Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014
National identity cards
Section E. Social, moral and religious
The arguments below assume a motion on the introduction of compulsory identity cards. A debate on voluntary identity cards is possible, and the last set of points addresses this. A Proposition team can clarify the debate by defining what information would be held on the card, whether it would be compulsory, and if so, what the penalties would be for failing to have one. Many countries including Belgium, Germany, South Korea and Pakistan issue compulsory ID cards. Others such as Italy, Japan and Canada have systems of voluntary ID cards while the UK, Denmark and Australia among others have no national schemes.
Pros
[1] Many forms of crime depend upon individuals claiming to be someone else (e.g. benefit fraud, tax evasion, dealing in stolen goods, terrorism, gaol-breaking, illegal immigration, or lying to the police after another crime). Without ID cards there is no form of standard identification for domestic use that is widely accepted. Different forms of identification are demanded for different activities. If a country had one official and standard form of ID, verification by the police would be easier and many crimes would be avoided. With the increased terrorist threat in the world, ID cards have become a matter of national security.
[2] Many European states require identity cards, yet they are hardly authoritarian police states. When they are abroad, tourists willingly carry a passport, while at home almost all drivers carry a driving licence. Carrying identification causes no problem to innocent people; it is only criminals who would resist. Encouraging police harassment is a negligible risk; the circumstances under which ID cards would be demanded could be carefully regulated.
[3] National identity cards are useful not only for society, but also for the holder. There are many daily transactions where identification is required; currently we are forced to carry a large number of separate cards. In the USA and the UK where driving licences bear photos, they are used as identification for a wide variety of purposes (proving the owner is old enough to drink, guaranteeing cheques, etc.). Modern smart-card technology would allow one small card to encode a huge range of information, including photographic images, retina and fingerprint records, signature, passport, driving licence, criminal record, bank and credit details, health records and even employee and library/club membership details.
[4] Given that most people currently carry all their multiple forms of identification in the same wallet or handbag, the problems of losing a single card are unlikely to be worse in practice. The chance of being impersonated is less if photo, retina and fingerprint details cannot be detached from the card; at the moment, a thief could discard all forms of photo ID, but keep, for example, a credit card and forge the signature. In addition, the majority of identity theft now occurs through the Internet rather than through the stealing of cards.
[5] Identity cards could be made voluntary, producing many of the benefits of compulsory cards while avoiding most of the issues of civil liberty.
Cons
[1] Identity cards represent a major intrusion by the government into the privacy of the individual, and would greatly increase state control. In order to be effective, card carrying would have to be compulsory (as with a road tax disc), and failure to produce the card would be a crime. This would use up valuable police and court time.
[2] Countries such as the UK, Australia and Denmark value their liberties highly and are wary of any attempts to undermine them, which is why they have resisted ID cards. National identity cards would allow a considerable degree of police harassment in the name of enforcing the policy, probably targeted at minority groups who are already more likely to be stopped on suspicion of motoring and other offences. This harassment is a particular problem in France with the immigrant population. Relations between minority groups and police would only grow worse.
[3] With separate cards we have a choice about whether and when to carry them, and which ones to take out with us. Smart-card technology is so advanced as to be dangerous; we would have no idea what information was contained on our ID cards that could be read by others, and no choice about how much information to declare. Employers and the police could discriminate against us on the basis of hidden facts that we should have the right to keep hidden. The cost of introducing millions of smart cards and vast numbers of card-reading machines would be enormous. Theft of the cards would become major business, and the police are always technologically less advanced than the criminals, as credit card fraud and online financial crime suggest.
[4] The chance of losing all your forms of identification in one go is high and immensely inconvenient — your entire identity would be erased until a new one could be obtained, which would presumably be a strict and lengthy process. If criminals did obtain card-reading technology, they could have access to all parts of your life via a stolen card and identity theft would become much easier.
[5] Voluntary schemes are likely to be the thin end of the wedge, soliciting public support before proposals to make cards compulsory are tabled. In any case, unfair suspicion would naturally fall on those who chose not to carry them — an infringement on civil liberties. Courts might take ’not carrying a card’ into account with the same scepticism with which the right to silence is treated. Voluntary in theory would become compulsory in practice if banks, rail companies, airlines and so on demanded cards to be shown as part of transactions.
Possible motions
This House would introduce a national identity card.
This House would remain anonymous.
This House would scrap compulsory ID card schemes.
Related topics
Protective legislation v. individual freedom
Zero tolerance