Clarifying our position against ID Cards and the National Identity Register

9th April 2010 11:21 | by Andrew Robinson

Following the publication of the Pirate Party UK's manifesto, we have been accused of supporting ID cards and the government's intrusive, dangerous and worryingly flawed National Identity Register. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

ID Cards
To put the record straight, our manifesto clearly states "We strongly oppose compulsory ID cards, and pledge that we will never introduce them." Some political opponents have tried to twist our use of the world 'compulsory' to imply that we want to introduce non-compulsory ID cards, but this simply isn't the case. Many different voluntary ID cards already exist and are very useful, for example when borrowing a library book, or proving to a foreign hospital that the NHS will cover your medical expenses. The usefulness and unintrusiveness of these voluntry cards is the reason we do not propose a knee-jerk blanket banning of current, non-compulsory, cards that can be used to prove identity.

The National Identity Register
We strongly oppose the current plans for a National Identity Register that contains fingerprint, biometric and personal data. We clearly state in our manifesto that "The proposed National Identity Register will be regulated so that it can only contain trivial information". This would result in a very different database to the all-inclusive one currently proposed, as it would remove biometric data, fingerprints, and private information from the database. 

Why regulate rather than destroy?
We recognise that there are times when it is sensible for government departments to share trivial information, for example many young people in this country are not currently eligible to vote in the general election because trivial information held by the department of education about their age is not connected to the register of electors. We believe that a minimal database of trivial information would be a good way to cut government waste and duplication, and that is why we plan to strongly regulate rather than blindly prohibit the sharing of trivial information by government departments. Arbitrarily prohibiting any form of central database would simpy mean that every government department would create their own database, vastly multiplying the chance of leaks, vastly multiplying the chance of inaccuracy, vastly multiplying the work needed by the public and government to correct mistakes or make changes and of course vastly multiplying the costs. 

The need for regulation of all government databases
Government databases urgently need much tighter controls. Our manifesto pledges to introduce "a new right to compensation for people affected by government data loss" and "a new right to apply to a court for compensation where data protection laws have been broken." We believe that a strictly regulated set of government databases, limited in scope by law and safeguarded by strong legal rights rather than by an information commissioner who can choose not to act on your behalf, is the best way forward.

Our policies would replace the proposed Orwellian nightmare version of the National Identity Register with something that is well regulated, trivial and ultimately harmless. While while the exact wording of our policies might not match that found in the No2ID pledge, they fit perfectly with other similar campaigns such as section 2 of the Power 2010 pledge. We hope this statement makes it clear that we are simply proposing a slightly different and highly practical solution to achieving the same aim.
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11 comments

Apr 09 2010 11:04 by cowbutt
The objection remains that PPUK is not pledging to dismantle the National ID card and Register if a prior government has already established it. If it exists, there there remains a strong risk that it will become a defacto compulsory ID system, e.g. for high value transactions such as banking. As far as I'm aware, as a member, No2ID has no objection to *non-national* voluntary ID cards (e.g. library passes, employer passes, season ticket photocards), so PPUK's comment about "knee-jerk blanket banning of current, non-compulsory, cards" is a strawman.

Regarding the Register, there is no pledge that the 'trivial information' will not include shared keys between databases, which would facilitate linking individuals' records between those databases and using that to derive less-than-trivial information. The right to compensation for abuses and negligence is welcome, but I would rather have prophylactic measures in place to guard against such failures.
Apr 09 2010 01:04 by graphiclunarkid
The policy is disingenuous. It supports decentralised, single-purpose, user-controlled identification and authorisation mechanisms, such as library cards and PASS cards, while advocating an all-purpose, centralised, state-controlled database for official use.

It's wrong to assert that an all-purpose, centralised and widely accessible database is more secure than a number of separate, special-to-type, limited-scope databases with restricted access. Don't be tempted down the road of linking together data sets for convenience, official or otherwise. That's how the Identity Cards Act was born.

If you want a "single source of truth" for information about citizens, put it under citizen control. Give them the means to publish information about themselves, and let them define the purposes for which each datum can be used, then have Government systems syndicate those data where the citizen permits them to do so. The key to this is control. Citizen control is good. Government control is bad. We should be trying to enable citizens to manage their own information not finding ways to do it for them.

Ultimately, I find your policy authoritarian - though much less so than Labour's - and lacking in vision.
Apr 09 2010 04:04 by Andy_R
Of course the PPUK would dismantle the National ID card if it was already in place, and of course we would get rid of all the biometric and non-trivial data in the register, that's what our policy that says "We strongly oppose compulsory ID cards" implies. We haven't explicitly pledged this in the manifesto, because a manifesto that went into every possible subdivision and what-if situation would be practically unreadable. Our manifesto doesn't go into the details of how shared keys would or would not be implemented, or exactly who gets access for the same reason.

