For more information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact Phil Booth (National Coordinator,  national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839, Guy Herbert (General Secretary,  general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308, or Michael Parker (Press Officer,  press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166.

Campaign launches The NO2ID Pledge

Civil liberties and privacy campaign NO2ID [1] today launches The NO2ID Pledge. Following hard on the heels of the launch of its legal defence fund – which involved calling in donations pledged by over 11,000 ID refuseniks [2] – the campaign is throwing a renewed pledge, taken by means of signing a certificate, open to all who oppose the government’s ID plans. The pledge [3] is a means of publicly declaring their personal commitment to refuse to comply.

Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator, said:

“This is not a petition. This is not a request.

“This is real people saying: ‘No, we’ve had enough. We are sick of the government snooping into our private lives, leaking or losing our most confidential personal information, and trampling the individual liberty that made this country what it is. It has to stop.’

“The NO2ID Pledge will lead to civil disobedience only if the government fails to see sense and scrap its monstrous ID scheme. The polls have long said millions [4] will not submit to being numbered like cattle. Is the government really going to risk trying to make them beg to be branded?”

Guy Herbert, NO2ID’s General Secretary, has written a short article to explain in more detail the purpose of The NO2ID Pledge [5].

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. Scroll down  http://www.no2id.net for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

2) In 2005, during the passage of the Identity cards Bill, 11,361 people pledged the following via the PledgeBank website: "I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund
but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge".

In its first week alone, NO2ID’s Legal Defence Fund received approximately £25,000 in donations from pledgers. Donations for the fund can still be sent to “NO2ID” at, Box 412 LDF, 19/21 Crawford Street, LONDON W1H 1PJ. Or by bank transfer to: sort code 40-28-15, account number 81377965.

3) Pledge certificates can be downloaded from the NO2ID website at  http://www.no2id.net/pledge/ from 00:01am Monday 3/2/07.

4)  http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/idcard/uk/idpollanalysis.pdf - Privacy International’s analysis of a YouGov poll dating back to 2004 demonstrates significant hardcore opposition before the ID legislation was even laid before Parliament.

5) The following may be freely reproduced in any medium provided it is credited to Guy Herbert, General Secretary, NO2ID:

The NO2ID Pledge

You might be prepared to go to gaol rather than have an ID card. But you can’t.

David Blunkett has been smugly pronouncing that there will be no ID card martyrs because the intent is to have a system of penalties – like monstrous parking fines – hard to contest in court. So further punishments would relate to failure to pay, not ID cards. That silly distinction is currently irrelevant, since powers of direct compulsion have been dropped, for now. It hasn’t stopped Mr Blunkett repeating it, though.

Subtler minds have been at work. The Home Office plans to make you to “volunteer”. It hopes almost all the population will “volunteer”, before most people have even noticed what is happening. Well before it rounds-up and force-fingerprints a few pariahs. Official documents will one by one be “designated”, so that you cannot get one without at the same time asking to be placed – for life – on the National Identity Register.

The civil servant, Sylvanus Vivian who originated this idea in 1934 – yes, that’s right, nineteen thirty-four – called it “parasitic vitality”. In other words, the scheme is a vampire. It has no life of its own, and thrives only if it feeds.

There is its weakness. We, collectively, can choose to starve the Identity and Passport Service. It only works smoothly if few are prepared to face a little inconvenience to resist. It only works at all if a large majority of the population can be hypnotised into thinking that it is just routine, no big deal. If enough of us refuse to be bled willingly, the beast will either starve or show its fangs.

Already “e-Passports” have been used as a pretext to build a chain of interrogation centres to service the ID scheme. But further growth of the parasite will be harder to hide. Which is where you come in.

Making martyrdom hard, made resistance easy too. Actually breaking the law at this stage is hard to do. There is scarcely any ID card law to break; it is designed to be brought in silently by regulations, alongside administrative changes.

So that’s why NO2ID is suggesting a new form of non-violent direct action: pre-emptive resistance. You can do something positive now. Something totally legal; that has its own life, not determined by us, but by you. Anyone can do it. Anyone can help others do it. The more who do, the easier it is.

You can resolve openly, and clearly, not to do those specific things that give the ID scheme its “parasitic vitality”:

“I solemnly and publicly promise that:

• I shall not register for a national identity card
• I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
• I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
• I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service interview concerning my identity

I also promise by my example to encourage others to do the same.”

In just one month of 2005, over 10,000 people pledged online not to register. Many more will take this NO2ID Pledge, and pass it on to others. Maybe the Government thinks it could force tens of thousands to submit by denying them basic services. It would be a very brave Government that tried.

© 2007 Guy Herbert