Mark Gobell
On Gardening Leave
Joined: 24 Jul 2006
Posts: 4529
|
 Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:27 am Post subject: |
 |
|
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article2104562.ece
| Quote: | The winning essay in full.
Philip Johnston is this year’s winner of the annual Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust Award, established in 1986 in honour of the former Editor of The Times. Previous winners include VS Naipaul, Michael Gove, Matthew d’Ancona, Anne Applebaum and Anthony Daniels.
|
IN his first statement to Parliament as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said that “Britain is rightly proud to be the pioneer of the modern liberties of the individual.” Little noticed among the cascade of pronouncements about constitutional reform, was a promise to reconsider the ban on unlicensed political protest in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster. Mr Brown implied that when it came to balancing the need for public order with the right to public dissent, this was a law too far.
A commitment to personal liberty is only to be expected from a British prime minister, and especially from a son of the manse brought up in Adam Smith’s home town. Yet Mr Brown sat in a Cabinet that did more than any other in recent years to alter the balance in the relationship between the State and the individual.
If Clement Attlee is remembered for post-war welfare provision and the NHS, Harold Wilson for Sixties optimism, Edward Heath for joining Europe, James Callaghan for the Winter of Discontent, Margaret Thatcher for reducing the size of government and John Major, however unfairly, for sleaze then we will look back on the past ten years as marking a serial assault by the State on the civil liberties of the citizen.
To be sure, the State always wants to limit the liberties of its people. But it is normally restrained by an executive that understands the limits of illiberalism or is contained by a parliament that considers itself to be a guardian of freedoms.
For a number of reasons, neither of these brakes was applied under Tony Blair’s premiership. The huge Commons majority he enjoyed, the craven pusillanimity of his party, the implosion of the Conservatives and the consequent absence of opposition, other than in the Lords ¬ and, to an extent, in the courts – conspired with a genuine, though irrational, fear of terrorism and rising street crime to let the State take greater control over the citizen than it has enjoyed in modern peacetime.
It is often easier to recognise the State than define it. It is not simply the Government. It is the agglomeration of all those offices and agencies whose raison d’etre is to run the country. It is the body politic. It is the supreme public body within the sovereign political entity. Every nation needs a State to function; but it needs also to contain its aggrandisement. We all know what happens when the State becomes over-mighty.
Under Mr Blair, the State recaptured territory that it must have thought had been buried forever under a mountain of human rights laws and beneath all the freedoms that would normally make it more difficult to control the individual, such as ease of communication and of movement. But the technology that has made us feel freer has also given the State the wherewithal to keep control over us and to say that it does so for our own good.
This assault on freedom has come from all directions. Surveillance of a sophistication never dreamt of in Orwell’s worst nightmares; the gradual dismantling of the judicial protections afforded to defendants in criminal cases, even to the point of questioning the presumption of innocence; the criminalisation of dozens of activities that would never previously have been considered immoral; the limits on freedom of speech; restrictions on movement and detention without trial or even charge; and the creation of databases containing information on us all and which will track the movements of our children and theirs from cradle to grave.
Taken singly, each one of these might be considered justifiable. For instance, the removal of the double jeopardy rule in trials, whereby a suspect found innocent cannot be tried again for the same offence, may seem sensible given the advances in DNA technology. But when this is combined with proposals to give police greater summary powers or attempts are made to limit, or even to dispense with, trial by jury then the sum of the parts appears far less benign.
Similarly, the proliferation of CCTV cameras would appear to be warranted by the additional reassurance that they provide to people in town centres or in shops, despite the dearth of evidence that they actually prevent crime, as opposed to record it. Yet, if microphones are added to the cameras to eavesdrop on passers-by, and recognition systems are installed to alert watchers to particular types of gait or behaviour, and radio frequency readers are able instantly to identify an individual by way of the personal data contained in a chip on his ID card, do we then feel so sanguine about them?
