Id Cards

[marcus]

Over here, the goverment are starting to debate the ID card issue.

 

Personally i'm all for them.

 

What do others think?

[Observer]

I wouldn't object to carrying an ID card at all.

[P.K.]

You don't hear of objections to carrying the new driving license and I don't see it would be much different.

[marcus]

The biggest complaint is from civil liberties groups...a 'Big Brother' type thing and also the cost.

[the-rhymes]

Biometric passports fine, make them compulsory. ID cards not for me please. I don't fancy being stopped and asked to produce anything... If I need to Identify myself I can get my passport otherwise they can go and jump.

 

I think they should have a referendum, if the people want them I will comply otherwise I don't want an ID card imposed on me...

 

This as been discussed in detail here:

 

http://www.manxforums.com/forums/index.php...c=5486&hl=cards

[Static]

I don't have a problem with ID cards per se as I always have some form of ID on me but I do object to having to pay for something that the government want to impose on me. If the UK or IOM governments want me to have a compulsory ID card then they should supply me with it free of charge.

[Observer]

I agree with him ^^^^

[Bill Posters]

I'd be happy to carry one if it worked. The Spanish have them, they didn't stop the Madrid train bombings.

[Tugger]

I have a number of objections to this. First, I don't want to be guilty of a criminal offence simply because I absentmindedly leave something at home when rushing for work in the morning. Secondly, the classic response to these things is "Well you've nothing to worry about if you've nothing to hide", but I don't feel that's the case at all. Unwillingness to provide personal information doesn't necessarily imply criminality, just a desire for privacy.

 

It will cost a fortune, won't stop terrorism (as Bill Posters noted, they have them in Madrid) and I wonder how many times you'll be stopped and asked for them if you're a little darker than the average Manxie, compared to us lily white people.

 

At the bottom of this though, I just don't want to live somewhere where someone can come up to me and demand "Sofort mit Ihren Papieren!", or similar. It's a step in the wrong direction.

[Rog]

What is being proposed is NOT an ID card as per anything that has been seen before.

 

What is being proposed is the establishment of a database on everybody, a database that would soon be expanded beyond details of who and what we are – or more like what some dam fool THINKS we are based on analysis of our movements. The ID card itself is nothing more than the physical link between meat and machine.

 

THAT is the nightmare aspect of this NuLabour control-freak driven scheme.

 

What is being proposed is fundamentally WRONG. It opens up goodness knows how many opportunities for terrible mistakes to be made as data gathered from where we go, what we spend, who is there at the same time, and so forth gets number-crunched into garbage assumptions – and it WILL happen.

 

This whole scheme is being sold as being an ‘ID card’ and most people do not see what lies behind it and simply think “ID Card? Used to have one – no prob’s then so why not?” and utterly fail to grasp that the ID card is trivial compared to what it fronts up.

 

The question being asked is “Are you content with the introduction of a piece of legislation that will require you to possess and carry an ID card?!

 

I suggest that the real question should be

 

“Are you willing to be subject to having increasing details about how you live your life that will inevitably and starting within 10 years at my guess include details about your bank accounts, your spending habits, your movements when you take a train, boat, or ‘plane, your health record and more, and worst of all assumptions about you based not only on that but also others who may have been in the same place at the same time as you when something happened”?

 

That is the question for people to ask themselves. They may well find themselves giving a different answer to the one being asked by the government.

 

But how will data obtained by people using the proposed ID system work? And Charles Clark has already let the cat out of the bag regarding the scope of usage of the ID system when he let slip that you would need your card to board a ‘plane ---

 

The machine sifting, aka tranching, of information fathered will by done by machine using a search algorithm and will turn up suspects that will then be matched to events, seldom events forming the cause to tranche the database to find evidence against a known suspect.

 

An error on the search key, a loose definition of a search key, and all sorts of people will turn up, and of course the very fact that you have turned up on a tranche will be stored along with the rest of your record details.

 

Plus it would be naïve in the extreme not to believe that there will be a ‘comments’ section where freeform text entry could not let someone put their personal assumptions or suspicions in---

 

Or that people who have access to the database could not damage the data deliberately let alone accidently

 

Or that erroneous data could not be entered, maybe even by using a scanning terminal that would then appear as genuine data ---

 

The whole dam thing would be open to abuse and if something is open to abuse than someone will abuse it.

 

If the ID card system is to be effective as a tool to fight crime, terrorism and illegal immigration or more likely combinations thereoff it will need to become an item without which normal life becomes almost if not actually impossible.

