purplecthulhu

Amongst the many discussions I've got involved with on LJ concerning the possible introduction of ID cards to the UK, there's been one over on gaspodog's journal which has raised some interesting questions for me.

Rather than continue to stuff his journal full of comments, I've decided to ask a few questions here and attempt to answer them for myself.



One of the things that struck me over at gaspodog was the surprising support for ID cards from some people. This perhaps also ties in with comments made by hawkida. It seems that there may be an age divide at about 25-30, with more support for ID cards, at least among educated student types, below this age than above.

Is this just an issue of old fogyism, or the blind naive optimism of youth? Are conceptions of government and civil responsibility really that divided between the age groups, and if so what does that mean?

One of the things that shocked me most was gaspodog's impression that civil liberties campaigners are (and I hope he forgives me for exaggerating his argument for effect) mouth foaming loonies who will stand in the way of anything that a government might to do make life easier for its citizens and itself. As an old left-leaning liberal civil libertarian, I was shocked by this. Have civil liberties groups really got that bad a reputation? Is there something wrong with my distrust of government and powerful corporations? Why do we need civil liberties in the first place?

Its this last question I'd like to try and answer here...

I see the civil liberties of an individual as being a way of leveling the playing field. Governments and large companies are powerful. They have vast resources and can, if they choose, squash an inconvenient individual with relative ease. People have few means of defense against either government/corporate malice or incompetence (in the west the latter is admittedly the more likely possibility, but there are exceptions even in the UK - eg. the unsafe terrorism convictions from the 70s, and the actions of the West Midlands serious crime squad).

So something must be done to redress this imbalance of power, and that is where civil liberties and an independent judiciary come in.

Individuals are given rights to legal protection, to privacy, to security, to free speech. These are rights above and beyond those granted to the government, and in many ways hamper the way a government goes about its business. Life might be less complicated if you had fewer of these rights. Criminals could be removed from society more readily if there was no right to legal protection, for example, but at the same time it is probable that many innocent people would also be sent down. Which is worse - that a criminal should go free or that an innocent should be imprisoned? I would say the latter.

When we are asked to give up some of our accustomed liberties to make life easier for ourselves or the government, we must ask not just how it will benefit us, but also how it can damage us - by use, abuse or mistake. For ID cards I see huge potential for damage, but then this is because privacy is something I value. Maybe its my medical background, where patient privacy was sacrosanct, that makes me think this way. Is privacy really that important? gaspodog doesn't seem to think so. Is it because he's yet to experience the slings and arrows of the outside world, where fear, prejudice and self interest can easily combine to make a little information a dangerous thing, or is he right, and are we moving inexorably towards Dave Brin's Transparent Society? Are the cypherpunks and Privacy International just the last twitching extremities of the corpse of personal privacy, and are we about to enter a new world with safety and security guaranteed by open distribution of information about everyone that will be studied in a nonjudgmental way, and used only when there is clear evidence of law breaking?

I think you can guess my answers to these questions, but what I really want to hear are your answers not mine.