Government ministers fulminate against charges of illiberalism. Last year, Tony Blair engaged in an illuminating exchange of emails with Henry Porter in The Observer which served to demonstrate that the Prime Minister simply did not understand the concept of individual liberty or, if he did, considered that it should be subordinated to the needs of the many.
This is, of course, a classic socialist concept but not one you expected to hear expressed by Mr Blair, who has tended to regard himself more of an heir to Margaret Thatcher, who cut her ideological teeth on such champions of liberty as Hayek, Berlin and Popper. But in his exchange with Porter, Mr Blair seemed to challenge this post-war, anti-totalitarian philosophical consensus and to do so purely in populist terms.
The problem, he said, with those who accused his Government of an authoritarian approach – those, indeed, to whom David Blunkett once referred sneeringly as the “liberati” – was that they were out of touch with public opinion. This, then, is the ultimate abrogation of the politician’s duty to defend the rights of the individual against the State: if the polls tell us that people want to see the criminal justice system “rebalanced” in favour of the victim, then that is what we will do.
But the criminal justice system is not meant to be for the victim and it is dangerous that it should be seen in this context. Trials in this country are conducted between the Crown and the defendant; however much we may wish to see justice done on behalf of the victim, the purpose of the judicial system and the rule of law is to prove that the suspect is guilty. Even to question this fundamental tenet is to step on to a slippery slope. Of course, those Labour MPs who say their constituents care more for their safety on dangerous streets than for the civil liberties of the mugger have a point. However, the proper response is to put more police back into such communities, not remove the ancient protections afforded to individuals from wrongful conviction.
Freedom of expression is another basic liberty that has been eroded under Mr Blair, a statement that seems at odds with a world of incessant internet chatter and unrestrained blogging. Despite this, probably not since John Milton railed against restrictions on the press in the 17th century, has this country been so confused about where the boundaries of free speech lie. People used to be free under the criminal law to speak their minds, provided they did not, in doing so, incite others to commit violence or infringe public order.
Speaker’s Corner, in Hyde Park, London, came to symbolise a democratic tradition of which the country was proud and whose parameters were also understood. Rabble-rousers trying to whip up the mob have never been the beneficiaries of this latitude, just as extreme Islamists should not be today. Parliament Square was, rightly, off limits to rioters but a magnet for those who wanted to shout in the ear of their legislators. Now, unless permission is granted, it is not even possible to whisper criticism of the Government.
Maya Evans found this out when she stood by the Cenotaph to recite the names of Britain’s Iraqi war dead. For this she was arrested, arraigned and left with a criminal record. It is hard to conceive of a police officer a generation ago taking any notice of her since she was causing no public order problem at all. But Ms Evans had fallen foul of a clause in the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act which established a one kilometre zone around the Palace of Westminster, within whose boundaries political criticism can be voiced only on application to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Not only does the Government apparently feel no compunction about this grotesque infringement of liberties; neither, apparently, does the official opposition since they have not pledged to repeal the measure.
Or ask Lynette Burrows about free speech. She had offered her opinion on the radio that two homosexual men should not be allowed to adopt a boy, which is a view with which you may agree or disagree, but does not warrant a call from the local constabulary. She was told that, although a crime had not been committed, it was policy to record details of such complaints, so Ms Burrows is now, presumably, on some sinister register of people who express views that are not considered acceptable. Needless to say, she was flabbergasted to receive such a call. “This is a free country and we are entitled to express opinions on matters of public interest,” she said.
But are we a free country any longer? Were we ever? It is said, though less often now than it used to be, that the basis of English liberty is the rule of law, under which everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. According to AV Dicey, the 19th-century constitutionalist, this was one of the features that distinguished England from its continental counterparts, where people were subject to the exercise of arbitrary power and actions that were not specifically authorised were proscribed.
Effectively, this principle limited the scope of the State to intervene in people’s lives. Law set the boundaries of personal action but did not dictate the course of such action. Some limitations on personal freedom are introduced ostensibly for our own good and some predate the Blair government, such as the compulsory wearing of seatbelts in cars and a requirement to wear a crash helmet on a motorbike; but, since 1997, the pace of proscription has grown alarmingly.
