Growing up as a child in World War II, I saw countless movies in which a German soldier in uniform, or a Gestapo agent in plain clothes, would utter the spine-chilling words “Papiere, Bitte” (“Papers, Please”). What made those words spine chilling was the fact that whoever they were uttered to was in imminent danger of arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution. This was almost certain to be the fate of any hapless soul who was unfortunate enough not to have his “Papiere” or whose “Papiere” did not satisfy the German who examined them.
Now, over sixty years later, it appears that those dread words, “Papiere, Bitte,” will soon be spoken in English—”Papers, Please”— and with all kinds of British accents. This was reported exactly a week ago, in The New York Times of February 14, in an article titled “A Bit of Good News for Blair: ID Cards for Britons Advance.” The article reported, “The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair faced down its opposition on Monday in a politically charged vote in the House of Commons on a plan to introduce mandatory national identification cards. The vote moved Britain closer to the use of such cards but did not make clear precisely when that would be.”
Worse still, the United States may not be all that far behind Britain in the adoption of such a system. An op-ed piece in today’s New York Times is testing the waters. Titled “A Card We Should All Carry,” the article dares to assert that “a national ID can put power in the hands of the people.” It will allegedly do this by, among other things, providing access to a national database containing everyone’s complete medical history and by enabling people with no fixed address to more easily claim welfare benefits.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the author (or to Tony Blair and his supporters, for that matter), that as a government becomes more and more oppressive, people have more and more reason not to want to be identified by it, indeed, to have their government know nothing whatever about them. For as a government more and more prohibits behavior that is both peaceful and advantageous to people, and more and more compels behavior that is against the interests of people, there will necessarily be more and more violations of its ever growing body of laws and regulations. In such circumstances, the easier it is for the government to identify and find the violators, the more effective is its oppression. By the same token, the less the government knows about its citizens, the greater is their freedom from it and thus the greater their ability to pursue their happiness.
Of course, today we have a problem of terrorism. And many people are prepared to accept such a thing as national identity cards in the belief that they are necessary to combat terrorism. It does not seem to have occurred to such people, that the terrorists who pose a serious problem are those supported by foreign governments and that they will soon be equipped with identity cards that are good enough forgeries to make the system worthless as a means of protection. The people who will be stopped by the system will not be terrorists but innocent citizens, seeking to evade unjust laws and regulations.
The United States and Great Britain defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. It is disgraceful that they are they now on the road toward importing this vicious feature of that regime, and that there is as yet so little opposition to it.
This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved.
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“…terrorists who pose a serious problem are those supported by foreign governments and that they will soon be equipped with identity cards that are good enough forgeries”.
We could also add the problem of the home-grown terrorist who has a perfectly valid ID card, thank you very much. Even unforgeable ID cars aren’t going to help in this – probably increasingly dominant – case.
The form,no doubt, will have a magnetic strip so the policeman can swipe the card from his police cruiser and access your file in the field.Therefore,having a ‘blank’ card may not work, you will need the database too.
The more one thinks about it, the scarier it gets.
I suspect that we are not far from hearing sincere proposals for bar code tattoos to be applied at birth.
Or, if the proponents are remotely sensitive to the Auschwitz parallel, then perhaps a modern version: a permanent, embedded microchip?
Technically, we already have national IDs. It is euphemistically called the ‘Social Security Number’ and ‘Drivers License Number’. In some states, they are apparently one and the same number.
The real question is: who will be the first jackass in politics to suggest a World ID?
There was a recent article listing the number of U.S. citizens who have already been given embedded silicon chips for identification. Find the article at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ec414700-9bf4-11da-8baa-0000779e2340,s01=1.html
There’s already a world-wide ID every human carries with him (and, in fact, cannot part with it) — his genes.
Right now it costs about $1000 to make a genetic profile (not complete sequencing, which is still very expensive, but looking at known sites of SNPs). It takes half-day to run fast PCR and pour the result onto a gene chip. (Readout and processing the results are fast).
Now, the technologies for single-molecule sequencing (dispensing with the need for PCR) and ultra-fast PCR methods (based on microfluidics and other ways to avoid thermal cycling) can cut the cost and time to single $s and minutes (if not seconds).
So in a few years we’ll have not “show your papers, please” but “open your mouth for a swab, please”.
In other words – the ID cards themselves are not that important or worrysome. They are merely the cheapest method for identification (but not that cheap because you need to have an issuing bureaucracy and have costs of validating initial identification).
Of course, the genetic analysis is not completely infallible (it fails to distinguish between single-egg twins, and there’s always a possibility of sample contamination), but coupled with some simple biometrics (a fingerprint or iris scan) it may become the ultimate ID, less invasive than breathalyzer.
So relax and accept the ability to identify someone conclusively as a given. What is done based on the result of the identification is a lot more important. The real issue is not the identity, but the information government collates with the identity, and the ability of the government thugs to act on that information.
I agree with averros. Some sort of system is coming, even if it is only the linking of the smaller systems that are already in place. I think the final factor that will make it inevitable will be from the market, not national security. Identity theft is major problem and people want protection for their property. So as averros said, the issue has less to do with the ID card as it does with the data behind it and how its used.
But I would add there is also the issue specifically called out in the title of the blog article (i.e., “Papers, please”). Who has the right to require you to identify yourself and why. The recent Supreme Court ruling that you can be arrested simply for refusing to identify yourself was very significant, I think. Its one thing to want to positively identify yourself as a prerequisite for some commercial transaction, but quite another to be forced to at the point of a gun. When the police can demand your papers without any probable cause or even suspicion, and then arrest you for refusing, then we’ve already reached the Gestapo phase. A national ID system is simply the logical conclusion of such police power.
National ID provides no security by Bruce Schneier
see also: Real ID (U.S. national ID) by Bruce Schneier
I always have to chuckle when I see a copyright notice on an article at Mises.org. Thank you, Mr. Reisman, for so generously granting me the right to communicate the information you’ve written to other people — a right that I already intrinsically own.
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