Are ID cards in Britain the road to 1984?
Last month the first of seven centers due to issue ID cards for all non-EU nationals opened for business. Voluntary ID cards will be available to young people from early 2010 and to the rest of the country by the end of the year. In 2010 anyone renewing their passport will be required to provide biometric information and will automatically be entered onto the National Identity Register (NIR). By 2017 the Home Office intends that ID cards be compulsory for all citizens. Those who refuse will be fined up to £2,500.
“We have reached the point almost of paranoia about civil liberties,” was the conclusion of Times columnist David Aaronovitch with regard to the debate surrounding the introduction of these cards in the UK. Aaronovitch insists there is nothing Nineteen Eighty-Four about plans for all citizens to carry compulsory biometric identification, and for this information to be stored on a centralized government database. Hysterical left-wing comparisons to the novel are ridiculous, he insists; the Big Brother state is nothing more than “a paranoid fantasy.”
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, is one such paranoid fantasist, saying of the government’s plans to extend the capacity of the database that, “1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a blueprint.” He can be soothed, then, as Winston Smith was, by Aaronovitch’s favorite platitude: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