On July 1, it became a criminal offence not merely to smoke a cigarette in a public place, but even in your own car if that is shared by others for travel to work or is used for work purposes or in a room in your own home if it doubles as a workplace.
It is now a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to smack your own child if a visible mark is left as a result. It is also an offence to mount a horse and ride off in pursuit of a fox. Since 1997, it has been a crime to possess any handgun, even a .22 calibre, for sporting purposes. An individual whose most aggressive instinct is to fire at a target can no longer do so in this country, even under licence. Those who wish to pursue their sport must practise abroad. Not only has the ban on handguns failed to reduce armed crime, it also means that when London hosts the 2012 Olympics, it will be staging at least three competitions for which the equipment will be illegal in this country, and special dispensation will be needed for shooters.
Since 2003, it has been illegal to own a horse, donkey or a Shetland pony without obtaining an ID card for the animal to ensure that it does not poison anyone who eats it. Yet, at the same time, a thief who steals goods worth £200 or less from a shop is no longer arrested and taken to the police station but handed a £80 fixed penalty notice, without any criminal record provided it is paid on time. So, you can go to prison for not getting a horse an ID card although it has been perfectly lawful to own an animal without State interference since our forebears painted their faces blue. But if you are a thief, expect a rap on the knuckles, apparently because it takes up too much police time to deal effectively with “low-grade” shoplifters.
Even teenage canoodling is now criminalised under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which forbids under-sixteens from engaging in any sexual activity, though police and prosecutors have been issued with guidance to ignore the law where it seems to them appropriate to do so. One solicitor told how he had to deal with the case of two teenagers arrested on suspicion of mutual indecent assault, following a complaint by social workers. The case was dropped, though the children had to spend time in custody late at night.
It is now an offence, punishable by a £5000 fine or six months in jail, to set off a firework after 11pm, an objectionable and antisocial thing to do, but one that has not been a crime until recently. Under new EU proposals, it will be an offence to deny that the genocide of the Jews in Europe or of the Tutsi in Rwanda happened. Now, it may be especially obnoxious and somewhat loopy to hold such views but here we really are entering the realms of thought crime.
The State has recently taken other powers, justified under cover of the war on terrorism but which in the wrong hands could prove sinister indeed. The Civil Contingencies Act, introduced in 2004, significantly extended the arbitrary powers of ministers, once again (and this is characteristic of many of these developments) with little public or parliamentary debate.
This measure would allow a minister to suspend sittings of Parliament if necessary and to declare a Bank Holiday to shut down businesses. Any panic or disorder could result in armed troops being placed on the streets. By executive decree, property could be destroyed or requisitioned, assemblies banned, the Armed Forces mobilised and special courts set up to deal with suspects if it were felt another atrocity was planned. Ministers would need to get post facto endorsement of Parliament that they were right to use them. As the Government correctly points out, there have always been powers – for example, the Defence of the Realm Act – that can be wielded by the executive in times of national emergency, such as an imminent invasion. But this new Act (which as its name implies is less about defending the country and more about dealing with contingencies whose severity will be for the state agencies to determine) does not make clear the precise circumstances in which the powers would be used, other than that they must be “grave and serious” and pose a threat to the security and economic wellbeing of the nation, or part of it. The potential for the misuse of this legislation by a malign administration in more unsettled times is enormous.
We know, too, that given powers to restrict individual freedom, the police will use them in ways that were not intended, or certainly not understood by Parliament when they were passed. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has given police carte blanche to stop anyone and to question them within certain designated areas; it is no longer a requirement that reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed must be present. It was under this provision that Walter Wolfgang, the octogenarian Labour activist, now elected to the party’s national executive, was held after being ejected from a conference for having the temerity to heckle Jack Straw when he was Foreign Secretary. Section 44 was also the reason given to a trio of bemused train-spotters detained and questioned by anti-terror police over what they were doing on a railway platform at a station through which politicians were expected to travel. This power has been used hundreds of times in ways that it should not have been, a fact acknowledged by both the Government and the police.
