The Howard government is using the recent terrorist bombings in London as a pretext to reintroduce the idea of a national identity card. If this idea became reality, it would spell the death of civil liberties in Australia.
Coalition and Labor politicians alike claim that a national ID
card would help prevent terrorist attacks in Australia. This is a complete furphy — knowing who someone is and knowing their intentions are two totally different things.
The only research conducted on the relationship between
ID cards and terrorism has found no evidence of a connection between the cards and successful anti-terrorism measures. Of the 25 countries that have been most adversely affected by terrorism since 1986, 80% have national ID cards.
While an ID card won't prevent terrorist attacks, the national
identity database that would be required to make the card work would greatly increase governments' information about, and control over, our lives.
Britain's ID card legislation offers a glimpse of what we could be in for if the proposal for an Australian ID card goes ahead. The identity database includes more than 50 categories of information that would be required from every person, including: name, previous names or aliases, date and place of
birth, address and previous addresses, times of residency at these addresses, residential status and previous residential statuses, photograph, fingerprints, other biometrics (e.g. iris recognition), signature, nationality, entitlement to remain in Britain, passport numbers, work permit
numbers and driver's licence.
Information about an individual's religion and/or political affiliations could easily be added, making it much easier
for the state to target particular groups and communities for "special treatment". Australia's history contains many instances of such abuses of personal information, including the blacklisting of Communist Party members and supporters from any sort of waged work in the 1940s and '50s.
Under the British bill, police organisations, security services, the tax department, the Department for Work and Pensions and customs and excise can access the database. Further, the massive data-matching power of computers and the prevalence of hacking makes the possibility of individuals being profiled without their knowledge or consent very real.
To add insult to injury, the London School of Economics has estimated that the cost of the card would be £400 for 10 years — a cost that would be borne by cardholders themselves.
In New Zealand, Canada, Scotland and the United States, national ID card schemes have been decisively rejected by the
public. When the Hawke Labor government tried to introduce the "Australia Card" in 1987, it was defeated by big public protests. We need to do that again.
The Socialist Alliance demands that the federal Coalition government, in the interests of protecting the civil liberties of every person in Australia, withdraw its proposal for a national identity card; calls on the federal government to guarantee that the new Medicare card, to be distributed to 11 million Australians next year, will not be used to introduce a national identity card through the back door; calls on the federal Labor opposition and all state Labor governments
to actively oppose the introduction of a national identity card in any form; and encourages all ALP members to actively campaign against it within their party.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 10, 2005.
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