 

And it will so become.

 

Other countries don’t have what’s on offer with the present proposals and that’s part of the problem.

 

Stop thinking ‘ID Card’ and start thinking massive database. That’s where the 18 or so billion pounds figure for the UK, let alone the Isle of Man, comes in. If it was just an ID card system like other countries then we could be talking about only a few pounds each.

 

This is NOT something that has been used anywhere before.

 

I just wonder if the whole initial stages that we are going through are not an attempt by NuLabour to soften up any opposition and make resistance to any form of compulsory ID system that much less when a ‘cut down’ version gets tabled. I wish it turns out to be so but I fear it won’t.

 

 

Remember, This is NOT something that has been used anywhere before.

 

Ever.

 

And an ID system such as is on offer was NOT avaulable in Madrid.

[Bill Posters]

And an ID system such as is on offer was NOT avaulable in Madrid.

 

Granted. I'm still of the opinion that even this new system would not prevent another Madrid.

 

 

Unwillingness to provide personal information doesn't necessarily imply criminality, just a desire for privacy.

 

Very true. Good point.

[P.K.]

Intelligence gathering has been going on for ages. Over 25 years ago the "Collators Cards" where the local nick would hold spurious info on the folks on their manor were computerised. Store Loyalty Cards already have our spending habits as do the banks. There's nothing new here on the info gathering side and by the way the search algorithms are such a nightmare that you have to use vast synonym lists just to get anything useful.

 

Yes you will need one to board a plane. Errr.... like a passport? EU citizens have been strolling into the UK with just an ID card for something like 30 years.

 

The important thing to me is that Rog is absolutely right in that the format of these ID cards IS new. Nothing like it has been tried before ergo there may be big benefits. I would also be amazed if not carrying one was a criminal offence.

 

From the purely "social experiment" side I am very interested in what is going to happen.

[Rog]

It won’t matter if it’s a legal requirement to carry an ID card or not if as will be the case you won’t be able to draw money from an ATM without one as the banks replace their own card systems with ID card readers linked to you’re a/c, if you can’t buy petrol without your ID card (petrol = dangerous – need to verify who’s buying it), won’t be able to travel by train or long distance bus (for safety and security of passengers) won’t be able to board a ‘plane or boat (same reasons), won’t be able to get a job, visit your doctor, all these things and more and all always for the VERY best reasons of course.

 

Then that job that you went after and for which you are perfectly suited by reasons of qualification and experience and that you were even told that you would be short listed or even that the job was yours subject only to ‘security checks’ only to find that you didn’t get an offer after all and you will; never know the reason.

 

It won’t come in the first year. It will have started within 5 years, and O predict that all these things and more will be up and running within 15 years at the most.

 

Then there’s the matter of the sharing of data and information (two very different things, incidentally) between the home country, in this case the UK, and other countries and specifically the US.

Anyone who for a single moment doesn’t believe that the UK data base and information base will not be accessible to the ‘authorities’ in the US is kidding themselves. Or that the Manx government will not link any Manx ID system onto the UK mainframes. Sheer cost involved alone will dictate that should be done.

 

I really am disgusted that Bleah can not for once in his life be up front and call this proposal for what it is. Not the introduction of an ‘ID’ card system but the creation of a massive database that will store personal details, and soon even minuscule details of how people go about their lives, and make it available to government agencies to do with as they please and draw assumptions from what is stored no matter how wrong those assumptions may be.

 

If you have to think ‘ID’ then think ‘Integrated Databases’ because THAT is what is involved here. The physical card is trivial. What is behind it is NOT.

[lectro]

I have no problem carrying a card that identifies and confirms who I am and if it has biometrics included as a security option then all the better.

 

I already carry a driving licence, business cards and an organ donor card, and I have a passport and birth cert so I have no problem with ID. I just don't want to pay for another form of ID unless it replaces most of these.

 

I do however refuse (and always have done) to use store loyalty cards and do those surveys to win a prize "competitions" - that's far more intrusive and the "Big Brother is watching you" fanatics would be better attacking the privacy aspects of those.

[theintelligentthug]

surveys of spending habits have been going on for years, and to be fair, if someone wants to track you around the globe, they can do. its not impossible.

 

ID cards are a minefield i think, and i dont think the government is ever going to truly let on exactly how much information they have stored about each and every one of us. i dont want one.

 

ive not needed one up to now and i cant forsee me ever really needeing one, save to placate the paranoid losers who might think im a terrorist or something