Another aspect of liberty is privacy. It may be hard to believe in a world where people crave televised notoriety that there are still many who cherish anonymity. In a truly free society it should be possible for someone who does not wish to come to the attention of the State to remain unnoticed provided that he breaks no laws. As AJP Taylor observed, before the First World War, the average citizen’s interaction with government was largely limited to paying tax.
“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the State, beyond the post office and the policeman,” Taylor wrote. “He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home.”
Of one thing he could be certain and that was the inviolability of his home. But recent research has uncovered 266 separate powers under which the police and other state agents can enter your home, often using force to do so. As Harry Snook, who conducted the study for the Centre for Policy Studies, said: “The growth in powers of entry should be seen in context as a symptom of the expanding role of the state in the lives of citizens.”
The proliferation of state databases, again very much a recent occurrence, has also rendered the concept of the private individual a thing of the past, and from the earliest age. From next year, the children’s database will go online, containing confidential details on every child in the land, including a record of school achievements, police and social services records and home address. Each child will be assigned an identifying number so that the authorities can access his or her records. This database, known as the Integrated Children’s System, is being developed ostensibly to curb child abuse, but it goes much farther than the Child Protection Register, which holds information about children considered to be “at risk”. One reason all children are to be included is to avoid “stigmatisation”. Astonishingly, this plan has attracted little public hostility, though the Joint Parliamentary Select Committee on Human Rights pointed out: “The information which may be included on the database about a child goes beyond purely objective facts about a child, such as name, address and date of birth. It includes information, such as contact details of persons providing services including health services, which may reveal very sensitive information, such as the fact that a 17-year-old girl has been referred to family planning services.”
It also includes “the existence of any cause for concern” about a child, “an extremely subjective and open-ended phrase which is almost bound to include very sensitive information.” How long will this information remain on the database? Will it be erased when the children turn 18 or will some youthful, even childish, transgression return to haunt them in adulthood? We do not know.
Meanwhile, the NHS is continuing to develop its database that will, for the first time, make all our medical records available electronically and centrally, rather than filed away in the surgeries of our family doctors. Medical records are, perhaps, the most sensitive that are kept and we are understandably reluctant that anyone should see them except those that must. Supporters of the idea say a centralised electronic system will stop records going missing (will it?) and ensure instant access to the records of patients if they are taken ill away from home.
But many GPs are distinctly uncomfortable with this plan and are concerned that comments they include on a patient’s record will fall into the wrong hands because the scheme allows for “summary information captured during a GP consultation (to) be automatically extracted and transferred to a nationally accessible spine”. Would it not be better – and more in keeping with the concept of privacy – if everyone could keep their own records on a health card rather than place them on a multibillion pound national database that will be vulnerable to hacking or crashing? There is, of course, one group that will always be able to access all the information with a click of a computer mouse: the State and its agencies.
Ministers always promise to keep the information separate, yet they have recently proposed that details held by one department should be available to another. Furthermore, given the welter of anecdotal evidence from those wrongly identified as miscreants by the Criminal Records Bureau or the innocent people whose details are now on the world’s largest criminal DNA database, does anyone trust that the information held about us will be accurate or consider that the technology is foolproof?
Link all these databases together and you have something that is awesomely intrusive, whatever the justification that can be advanced in favour of each. We are, almost without realising it, becoming the most snooped-on nation on earth, electronically tracked from cot to coffin, our most personal details to be stored forever, all in the name of modernisation, efficiency and, we are told, our own good.
But we have not yet got to the main event, the ultimate weapon of state control: the national identity system. This is something that the State qua State, as opposed to an individual minister or government, has long sought to introduce. When it comes to softening up the country for an ID card, the Home Office has been prepared to play a very long game. Officials have presented every home secretary for the past 50 years with a proposal for an ID scheme.
