The Governments proposed Identity Card Bill has now entered the comittee stage where a comittee will spend just two and half weeks examining it before it goes on to the third reading. Despite having major implications for every person in the UK, this bill is being rushed through parliament. Liverpool Defy-ID has been formed to organise local resistance and action to stop the proposed bill becoming law. This is part of a growing nationwide network of resistance to a bill which would give the state unprecedented surveillance powers over all of us. In the current climate of eroding civil liberties and lack of democratic accountability, it seems obvious that these powers will be used to extend government invasion into our daily lives, re-inforce social inequalities and stifle political dissent.
The card will carry all your names, fingerprints, iris scan, photo, NI number and resident status. The government says it won’t be compulsory to carry the ID Card, but if the police stop you without it they will be able to take your fingerprints and iris scan and compare them to a national database where your details are stored. They don’t need an ID Card to know who you are. Besides, the it is clearly stated in the bill that it is intended to become compulsory in the future.
Other public institutions and private companies (banks, utility companies, credit agencies, employers!) will have the right to consult this database, the National Identity Register. And anyone who’s asked (your employer, doctor, inland revenue etc) must pass on all the information they hold on you to the NIR who can pass it on to who they like. So, for example, if you’re running away from debts and go to your doctor for a prescription, your location will be passed to the credit company who will send in the bailiffs. The government will be doing the bosses’ dirty work.
Everyone will be required to have their fingerprints taken and stored nationally. The police will have the power to check them against those found at crime scenes, even years old. So, if you stayed in a hotel room and left your prints and the next night there was a murder, it could be you being fitted up and facing thirty years to life in prison. Terrorists need to stay in hotels and hire cars to do their dirty work, so hundreds of thousands of businesses will be required to have identity card readers to catch them out. So every time you buy petrol or a mobile phone, stay in a hotel, rent a flat or lock-up, take a new job or just go about your daily life you will be required to produce your ID Card to prove who you are. All this is justified by “being in the public interest” or for “national security” but it gives banks, employers, doctors, hospitals, the benefits agency, shops, lawyers, travel agents, just about everyone the right to force you to prove who you are and carry out checks that what you are saying is true. Data will not be erased, meaning that database will contain a complete record of all the places you have lived, transactions you have carried out, treatment you have received etc.etc..And the government will have the power to collect, analyse, distribute and sell this information whenever it feels like it to whoever it likes.
Don’t’ Think It Won’t Affect You
The government is not going to let anyone stay free from the Card. Failure to be scanned and finger-printed will cost a £2500 fine while not reporting a defective card risks a prison sentence. You can’t refuse to register (£2500 fine) or withhold information (£2500) or give false information (2 years in prison) or just not turn up when ordered to (£2500) or ‘forget’ to renew your card (£1000) or tell the authorities you’ve moved (£1000). ID Cards are just the start. Next the state will suggest your genetic profile should be stored on the card (to help out the hospitals, sure!) and that the card should be fitted with RFID (which will allow the card to be detected and scanned at a distance by hidden sensors in public buildings or street lamps). The police, government and MI5 will be able to track us every minute of the day.
We’ll Pay To Be Spied On!
The cost of ID Cards has already risen to £5.5 billion and it’s us that will have to pay for the scheme. The new ‘enhanced’ passport, which will automatically include your appearance on the NIR will cost £85. Just the ID card alone will cost £40 and there’ll be a stiff charge for changing details, renewing or replacing your card (which you must do or be fined). It’s a tax on simply being alive they’ll go on collecting year after year. Some choice!
So What Can We Do?
At least two networks have been set up to co-ordinate resistance to the bill:
DEFY-ID is an adhoc network of groups and individuals prepared to actively resist the bill, as part of resistance to a Big Brother state. They are proposing a day of direct action on January 28th . The website features information, texts for leaflets and ideas for actions, anything from leafleting, blockades, sit-downs and street theatre. The website has loads of ideas for actions and suggestions about targets for action, companies and organisations involved with or profiting from ID card legislation, with their locations around the country. Liverpool Defy-ID have met once already and are planning actions for the 28th. They need YOUR involvement and can be contacted by e-mailing italia@gryphon33.fsnet.co.uk
NO 2 ID is a mainstream national organisation supported by a wide range of organisations and individuals including NGO's political parties and members of parliament. Their website includes up to date info on latest developments concerning the bill.
