Who
I’d like to hear an actually persuasive argument in favor of a national ID card on the grounds that it would help counter terrorism. I’ve heard some people say the London bombers would have had one but that isn’t an argument against such cards, but the people saying that don’t go on to explain their thinking (if you could call it that – what’s an argument without an argument? Just orders.), so I’ve yet to hear anything particularly compelling. The idea’s been mooted in the U.S. and Britain as well as Australia more than once in recent years, and it’s usually shouted down or allowed to pass away quietly, often on privacy grounds. I do hear various authorities say that privacy’s not an issue, after all we let credit card companies collect more personal data than’s being suggested here, but that’s not terribly valid argumentation. Yes, credit card companies and other commercial ventures collect information, and we hand it over and end up on mailing lists and getting sales calls at dinner: the plain fact here is that we often don’t realize the extent and meaning of what we’re signing up for. What’s being touted in a national ID is a centralized government database of . . . essentially whatever the administration in power at the time or subsequently decides to collect. Interestingly, I have heard suggestions that in addition to my Medicare number and my tax file number and my driver’s license information (no, not yet; someday, after I’ve had the money and time for lessons), and my passport and visa, I could also have my banking and credit details encoded onto the little magnetic strip, or the embedded chip, or whatever. After the RFID-embedded passport flap in the U.S., the new Australia Card may not have an auto-detection feature, but it is already starting to sound like a lot more information than I want any government to have on file for me. I already know what the banks and others do with my personal data, what happens when the Feds have my medical history and it gets hacked, or passed along for research, or sold? Believing that bureaucracy is the principal safeguard over government-held data, can the trust barrier be overcome? Is a national ID just that one step too far closer to “papers” teutonic-accented agents will demand as they buttonhole me on my way to the train station? We had these scares over social security numbers in the U.S. when that program was initiated, and despite the abuses – retailers collecting the number illegally, for example, one of the key factors in the rise of identity theft – the effect overall has been mild enough. And what about national security and fighting terrorism? Is there really a link, or can we only expect to identify the presence of individuals or of forged documents? Will the cards include known associates? Political affiliation? Is there really any hope of these things being useful ahead of the crime? You’ll have to convince me, because right now it just sounds like another way to help reduce civil liberties.