Only the almost innocent need fear a national ID card
COMMENTFrank Devine
THE federal budget allocated $1.1 billion for the introduction of a national identification card. Having reached an age when all the crimes I'm likely to commit have already caught up with me, I have no reason to fear such a card.
On the other hand, I don't think I need one. Why is the Government forcing it on me?
The photo-and-signature ID card - with further information, such as address, date of birth, names of dependants, details of allergies and other medical conditions, contained on an embedded microchip - is being promoted as no more than an access document, providing more efficient, fraud-proof delivery of government benefits.
But there is a euphemistic slipperiness about the access label that invites comparison with the Hawke government's 1987 use of the Australia card, complete with gold and blue colours to convince us that it was a patriotic duty to accept its national ID plan.
Prime Minister Howard's assurance that the access card won't be compulsory sounds very, very slippery.
Without the card, we'll be barred from, among other government services, Medicare and pharmaceutical subsidies. How much more compulsion do you need?
Moreover, there's little doubt this micro-chipped super card would soon supplant driver's licences, credit cards and so on as the requirement of those who want to identify us. With failure to produce the super card probably counting as suspicious conduct, of course we'd have to carry it all the time.
The slipperiness in selling the super card naturally makes one look for hidden intent. Peter Costello implied its existence when, on the ABC's The World Today program in March, he said the access card would be more acceptable than Hawke's Australia card because the war on terrorism had "changed Australia's attitude to security measures". Maybe there's a good argument for national ID cards to secure us against terrorism. If so, let's hear it. Justification is not easily discernible. The London bombers of last year possessed identifying documents by right. Since the US began clamping down on illegal immigrants, it has discovered in circulation hundreds of thousands of stolen or forged social security cards, the ID carried by practically every American.
Mark Steyn recalled recently in the Chicago Sun-Times that terrorists who crashed a hijacked passenger jet into the Pentagon in 2001 had bought identification papers for a fistful of dollars from a professional ID trafficker operating in a Boston airport car park.
My wallet, in addition to bulging with cash, contains two credit cards, an ATM card, a Medicare card, private insurance card, a library card and my driver's licence. All these documents are backed by information I have chosen to divulge to the issuers.
The Boston airport dealer would have his work cut out matching such a collection. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock is reported to have warned cabinet that the super card may help bad guys by giving them only one item to forge or steal.
What's my compensation for risking a mugging? Improvement to the administrative efficiency of a few government agencies? Well short of an offer I can't refuse, as well as being akin to cracking cashew nuts with a bulldozer.
The only ID I've been compelled to carry was a foreign resident's permit when I lived in Japan in the 1960s. It was non-photographic - maybe Westerners all look alike - and gave me no problem until I lost it.
To get a replacement, I was required to report to a police station and be interviewed. My cop was a creep who enjoyed having a resentful foreigner under his thumb. The interview lasted more than an hour and the questions - where I went to school, my father's occupation, my parents' ethnic origins, my religion, my employment history, other countries I'd lived in - were clearly intended for somebody's dossier. The dossier wasn't used for any purpose that I'm aware of, but its compilation caused the only disgruntlement I've ever felt with the hospitable Japanese and gave me an aversion to carrying identification documents at somebody else's command.
One of the most influential arguments against the Australia card was made in a paper by Geoffrey Walker, professor of law at the University of Queensland, published by the Centre for Independent Studies.
Many of Walker's general points apply to the so-called access card. To summarise: In a free society the people should scrutinise the government, not the other way around. A super access card will, effectively, put people under surveillance by acting as a guide to information from other databases. When it's established, the card's functions will almost certainly be expanded. Once personal information is on file, decision-making civil servants take a career risk by not consulting it. ID cards in other countries have not inhibited the depredations of serious wrong-doers.
Walker's opinion: "Only the innocent and relatively innocent have anything to fear."
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