This is why we know that the current arguments in favour of an ID card are phony – because we have had the debate before, only last time the justification was different. When Michael Howard, as Home Secretary, proposed an ID scheme in 1994, among the reasons advanced were that it would bear down on benefit fraud and could be used to help cut under-age smoking, drinking and betting on the National Lottery. There was hardly a peep about international terrorism or illegal immigration because these were not the problems they are today.
The specious nature of this debate was exposed by Peter Lilley, the former minister who led the Cabinet revolt that resulted in the abandonment of the last ID scheme. “There is no policy that has been hawked, unsold, around Whitehall for longer than identity cards,” he said. “It was always brought to us as a solution looking for problems.”
Most of those home secretaries whose in-trays contained an ID card proposal sensibly dropped it straight into the bin, where it would be retrieved by a knowing official and replaced on the shelf to be brought down when the next incumbent arrived.
Mr Howard, always on the look-out for a piece of eye-catching populism and perhaps sensing there was less visceral public hostility to the idea than there once was, bought into it, though only halfway since his scheme would have been voluntary. However, he was beaten back by a Cabinet that found even this unacceptable.
Then along came a Labour government, David Blunkett and September 11, a toxic combination that the Home Office had been looking for. The dust was duly blown from the plan rejected by the Tories and resubmitted to the Blair administration, duly tweaked to reflect the latest justification for its disinterment with the added lure that played to New Labour’s modernistic fetishism: biometrics.
Suddenly, ID cards became a panacea and civil liberty considerations were simply brushed aside. Ministers decided, or rather they decreed, that the argument has been won “in principle”. Mr Blair emphasised the personal benefit of having a national identity system, as though it were being established solely for the benefit of the citizen, and merely facilitated by the State. No doubt he believed such baloney. He claimed that because most citizens provided personal information to private companies on a daily basis he did not think “the civil liberties argument carries much weight”.
Mr Blair added: “I am confident that in principle we have public support for this measure. People recognise the benefits of a scheme that will allow us to tackle identity fraud more effectively, bear down on illegal working, illegal immigration, abuse of our public services and help in the fight against organised crime and terrorism, and these are all strong arguments for moving forward with identity cards.”
Yet even to conduct the debate exclusively on their terms – the practicalities of an ID card system – is to find the arguments of ministers thoroughly unconvincing. Just because biometric technology is available does not justify fingerprinting the entire population. Nor does it necessarily give us a secure identity. However sophisticated the system, there will be false matches and false non-matches, and these increase in number the larger the database.
The innocent will be most inconvenienced – or even criminalised – by these inevitable glitches, accused of being someone they are not or not accepted as who they are. Crooks will simply find a way of attacking the system, and the temptation to do so will be all the greater precisely because people are being falsely led to believe that it will be foolproof.
Mr Blair’s assertions, helpfully provided by officials who had tried them out on his more sceptical predecessors, are all open to question. To begin with, the cost will be enormous. The Home Office originally estimated this to be around £3.1 billion, most of which would be spent in any case introducing biometric identifiers into passports. The latest official cost, though only to the Home Office, is £5.8bn. Experts at the London School of Economics put it closer to £20bn because the Government has not properly factored in the cost of supplying hundreds of thousands of biometric readers. Already, the Home Office has been forced to abandon plans to build the national identity database from scratch on the grounds of cost and the system will, instead, piggyback off existing databases.
An ID system will do little to deter illegal immigration since the only people who will not have to register are foreign nationals in the country for three months or less. How will we know whether they are overstaying if it is not mandatory to carry the card, something the Act specifically rules out?
Nor will it curb social security fraud because only a tiny proportion of fraud relies on false identity; most is to do with people claiming false eligibility for payments, for instance while working in the black economy.
It will have little impact on terrorism. Determined bombers, especially if they do not need to have an ID card when they are in the country and do not have to show one in any case, will not be prevented from carrying out their activities.
