Why Civil Liberties are Important : comments.
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hmmm...
I just doesn't occur to me that you would trust the government in this way. The "its ok if you have nothing to hide" argument sounds like something my mother would say. Plus, I know people who've had nothing to hide who've got themselves into reasonable amounts of trouble.
Nor do I think its true to say that the British government is all that benign. Its not been particularly benign for the last 30+ years I've been around. It doesn't, reading the works of Chairman Blunkett, look all that likely to get any better.
Sure its nice to have an ID card of some description - my driving license normally works now it has a picture on it. I was one of the generation who didn't ever get an NI card (they were on strike in 1984), so I have to ferrit through scraps of old pay slips to find that.
The problem is a volentary ID card won't stay that way for long. Any more than the Social Security number in the US isn't actually required by anyone. Try getting a phone, appartment, bank account or pretty much anything else in the US before they issue you a Social Security number. It is virtually impossible. Pretty soon you'll be asked by banks, shops, bars and a bunch of other things - then it'll be the police.
If you're not a white anglo-saxon who looks normal I'd frankly be petrified of it.
Re: Hmmm...
The fear of ID cards is that people will be hassled for them by jobsworth police officers. Is this likely to happen to white middle class people that much? Of course, what we really need is a citizen's police force selected on a rotating basis in the same way as juries. A professional police force is, by its nature, alienated from the people it is supposed to serve and protect.
In countries that do have ID cards, is there significant evidence of abuse.
Re: Hmmm...
I'm told there is evidence of abuse in some other countries, notably Belgiuum.
Re: Hmmm...
No, but that doesn't make it right.
I hear that Belgium and Spain both have a tendancy to abuse ID cards for random stop and search.