do without them. Identity cards will be seized on by banks, insurance companies, shops, public libraries, and every branch of the State administration that has contact with the public. Voluntary or not, life without one will soon become hard. As for the banks and so on just mentioned, their interest will be determined partly by the need to enforce the money laundering regulations mentioned above, and partly by a desire to avoid the costs of securing themselves from fraud. These costs should not be borne by the taxpayers.

Question: Would a photographic driving licence make a useful de facto identity card?

Answer: Yes - and that is why we are against these also. As for any separate arguments in their favour, we will note that the absence till now of photographs from driving licences has caused no problems that are significantly greater than in countries where they are standard.

Question: Views are invited on the case for introducing a dual-function card in particular one serving the purpose of driving licence and identity card.

Answer: Except we are opposed to identity cards in any form, and to any waste of the taxpayers' money, we have no views on this matter.

Question: Views are invited on the possibility, perhaps in the medium or longer term, of introducing, a multi-function Government card which would serve as an identity card and could provide extra convenience to the citizen.

Answer: We are against it. So long as we respect the life, liberty and property of others, no authority has any right to know who we are, where we live, or what we may be doing at any moment. The only "convenience" of this kind of card would be for dealing with a government that consistently exceeded its legitimate authority. We once hoped that a Conservative Government - committed to economic freedom and the generally free traditions of this country - would rather reduce the number of contact between citizen and state than find ways to make them easier, and therefore still more frequent.

Question: Views are invited on the possibility of introducing a compulsory identity card based on either a simple or multi-purpose identity card and the level of enforcement necessary.

Answer: Either of these is possible. We only deny the need and morality of both. Yet, this being said, we will note that the estimated costs - of £2-4 billion to start up, plus anything up to £1 billion per year thereafter - are enormous. And these costs probably take no account of the waste and extravagance that attend all government efforts.

Turning to the level of enforcement necessary, we say this: Any scheme that stops short of total surveillance of the whole population, and that fails to incorporate fairly secure identification protocols - retina patterns, DNA sampling, or whatever - will have little effect on criminal activity. Any scheme that does not stop short will take us straight into the world of dystopian science fiction.

These are our summarised grounds of opposition to any identity card scheme.

Sean Gabb and Chris R. Tame