And crime? The police will have no greater powers than now to demand that an individual identify himself and, since no one will have to carry and produce a card when asked to, this seems to be of limited usefulness. Any coherent argument for a compulsory ID card must rely on it being mandatory to carry one; but this is not what ministers are proposing, because they know that a large number of law-abiding people will object strongly to being required to produce it.
It is often said by expats living abroad that they carry ID cards and it does not cause them any problems. About 100 countries have compulsory ID cards, including Germany, Belgium and Spain. Some, such as Australia, Canada, the US and New Zealand, have no ID cards at all. Others, such as France, Italy and Austria, have voluntary schemes under which it is not compulsory to carry a card at all times. Japan has ID cards for foreigners.
In none of the countries where the ID card exists can they be said to “work” if that means prevent illegal immigration – which, among European countries, is highest in Spain and Italy – or terrorism, which was inflicted upon the commuters of Madrid despite the identity scheme there. People in countries where ID cards are long-standing are, however, inured to their possession and to the requirement to show them when requested by the police.
So what’s the difference here? Why the fuss? Because it is not the card that is the issue; it is the database. For too long, this has been a debate about carrying a card, which most people feel comfortable with because they already have plenty of them. But the key to this system is the information held on the national identity register.
This is not an exercise in giving people the chance to protect their identity, but in gathering information about the population and keeping it on a database for use by state agencies. Ministers dismiss this concern, saying that banks, insurance companies and supermarkets already keep vast amounts of personal detail about us all with few obvious controls. The fundamental difference is that it is voluntary to have a supermarket loyalty card or a bank account; and they do not all link up, even if some do.
The identity database, however, will be a true behemoth of personal information. This was not originally the case. When this scheme was first mooted and pushed through a reluctant Cabinet by Mr Blunkett, with Mr Blair’s backing, we were told that only basic details would be gathered, and Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, repeated these assurances when the Act was going through Parliament in 2006. But it depends what you mean by basic. The Bill contains powers for 51 different classes of information to be put into the database and to impose fines if we do not keep the details up to date, for instance when we change address or name by marriage.
It is not a basic information database that is being constructed but a comprehensive index on each and every one of us, who will thereafter be issued with a personal identity number. If you have no objection to this on civil liberty grounds, and many do not, there are practical reasons for being concerned. It is likely, for instance, that the ID database will reinforce, rather than expose, false identities since once the details have been entered, no one will challenge the bona fides of their possessor. It may stop the accumulation of multiple identities, but not of a false one.
What is just as likely to happen, however, is that the database will reject perfectly law-abiding people because the technology has difficulties with certain biometrics, such as brown eyes or bald heads. If this happens, to the annoyance of potentially hundreds of thousands of people who will have paid for the privilege of being denied access to services to which they are entitled, it will not be long before it is proposed to capture everyone’s DNA to reduce the chance of false matches.
There are people who remember carrying the old wartime ID cards, scrapped in 1952, and cannot see what all the fuss is about. It is about the database, not the card. This is not about protecting our identities but about placing them at the disposal of the State and sundry other organisations that will have access to them. There has never been so grandiose a scheme as this anywhere in the world.
This would be bad enough if the Government was building its identity database from scratch as was promised when the legislation was going through Parliament. But ministers recently dropped this plan because it would cost too much. Instead, the database will be linked to existing Whitehall computer networks. Instead of being input on to a separate database, biometrics such as finger prints will be stored on an existing system in the Home Office used for asylum seekers. Biographical information will be held on a National Insurance database in the Department for Work and Pensions. A third database at the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will hold administrative details related to the issue and use of the ID cards.
When Mr Blunkett announced the ID scheme in 2002, he said: “We’ve got to build a clean identity database from scratch. We can’t use the national insurance numbers because there are 20 million more national insurance numbers than there are people in the country.”
This apparently essential requirement has now been dumped after the legislation has gone through Parliament. So, too, has an earlier plan to make iris prints one of the biometric identifiers for the system.