People and communities who just want to live ordinary lives in relative freedom need to start organising, now! WE BEAT THE POLL TAX, WE CAN BEAT THIS TOO. LET’S DO IT!
Other links:
Liberty
News From Nowhere
Trevor Mendham: The case against ID cards
Comments
Hide the following 5 comments
Good and necessary
15.01.2005 01:27
Let's join forces
Sheffielder
LSF can help
15.01.2005 19:10
Bring any ideas to the BRAND SPANKING NEW Liverpool Social Forum so even more people can get involved!
It's on tuesday 18th (i.e. next tues) at 7.30pm in the McAusland Lounge in the Liverpool Guild of Students, Mount Pleasant. This is exactly the sort of thing local social forums can really do stuff about and help to join all the progressive/lefty forces in an area to put up a big united front.
come to the meeting!!!
antoine
Homepage:
http://www.geocities.com/liverpoolsf/titlepage.html
Liverpool Defy ID organise local protest as part of National Day of Action!
29.01.2005 00:59
PC Tony Blair shows his mock ID card here in Liverpool !
The group was formed just this month and we quickly and successfully organised today's protest right here in Liverpool City Centre today and right under the gaze of the overhead CCTV camera zooming in on us. We distributed many leaflets and our orange mock ID cards to a wide section of the public. We engaged in much debate and discussion and hope to continue this process.
We have to educate people on just how this WILL impact on all our freedom, liberties and civil rights whether this is fully or even just partially implemented. We also have to think of our children as it is also proposed to set up a national children's database, think about the repercussions of that!
It was an upbeat protest and I was pleased to be part of it, come and join us and be part of this is broad and growing campaign too!
Locally and nationally the ANTI-ID campaign has been formed from across the political, social and class spectrum and has been founded on fundementally 'principled opposition' to ID cards and the National Identity Register. Many of us expect the ANTI-ID campaign to grow quickly here in Liverpool and nationwide in a similar manner to the ANTI-POLL TAX movement did in 1989-1990.
This is Tony Blair and New Labour's POLL TAX!!!
This is a brief report with one photograph posted. A further report with extra photographs will appear here tomorrow (Saturday 29th January) as soon I/we write and post it.
Kai Andersen c/o Liverpool DEFY-ID
e-mail:
defyidnewsfromnowhere.org.uk / aokaitiscali.co.uk (replace with @)
Homepage:
http://www.liverpool-defy-id.org.uk/
Liverpool DEFY-ID organise local protest - extra report
29.01.2005 23:31
Composite digital photograph - Liverpool DEFY-ID day of action
We were out between 11am and 1.15pm yesterday and it was bitterly cold. You can see from this composite digital photograph exactly where we decided to put up our stall, banner, give out leaflets and issue mock ID cards. We were opposite the Gyratory bus lane, this is very significant in itself as it’s not a location where campaign stalls, banners and leaflets have been seen before. We were given a fair looking over by the CCTV camera which pointed down to have a closer look at us, followed by Mersey-travel staff who were later joined by the ‘blue band capped’ community support police. There were approximately ten of us at the start of the action and at no point did anyone official complain or question what we were doing, in actual fact they would have been hard pushed to make up an excuse to move us on, we weren’t blocking the thoroughfare and we didn’t litter as none of our leaflets were dropped as we can quite clearly see from our own digital photographs.
I spoke to a group of five young Spanish students who opened their wallets to show me their compulsory ID cards, for which they have to pay, however it didn’t stop the terrorist bombing of the Spanish train early last year which clearly exposes one of the many fake excuses for this repressive legislation, that it will stop terrorism.
NOTHING TO HIDE? NOTHING TO FEAR?
