Comment: Big brother's little secrets

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 19 Aug 2002 at 14:48

This brings us on to Blunkett's latest flirtation with controlling the masses through technology. The home secretary would like all Britons to carry an ID card. Inevitably, human rights groups are up in arms: 'Invasion of privacy', 'nanny state', go the cries.
But this is the sort of interaction between government, citizens and technology that many people support. The technology is already available to make ID cards both hard to forge and packed with useful information.

In both the RIP Act and the identity card debate, the Internet community has habitually taken the stance that technology and government monitoring shouldn't mix. Attempts to monitor communication and identities are seen as an invasion of personal cyber space. But surely the point of technology is to improve society, and ID cards are a chance for IT to provide benefits reaching down through all sections of life.

Whatever the sceptics might say - and there are plenty of arguments about what might happen if the cards fell into the hands of organised criminals - ID cards should represent nothing but a benefit to the legal residents of any country. Britain is unusual in not having an ID card policy in place already.

With the ability to put biometric information - fingerprints and iris recognition - onto the card, there should be very little chance of identity fraud. Bearing in mind those fingerprints would be held in a national database, many crimes would be more difficult to perpetrate without punishment - from burglary to illegal working.

Technology and governments should not restrict what we do and say, but if IT can help us identify criminals, fraudsters and illegal immigrants, it should be at least given a chance and not dismissed out of hand. Who are we trying to protect?