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I have just used the fantastic web services TheyWorkForYou.Com and WriteToThem.Com (both projects of MySociety, who are the people behind Pledgebank too) to write a letter to my MP, Tessa Jowell about the ID cards debate. The text of the letter follows below. I’d urge you to have a think about what is really bothering you, whether it’s ID cards, protest bans or anything else that is currently or could affect your life, and use these tools to communicate with the people in power. They are people, with their own families, lives and problems. Appealing to them on a personal basis will be our best chance to reverse our current plunge towards a repressive society.

My letter:

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Tessa Jowell MP
Dulwich and West Norwood

Dear Tessa Jowell,

I am one of your constituents, and have been for two years. I’m writing to you today to let you know of my deep discomfort with your stance on the National Identity Register and Identity Cards in the UK. I feel that as my elected representative, you are not working to the best interests of myself or anyone else in your constituency.

I believe that a National Identity Register and Identity Cards in the UK would be a mistake on several grounds.

Firstly, I believe that biometric registration of the more than fifty million adults in the United Kingdom would be both a gross invasion of individual privacy and of no overall use in the proposed aims of fighting terrorism and crime.

May I point out that the four young men who immolated themselves in London last July were all British citizens, and in your proposed world would all have been carrying ID cards. Would this have stopped them? I can see no reason why, and neither can the London School of Economics, who you would do well to listen to. I refer you to page 58 of their interim report on your Government’s plans for ID cards, in which they state that :

“Of the 25 countries that have been most adversely affected by terrorism since 1986, eighty per cent have national identity cards, one third of which incorporate biometrics. This research was unable to uncover any instance where the presence of an identity card system in those countries was seen as a significant deterrent to terrorist activity”

Secondly, there seems to be an institutional disregard for the fact that the time required to process that many people is around 60,000 man years (source: LSE report). This also relies on people actually a) submitting and b) turning up on time. So, if you had a workforce of 6,000 people, it would take you a minimum of ten years to register everyone in the country. What is the point of an ID card system that takes ten years to fully implement? Of course, civil or criminal penalties for failing to carry or submit to an ID card scheme could not reasonably come into effect until such a scheme had had those ten years to register as many people as possible, meaning any sort of deterrent effect intended would be minimal.

Thirdly, the creation and implementation of such a system is both the largest possible security risk I can imagine, and a potential cost to the British taxpayer that lies in the region of £19 billion. The previous tendering of such large-scale IT contracts by your Government leaves a great deal to be desired, and this lies far, far beyond the scale of anything attempted thus far. Again, I would emphasise, the benefits of this scheme are extremely limited and far outweighed by the potential dangers, whether they come in the form of a single point of failure for civil information (i.e. a security breach of an ID cards database would be the Mount Vesuvius of personal data, spewing all the necessary components for mass identity theft) or in the potential for future repression.

This is my final point, and the one that I think is most salient. I, for one, do not believe that the current Labour government is either immoral or sinister. I do not believe that you or your leadership wish to create a state of repression in this country, but I do believe that the relatively short horizon of your office means that you have neglected the consequences of enacting this legislation.

As an example, consider the possibility of continued, large-scale terrorist atrocities on British soil. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility to suppose that sustained attacks on British cities could lead to the election of a government with an even less liberal outlook on civil liberties than your government (I may add that it pains me to say this, but the actions of your government over the last few years have done more to erode essential liberties in place since the Magna Carta than two world wars and the end of Empire c.f. the banning without permission of legitimate protest within a kilometre of parliament. Requiring permission for protests removes the legal legitimacy of those protests and becomes a tool for censure). If such a government were elected, the tools that you are are proposing could be very easily abused, and the means of legal recourse to prevent that could be easily removed. Do you wish to live in a world where you can be stopped on the street and asked to prove who you are, especially when you have reason to believe that those who are stopping you may have grounds to treat you differently based on the documents you produce? Because that is what you are introducing the potential for, with no appreciable benefit to your constituents.

You and your government have expressed the wish to become rapid, decisive and effective in combating crime and terrorism. But this should never, ever come at the expense of due process and the right to privacy and personal liberty, because if we remove that or seek to introduce tools and processes that can allow its future removal, we have lowered ourselves to the level of those who wish to destroy our way of life.

I urge you to reconsider your stance on this issue, and to examine at length the different opinions on this matter. While I appreciate that your career involves the submission of your own opinions to a perceived greater good, I feel you must ask yourself if you are creating the kind of society that you would wish your children and grandchildren to live in. And, I would ask yourself - would the people’s money be better spent on this dangerous lame duck of an ID card scheme, or in addressing the social ills that have so alienated four young British men that they felt it necessary to kill themselves and 52 other people last year?

I will close this letter with the following quote from Benjamin Franklin, and the sincere hope that I will receive an honest reply from you:

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” — Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Yours sincerely,

David Goodman

Originally posted at Happy Dave.

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