We all have something to hide it’s why many of us have net curtains on our windows, it’s why we have frosted glass on toilet and bathroom windows. However more than that we have a fundamental right to our privacy it’s enshrined within the UN human rights convention and incidently in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. A few people were unshakeable in their belief that they had absolutely nothing to hide. I’m not sure whether they meant that they didn’t have anything criminal to hide as they didn’t seem to want to engage in debate they just wanted to say they agreed with ID cards and move on without engaging in balanced debate.
We had a few express racist opinions, no surprise there, saying it would keep out the foreigners but they didn’t want to listen to reason, they just ranted and moved away quickly.
Quite a few people seemed to relish the opportunity to engage on various levels of political debate on issues around ID cars and police/state powers such as; what freedom have we got now? Don’t we already live in a police state? I myself was cornered for quite some by a variety of people, it might suggest the public are not being engaged in political debate at the level we used to be by councillors or MPs on the street or doorstep anymore, as I said in my earlier posting we had a very broad section of the public engage with us.
I mentioned to a few parents with babies in prams that the government were also proposing to set up a national children’s database as well for all 11million of them. I used a possible example of a child labelled as disruptive at age seven, it being written on their computer file and linked with their National Identity Register number for all time and it adversely affecting their choice of schools at a later age, many small children naturally grow out of their hyperactive behaviour as they grow up or with a change of diet, however if they have undiagnosed ADD then it could quite easy end up with them being negatively treated by their teachers and schools. One parent commented that her toddler had just been diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and what I suggested as a possible scenario concerned her and she then gladly took a leaflet as suddenly it brought home to her what a compulsory ID card and database could mean for her toddler.
Another example given to me was someone who said it’s only been in recent years that dyslexia has been more fully understood, previously you were simply labelled as being ‘thick’ left at the back of the class and ignored, however as many parents will know many children with learning disabilities are not being properly assessed and also not being given adequate support or resources.
This is an additional infringement on our human rights before we even become adults. The more we look into ID cards and the National Identity Register the more alarming it becomes - the broader the impact. I will chase up the original source of my research on the national Children’s Database and write an additional article here, in the meantime here is a link to be going on with:
It’s 52 years since second world war ID cards were abolished in 1952, they were the first and only time compulsory ID cards were imposed on the British public and in actual fact they were in use for longer in peacetime than during the war years. I pointed this out to older retired members of the public and I said the reason they were dropped according to the Churchill government of the time was the breakdown of trust between the police and members of the public going about their own private business. People simply didn’t like being bossed around by people whose wages they paid.
For further information on 1939-1952 compulsory ID Cards check the following link.
I mentioned Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) technology it was being discussed on BBC Newsnight on the evening of our action, this is a case of “BIG BROTHER” tracking your shopping without your permission! Here are a couple of links to articles which will give you a basic introduction and the facts and figures, first a quote:
“Pressure group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian) is urging people to restrict their purchases at Tesco.
It claims RFID chips can be used to secretly identify you and the things you're carrying or wearing. All kinds of personal belongings, including clothes, could constantly broadcast messages about their whereabouts and their owners, it warns.”
Read the full story on this next link:
Q&A: What is the RFID-hype all about?:
Credit cards tap into radio tags
Already computer hackers can access and reprogram RFID chips with portable handheld computers linked to portable radio equipment, the security level is very poor. Take a read of the next link.
Plenty to get you thinking for now.
LIVERPOOL DEFY-ID NEXT MEETING:
The next meeting is 6.15pm Thursday 3rd of February at News From Nowhere, Bold Street where undoubtedly we will share the feedback we got from the public and consider how we develop the campaign further and involve more people.
Kai Andersen c/o Liverpool DEFY-ID
e-mail:
aokai[AT]tiscali.co.uk (anti SPAM replace AT with @ to reply)
Homepage:
http://www.liverpool-defy-id.org.uk/
unable to download without details
22.09.2005 11:26
I believe that the police should be policed as i cannot get any ware with complaints in the isle of man as they will not bring in or reconise the 2004 police reform act and the police officer investigating my complaints will not deal with the complaints as submitted and is even manipulating the statment given in favor of themselves and to put ambercurites within the statement to exonerate there collegues. further complaints of corruption in not being delt with.
yelac