1 August 2003
Government
paves way for EU Identity cards
Marc
Glendening wants to know why the British government is colluding with
an EU-inspired
plot to attack civil liberties.
"No
common law country in the world has ever accepted the idea of a peace-time
identity cards" commented Privacy International, following David
Blunkett's recent announcement that the government will require us to
pay for and produce if required what the government euphemistically
prefers to call an 'entitlement' card.
Civil liberties campaigners should surely not be surprised by such announcements.
Britain under Tony Blair's administration, as was the case under its
Tory predecessor, has been busy dismantling the key traditional foundations
of our once liberal, common law criminal justice system. The introduction
of ID-cards will represent a reversal of the relationship we once assumed
we had with the authorities, whereby the onus was on them to justify
why we should be inconvenienced, detained and ultimately deprived of
liberty.
Britain will be taking a further step in the direction of most other
European countries that have operated according to a quite different
legal logic. And here lies a big clue as to why the government is so
keen, despite the political controversy, risk of mass civil disobedience
and enormous cost involved, to introduce ID-cards: They are part of
the EU's drive to create what the European Commission in its 1997 criminal
justice blueprint referred to as a "unified legal space".
This envisaged the creation of an EU category of crimes, the phasing
out of trial by jury and habeas corpus.
"Ministers
welcomed co-operation
between member states and the
Commission in order to assess the
feasibility and support research
on cross-border usage of emerging
solutions for identification."
Conclusions: EU 'eGovernment'
conference - June 2003
No
doubt, the microchip containing personal information that will be inserted
in the card I will be allocated will include reference to advanced Eurosceptic
paranoia - anybody who identifies the hidden hand of Brussels behind
so many disturbing developments apparently initiated by our government
tends to get branded delusional. But let us look at the evidence before
mentally assigning me secure accommodation with David Icke.
The Commission in December 1999 established the eEurope Initiative.
It states its objective as being "accelerating and harmonising
the development and use of smart cards across Europe, the production
of a set of common specifications". Jurgen Nehls of eEurope has
suggested that the driving licence should evolve into a full Euro ID-card
and officials from the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency have participated
in the work of the Porvoo e-ID Group. This is one of 65 bodies working
for this objective receiving Commission funding through the Information
Society Technologies Programme at a cost of 180 million euros. At an
EU summit held in Lisbon in April 2000 the member states collectively
signed up to the 'eEurope Smart Cards Charter'. In October 2001 the
EU Police Chiefs Task Force added their support to the project by urging
that 'the EU should speed up the universal adoption of ID cards'.
Last month the Italian presidency of the EU hosted an 'eGovernment'
conference. Andrew Pinder of the UK cabinet office's e-Envoy unit was
the lead speaker at the session on making the cards 'interoperable'
across Europe. The conference's closing statement noted that "Ministers
welcomed co-operation between member states and the Commission in order
to assess the feasibility and support research on cross-border usage
of emerging solutions for identification."
"The
European standard to which the
driving licence/entitlement card
would need to conform does not allow
for national symbols, only the
European 'Circle of Stars'."
Home
Office 'Frequently Asked Questions' on Entitlement/Identity cards
The
EU's motivation in this area is three-fold. First, and self-evidently,
Euro ID/smart cards are seen as contributions to state building. The
Commission attaches great significance to the cultural, symbolic, as
well as legal, value of certain policy initiatives. eEurope affirms
that the card it is promoting is a "state of mind" as well
as an actual programme. The Home Office's own "Frequently Asked
Questions" about the entitlement card, available on its website,
confirms that it is thinking of basing its card on the driving licence
in which case it would have to conform to existing EU law which "does
not allow for national symbols, only the European circle of stars".
Second, Euro ID-cards are the function of the creation of a common borders
and asylum policy. They are thought to be a useful tool in the fight
against illegal immigration and related criminality. David Blunkett,
speaking in the House of Commons on July 3rd, said Britain had no choice
but to go down this road "because, as part of the Schengen Information
System, the rest of the European Union will be introducing new biometric
recognition for identification."
The last major motivation is to re-create at the Pan-European level
the authoritarian relationship that exists between citizen and state
in most other EU member countries. A pre-modern, neo-feudal system of
government is being established in which the disparity in power between
ordinary Europeans and their political masters is getting ever greater.
None of the self-denying ordinances that have traditionally characterised
common law based societies apply in the emerging EU state.
"the
EU should speed up the
universal adoption of ID cards"
EU Police Chiefs Task Force, October 2001
So,
while we will be required to account for our presence at any one moment
and could have our movements and lifestyles tracked through the introduction
of ID-cards, Brussels has been busy granting Commissioners, members
of its own police force Europol, and other officials immunity from criminal
prosecution. This issue also relates to another matter with civil liberties
connotations.
In July 2002 the Council of Ministers instructed police and security
services to place on the Schengen Information Service database suspected
political "troublemakers" with a view to preventing them from
leaving their home countries and attending protests directed at EU summits,
as well as "sports, cultural, political or social events".
The advent of ID-cards would enable police officers to block the exits
to meetings considered to be subversive and to oblige those leaving
to identify themselves, so resulting in their inclusion on the database.
Given that the UK government is co-operating with this project of its
own volition the main moral responsibility for introducing this illiberal
measure lies with Tony Blair's cabinet, not Brussels. However, the fact
that there is a clear EU agenda here should be additionally disturbing
to civil libertarians. If a Pan-European ID card system is put in place
it is difficult to imagine Brussels allowing a future UK government
that is more enlightened on this (and other criminal justice) issues
to reverse it. The proposed EU constitution contains some highly elastic
articles of "loyal co-operation" that could potentially enable
the European Court of Justice to bring a dissident national administration
to heel.
The introduction of ID cards will represent a crossing of the legal
rubicon. It will confirm that the balance between the individual and
the state has further shifted in an authoritarian direction. It will
also signify that we, collectively as a country, have moved deeper into
an EU jurisdiction in which, to quote Tony Bunyan of Statewatch, the
human rights group that monitors Brussels, "even traditional and
often ineffective, liberal democratic means of control, scrutiny and
accountability of state agencies and practices are not in place nor
is there any political will to introduce them."
-
Marc Glendening is campaign director of the Democracy Movement
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