The problem here is that you are expecting us to be evil, and you are both looking for ways for us to weasel our of the broad principles in our manifesto. The Pirate Party isn't out to get you. Of course citizen control is good, and of course we would want to build it in, of course there is a lot of other fine print needed to get us to where we all want to be, but a manifesto isn't the right place to be specifying in great detail how government databases would operate.
Apr 09 2010 04:04 by graphiclunarkid
andy_r wrote: The problem here is that you are expecting us to be evil, and you are both looking for ways for us to weasel our of the broad principles in our manifesto.


I was suggesting that the policy is less than perfect, while the explanation given is disingenuous in some respects, wrong in others.

andy_r wrote: The Pirate Party isn't out to get you.


Don't be evil?

andy_r wrote: A manifesto isn't the right place to be specifying in great detail how government databases would operate.


I agree. It is the right place to declare what you would do if you were elected. PPUK would maintain a centralised database of citizen information controlled by the state. I contend that this is a Bad Idea and instead you should strive for a decentralised system of citizen-controlled identity management.

I have read the PPUK manifesto but I confess I didn't refer back to it when responding to this post earlier. Have I misunderstood?
Apr 09 2010 05:04 by cc
Well, our manifesto isn't written in stone (and if it is, it shouldn't be).
Seeing as the policies mentioned above merit their own blog-post for clarification, wouldn't it be best to just rephrase those policies in the manifesto to say what they are supposed to say?

graphiclunarkid, we are not professional politicians, and it was never our intention to cheat or to mislead. We'd never say one thing and mean another, or say one thing to some people and the opposite to others just to get votes! You can accuse us of saying "Don't be evil," but we aren't an american mega-corporation with a hidden agenda, we are a small party technically being run by its membership, and as such all our cards are on the table: each and every policy was voted upon by the members, and the manifesto as it currently stands was written by volunteers (so you can expect some parts to be a bit sloppy).
Apr 09 2010 06:04 by samgower
cc wrote: Well, our manifesto isn't written in stone (and if it is, it shouldn't be).

That is true. It is subject to change between elections.

At the moment, PPUK does not let non-members contribute to policy discussions. Hopefully that will change in the future, but in the mean time I would support some form of public consultation, especially on this issue as it has been the source of a surprising amount of criticism. There are a few things to be done on the policy procedure front after the election (including getting it started), but soon after I hope that we'll be able to communicate with our critics and organisations like No2ID to help improve our policy on ID cards and the national identity register.
Apr 09 2010 07:04 by Andy_R
CC and samgower sum it up quite well (although I wouldn't go so far as to say sloppy!), the only way we can prove that we are not evil is to build up a record of not being evil over a long period of time, and we've only been around for less than a year. All I can really say to convince you is that nobody here gets paid a penny, and if we wanted to be evil in an effective way, we'd have had the sense to pick a more hospitable party to do it in.

I'd love to get both cowbutt and graphiclunarkid involved in our policy setting process, because they both clearly care about this a lot, but realistically we are a fledgeling organisation that is already pushing itself to the limits running it's first general election campaign, so we'll be a bit tied up until May 6th. If you can cut us a bit of slack for now, give us a bit of credit for having the party leader come and talk to you here, and come back on the 7th May (or a bit later since I think I'll need a month's sleep the way the campaign has been going so far!) and we'll work with you to make a better policy. How does that sound?
Apr 09 2010 08:04 by cc
Only "some parts", and only "a bit sloppy" ;)
Not wanting to be ungrateful or anything.
Apr 10 2010 09:04 by cowbutt
andy_r wrote

"you are both looking for ways for us to weasel our of the broad principles in our manifesto"

I'm sure many, if not all, PPUK members are decent and honourable sorts. But mainstream politicians have let down the public so often, that we've come to read manifestos in a "lawyeristic" way; that is, being sensitive to use of weasel words and extrapolating to determine what actions they would permit, whilst still technically (if not in spirit) being consistent with those words.

If you mean "Of course the PPUK would dismantle the National ID card if it was already in place", then say ""We strongly oppose compulsory ID cards, and pledge that we will never introduce them, and will dismantle any such system if it is already in place". Twelve words makes all the difference.

Good luck for May 6th!
Apr 10 2010 04:04 by Andy_R
Thanks, cowbutt. Writing the manifesto wasn't an easy process, especially as we've worked really hard on doing it by asking the party members what they want in the manifesto, and then letting the members vote on their own ideas. Being obessive about being democratic, and thinking about closing loopholes and trying to write documents that are voter-friendly means we have compromised. It's too late to change our manifesto now, but here and now I'll proud to say we strongly oppose compulsory ID cards, and pledge that we will never introduce them, and will dismantle any such system if it is already in place.

I hope you'll understand and agree that those twelve words fix the problem you had with our explanation of the policy, but there are many millions of voters out there, each of whom might want a different set of extra words. We had to do our best to guess what would be right for everyone. We live and learn!
Apr 12 2010 11:04 by DragonDave

It's too late to change our manifesto now


An errata to the manifesto might not be a bad idea - think of it as an official FAQ on it that resolves any nitpicky questions!
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