Even if you do not like the idea of an ID scheme, if we are going to have one you at least want it to be secure. The most secure biometric is the iris print, though even this is by no means foolproof. A report drawn up for the Home Office by the National Physical Laboratory – Feasibility Study on the Use of Biometrics in an Entitlement Scheme – said that in order to be remotely secure, prints should be taken from all ten fingers and thumbs and from both irises.
Even then, “the practicalities of deploying either iris or fingerprint recognition in such a scheme are far from straightforward”. It adds: “Such a system would be a ground-breaking deployment for this kind of biometric application. Not only would it be one of the largest deployments to date, but aspects of its performance would be far more demanding than those of similarly sized systems.”
The study points out that however sophisticated the system, there will be false matches and false non-matches, which increase the larger the database, and will mean that innocent people will face accusations of fraud. One person in 10,000, said the study, does not have an iris that can be used for identity purposes because of a range of inherited conditions; others have missing fingers or scarring that makes fingerprinting impossible. Many people are housebound, so would not be able to attend the enrolment. They can expect a visit from squads of mobile enrollers with portable devices.
The largest trial for iris recognition was conducted among 60,000 returning refugees to Afghanistan. We have 50 million people over 16. Of the biometric systems, iris recognition is probably the most accurate form of technology in preventing false matches. But it has a high rate, probably one in 100, of false non-matches where the system simply fails to pick up a person’s record. A report by Privacy International said that all biometrics have been successfully spoofed or attacked and the temptation to do so is greater if people are led to believe that the system is virtually foolproof when it isn’t. The campaigning group Justice said: “It is clear that current fingerprint technology is not only susceptible to attack but there are also numerous accuracy and long-term implementation issues that need to be thoroughly investigated before a large-scale fingerprint identification system could be successfully introduced.”
So we are all being asked to subscribe to an identity system that is insecure and will rarely fulfil the grand ambitions that ministers claim for it. Worse than that, it is increasingly being done on the cheap because the vast cost of the enterprise is gradually sinking it. The great Ciceronian question springs to mind here: cui bono? Who on earth benefits from such a system? The Government would have us believe it is the individual, but it is not. Only the State benefits from having details on everybody and it is not even able to produce the quid pro quo that make restrictions of liberty worthwhile, which is to enhance our security and safety, since neither the cards nor the database will do either.
There is, then, to be a new offence to add to the myriad created over the past decade: simply to exist. Once the Identity Card scheme is introduced, everyone renewing a passport will be issued with a compulsory ID document and their details entered on a national register. Failure to register will mean a £2,500 fine. For the first time since the Domesday Book, we will be required to inform the State when we move house on pain of a £1,000 fine if we do not.
It is this extension of State control through the unfettered and unthinking deployment of modern surveillance technology and databases for which the Blair years will most be remembered. Our children, millions of whom are now routinely fingerprinted without parental consent, will be perplexed as to why their forebears came so easily and with so little public debate to allow the State to manipulate their lives.
To make any of these points is to invite opprobrium from Government ministers, who not only dispute the thesis but question the motives and the sanity of its promulgators. Before his unceremonious defenestration from the Home Office last year, Charles Clarke loosed off a broadside against Porter, Simon Carr of The Independent and others for what he called “a dangerous poison now slipping into some parts of the media view of the world.”
He added: “In the absence of many of the genuinely dangerous and evil totalitarian dictatorships to fight – since they’ve gone – the media has steadily rhetorically transferred to some of the existing democracies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, some of the characteristics of those dictatorships.”
But this was a classic Aunt Sally speech. Nobody sensible has called the British State totalitarian, nor compared it with Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. The true benchmark for comparison is not Europe under Fascism or Communism but Britain as the doughty champion of individual freedoms that it once was; it this instinct that has been eviscerated.
Mr Clarke said those who denounce the Government for its illiberalism are fantasists who do not understand “the balance of powers which currently exists in our society, whether legal or political.” But as was demonstrated by the list of new powers and crimes detailed earlier, it is the Government that has tilted this balance quite deliberately – in some cases properly, in others not – both to limit the rights of the accused before the courts and to be better placed to exercise greater control over the citizen. There can be no other explanation for what has happened.
