Jackie Danicki

I grow weary of people comparing compulsory state ID cards to supermarket loyalty cards - too weary, in fact, to take the conversation much further with such people. JP Rangaswami sums up the differences in a very tidy way:

I don’t have to have a passport. But there are things I can’t do if I don’t have one.
I don’t have to have a driver’s licence.
I don’t have to have a credit card.
I don’t have to have a cellphone.

Finding out that I have to have some tags and tokens to identify myself for different actions is OK.

Working out that some of these are single-use and some of them are near-permanent is also OK.

Connecting that thing to things I do is also OK. Provided I am in charge what happens to the info.

So it’s not the ID card that I have the problem with, it is actually the compulsory bit and the imposition bit. And the question of who owns the behaviour and pattern info that can be associated with the card.

I did some digging this afternoon for an old post of Natalie Solent’s from Samizdata, which for some reason I had a lot of trouble finding a year or so ago when I really wanted it. I’ve Furled it, but it’s worth linking here, too: Many law-abiding people do have something to hide when it comes to identity.

Filed under: Happiness, Life, People I Know, Politics, Survival, The State Is Not Your Friend