Proposals to introduce a national identity card in the UK have always generated hot debate. Do developments in information technology make any difference to the arguments for and against a national identity card?

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Nareshsing Seehakoo 2135089

Proposals to introduce a national identity card in the UK have always generated hot debate. Do developments in information technology make any difference to the arguments for and against a national identity card?

It is an undeniable fact that each time the issue of introducing the National Identity card in the United Kingdom has been raised, it has always been subject to great concern to many people and has provoked a hot debate. To understand the debate it is worth looking back at the history. There have been identity card systems in the UK during both World Wars. The scheme introduced at the outbreak of World War II was withdrawn in 1952; it has required people to produce their identity card on demand by the police, and this feature was eventually judged inappropriate in the peacetime post-war Britain. They were said to be unreliable in proving identity and damaged the

relationship between the public and the police. But the whole idea of introducing National Identity card eventually relates to the issue of privacy, or should we say, anonymity. Before actually considering the effects of information technology on the said debate, it is worth asking ourselves what privacy actually is. Privacy is actually a wide subject area but fundamentally it is at the foundation or the basis of the human rights. It englobes a number of aspects but it entails restrictions on a wide range of activities which have got to do with personal information namely collection, retention, use and disclosure. In Germany, this principle is known as  “self-information determination”.

“Privacy may subsume what is implied by confidentiality, but it is a much broader concept involving the right to be free from intrusions, the right to remain anonymous, and the right to control the circulation of information about oneself.

Privacy involves the right to control one’s control on one’s personal information and the ability to determine whether and how that information should be obtained and used.” Ann Cavoukian

        

As with any controversial issue, there are the proponents of the cause, those who support the idea because they think it could reduce crime as a whole, and we have the opponents who believe that the cards would cut back on their personal freedom. In view of the proposed introduction of the card, the government has called for a national debate to see what the public thinks and a consultation paper has even been published setting out the options and posing many of the questions that will be in people’s mind. But the ‘rules’ have changed from what they were fifty years ago and the debate must now take into consideration a number of factors, among which is information technology and its use in our present society. Nothing epitomizes modern life better than computers. They have infiltrated every aspect of our lives, for the better or the worse. Far gone are the days when computers were solely used for word processing or performing simple calculations. They are now used for numerous and diverse applications from running a farm, diagnosing a disease, designing to launching a space vehicle. They are also evolving into fields such as artificial intelligence and biometrics just to mention a few. But what must be pointed out as a major leap forward in the development of computer technology is that computers are not used on a stand-alone basis, but mainly used within networks, that is connected to each other, which adds to their capabilities. The advances made in storage media and devices and their competitive prices has also made possible the use of huge databases connected to each other, which once again adds to the functionality of the computer. Not to be forgotten is also the ever-increasing speed at which computers work providing fast processing of transactions.

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Let us now consider the proponents of the introduction of the ID card and find out about the arguments put forward by the latter. The first simplistic argument which came forward was that since the citizens of eleven countries out of the fifteen nations of the European Union use ID cards as part of everyday life, why not the UK, since people already carry a wallet or purse full of cards. One of the main proponent here in the UK is the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who spoke of a card “which would allow people to prove their identity ...

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