So why do we not care more? We have, apparently, been convinced by the Government that the liberties we once cherished are worth trading in to make us feel more secure. According to the latest British Social Attitudes Survey, there has been a marked decline in the “British public’s traditionally strong commitment to civil liberties”. More people than ever are prepared to see freedoms that used to be taken for granted, such as free speech and the right to protest, dispensed with. A large majority sees some erosions of liberty as “a price worth paying” to combat terrorism.
The survey even uncovered dwindling support for the fundamental principle of the criminal justice system, the presumption of innocence. People were asked whether they regarded an innocent person being convicted as a worse outcome to a trial than a guilty individual walking free. Whereas 20 years ago, nearly 70 per cent said they would be more perturbed to learn that an innocent person had been convicted, that has now fallen to 52 per cent.
We have become inured to restrictions on liberty that few would have tolerated outside wartime a generation or two ago.
But are those of us who are deeply concerned about the illiberal tendencies of recent years guilty of hankering after a time that never existed, of perpetuating a false mythology around the notion of “ancient liberties” for which we do no really care much?
Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law at the LSE, one of the compilers of the British Social Attitudes Survey, says liberal values peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, since when they have been assailed by “folk devils and moral panics”.
He adds: “I am convinced that our society can recover its commitment to civil liberties before the decline mapped in our survey goes very much farther. I also believe that most politicians and judges are, in principle, with us on this, including those holding high office at the present time. But nothing should be taken for granted. The idea of political liberty needs to be argued afresh for generations unfamiliar with what it means to struggle for freedom: it is too good an idea to let go without a fight.”
There are some who have fought this fight before, such as Clarence Willcock. He is an unsung English hero who would have described himself as an “ordinary man”. No statues are erected in his honour nor any roads renamed after him, though there is a plaque to his memory in the National Liberal Club in London.
On December 7 1950, Mr Willcock, 54, the manager of a dry cleaning firm, was ordered to produce his ID card by a police officer and declined to do so. He argued that since the emergency for which ID cards had been introduced in the first place no longer existed, it was wrong for the agencies of the State to continue using the power. The case went from court to court, each time finding against him on the grounds that the statute remained in force and could only be reversed by an Order in Council.
Lord Goddard, the Lord Chief Justice, reluctantly concluded that he had no choice other than to uphold the conviction but said: “To use Acts of Parliament passed for particular purposes in wartime when the war is a thing of the past tends to turn law-abiding citizens into lawbreakers.” Lord Goddard added: “In this country we have always prided ourselves on the good feeling which exists between the police and the public and such action tends to make people resentful of the acts of the police and inclines them to obstruct the police instead of assisting them.”
On regaining power in October 1951, Winston Churchill’s Conservative government repealed the National Registration Act and abolished the cards.
When the ID card scheme and its attendant database comes into being either next year or the year after, many thousands of people, perhaps many more, will refuse to register. We need to invoke the memory and spirit of people such as Willcock if we are to restore the proper balance between state control and individual liberty.
Philip Johnston is home affairs editor and assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph
Notes
1. ‘’Britain’s Liberties: The Great Debate’’ Observer April 23, 2006.
2. BBC Radio Four Today programme interview with John Humphrys. July 7, 2004.
3. John Milton: The Areopagitica. June 16th, 1643.
4. ‘’Why was I arrested for holding a memorial ceremony?’’ The Daily Telegraph, Feb 6, 2006.
5. ‘’Police warn author over gay comments’’ The Daily Telegraph, Dec 10, 2005.
6. Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Clause 132.
7. AV Dicey: An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885).
8. Letters to the Editor: ‘’Teenagers could be arrested just for kissing’’ The Daily Telegraph, Oct 8, 2004
9. ‘Heckler, 82, who dared called Straw a liar is held under terrorist law’’ The Daily Telegraph, Sept 30, 2005.
_________________
The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan. |
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
