ID cards: paranoia or well-founded fear?

Surveillance cameras, credit checks, bank and credit card statements, supermarket loyalty cards, annual appraisals, HR records, school reports, the council poking through your rubbish bags to see if you’re recycling stuff, the nosy neighbour peeking from behind net curtains. Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

Don’t worry: you are not alone. Around 11 million others, according to campaigning group NO2ID, are about to join you as the Big Brother state takes another giant lurch forward.

We are talking here about ID cards, along with DNA databases, fingerprinting and all the other information about you that, defenders of ID cards say, you shouldn’t mind the government holding - unless you have something to hide. After all, ID cards are the solution to global terrorism, child abuse, the mistreatment of vulnerable adults and every other social ill you can imagine. Who can argue with that?

‘We can!’ chorus the campaigners against ID cards. They go on to list the government’s abysmal record for losing confidential data; once it has its ID database, what’s to stop it losing that, too? The 9/11 hijackers and the Madrid bombers, they add, had ID cards, but the authorities didn’t manage to stop them. It’s all a plot, a conspiracy to control our every waking moment and restrict our civil liberties, human rights and dignity as free human beings.

Those are the well-rehearsed battlelines, but now NO2ID has thrown a new ingredient into the conspiracy theorists’ stew. It’s called the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) and it may, NO2ID claims, soon be keeping tabs on around 11 million workers and volunteers who spend time – or are applying to spend time - with children and vulnerable adults. These workers and volunteers include, to pick some at random, nurses, doctors, gardeners in care homes, carpark attendants at hospitals, parents running their child’s football team, junior tennis coaches, Brown Owl of the local Brownies, prison officers and school dinner ladies.

Who are the ISA? The ISA arose from recommendations made by Sir Michael Bichard in his inquiry into the Soham murders, when a suspected sex offender was able to find employment in a school and go on to kill two children despite the usual Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks being carried out. The ISA’s role, therefore, is to enhance CRB checks so as to stop another Soham tragedy.

It aims to achieve this, according to the ISA website, by cutting red tape and ensuring all relevant bodies – such as the police, social and probation services – share information. Workers and volunteers must register with the ISA and it is now a criminal offence even to apply to work or volunteer with vulnerable groups if you have already been barred from doing so.

This is all entirely laudable and above board and all right-thinking people must wish them success in their endeavour. There is not a squeak on the website about sinister government plans to control our lives with intrusive data collection and retention.

Phil Booth, national coordinator of NO2ID, says: ‘That’s where you’re wrong. The only way the ISA can possibly keep tabs on 11 million people is to have the workers and volunteers fingerprinted and made to obtain a national ID card. This is entirely consistent with the various forms of coercion strategy they [the Home Office] have been working on to create so-called volunteers for ID cards.’

Is this paranoia or well-founded fear? I would tell you my opinion, except you just never know who might be listening.