By Nathan Allonby
August 31, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Research
| Electronic ID cards have made alarming progress towards becoming universal, around the world. Already, over 2.2 billion people, or 33% of the world’s population, have been issued with ‘smart’ ID cards. Of those, over 900 million have biometric facial and fingerprint systems. On present plans, over 85% of the world’s population will have smart ID cards by 2012. Most of the remaining population won’t have escaped - largely, they are already enrolled in earlier generation ID systems, often in repressive states, such as Myanmar (Burma) Understandably, campaigns against the introduction of ID cards have tended to play up the problems with ID systems, presenting them as being unworkable and creating unmanageable problems with privacy invasion, fraud, unauthorised database access, organised crime, reliability of biometric recognition, etc.. As a result, a substantial number of people believe mandatory ID cards ‘just won’t happen’. It’s long past time to stop burying our heads in the sand. There are no obstacles to the worldwide introduction of mandatory, electronic ID cards. All those problems with ID systems may be real, but they are not enough to stop implementation, primarily because these are problems that will affect people as individuals, not their governments - our problem, not theirs. There has been hardly any meaningful debate about one of the biggest issues of our time. Most ordinary people don’t like the idea, but project goes ahead anyway. It’s also time to look at what ID systems are really intended to do, not the public justification. Since governments probably always knew that ID cards wouldn’t stop terrorism, organised crime, ID theft, fraud, etc., there has to be some other reason for their introduction - and it appears to be a reason that governments don‘t want to own up to, in public. A Coordinated International ID Agenda?
Interestingly, nobody seems to have published a comprehensive or reliable survey of world ID schemes, so a survey had to compiled for this article (see table as appendix). This survey has necessarily been fairly brief and incomplete - it is not easy to find good data sources about every nation, so apologies for any inaccuracies, misclassification of certain nations and complete omission of lots more. (If anyone has any links to published data, that would close the gaps, please could they send these as ‘comments’). What stands out from this survey, unreliable as it may be, is that advanced electronic ID card systems are coming to some of the poorest nations in the world, some in chaos, civil war, starvation, the smallest and the largest. They are coming to nations with vastly divergent cultures, to nations that are almost completely pre-industrialised and underdeveloped, and coming first to almost all Islamic nations. The few nations that will not have advanced electronic population registration will be in a tiny minority. This is all to happen by the end of 2012. For example, on 25 June 2009, India announced that it was pressing ahead with universal biometric ID cards, to be completed by 2011 - to register nearly 1.2 billion people within just 18 months. One of the few places that definitely isn't introducing smart ID cards is Myanmar (Burma), because they are getting along fine with their present ID card - apparently it is efficient enough for the repression they have in hand. The UN tried to convince them to upgrade their cards, but they wouldn't do it.
USA would probably come in the grey area, due to the uncertainty (deliberately not clarified) about the REAL ID Act, Canada, due to proposals for biometric ‘enhanced drivers licenses’, Australia, due to the uncertain status of the ‘Access Card’. Any uncertainty gets put into perspective by the ‘big picture’ - ID cards are coming, almost everywhere.
In the process of researching the list, something interesting came out - the plans to introduce a national ID card system in Uganda were announced in a memorandum of understanding sent to the IMF ('Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding'). The impression is, the IMF were involved in the decision long before the people of Uganda were consulted about their national ID card scheme.
Again and again, in the public description of the alleged benefits of biometric ID systems, the reasons given include the benefit to the banking system, in preventing fraud, and allowing the poor to have access to the banking system. Several nations (e.g. India) have mentioned the need to confirm that aid gets to intended recipients, and not lost in fraud - again, something which a body such as the IMF might see as a justifiable reason to promote or require biometric ID. Other people would see this as a mere pretext for ‘policy laundering’.
US, UK and EU
In July 2005, during its six month rotation as Presidency of the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom introduced a proposal for biometric ID cards for the EU, despite there being no power to do so under the treaties of the EU at that time. Legalities being no obstacle, this subsequently evolved into binding EU policy, in the Hague programme on justice and security. However, policies introducing ID cards, evolved in secret, go far beyond identification and security, as described by Tony Bunyan of Statewatch, in an article in The Guardian. ID cards are only one tool, enabling a much larger scheme, to track and record the lives of every individual; Bunyan calls this the digital tsunami : -
But this isn’t just coming to Europe, as Bunyan explains, because USA and Europe will share similar policies and practices, in an agenda of policy harmonisation : -
Was this a response to 9-11?
This means GW Bush and Tony Blair can only take part of the blame for this project - they may have backed it, but they didn’t start it. We can trace a continuing pursuit of ID-based databases back to the Australia Card, which was defeated in 1987. There have been persistent allegation of lobbying by the IT industry for smart ID cards and database government, but this is only part of the picture. We can also say with certainty that EU-US cooperation on security pre-dates 9-11, as does EU development of security databases which have been applied to political protestors. What Do ID Cards Do?
This is the significance of the ‘multi-functional’ identity function of the new cards - one ID number is the key to access all services and also all databases. One card, one number tracks people across multiple activities - across their whole lives and everything they do - employment, tax, health - everything. When numerous databases are linked together by means of a common interface, in this case ID numbers, they effectively function as a single ‘meta-database‘. The initial population register is compiled by consolidating the existing, separate databases. Governments want to know whether or not everyone has registered, and whether any new people have suddenly appeared for the first time. The Citizen Information Register in Britain :
The scheme is a joint project between the Office of National Statistics and the Treasury … The idea was developed by the Treasury's public services productivity panel - a group of senior business people and public services managers. The Home Office… admitted a national identity card scheme will have to be "underpinned by a database of all UK residents" and asked for views on whether the citizens information register should be used for this purpose …The Guardian The Indian ID scheme is another major example -
This is the new model for e-government, around the world. Historically, this isn’t the first time we have seen systems like this - this is very similar in concept to the Nazi ID system, as it finally evolved, with a ‘Reich Personnel Number’ to link all other databases. The system of compiling the initial population register from records in existing, earlier databases is, again, very similar to Nazi practice. Why should this be significant? Why should there be any big deal about the government collecting together data that it already has?
ID Cards - Loyalty Cards
Corporations want to know as much as they can about their customers, for marketing purposes, and have made an incredible investment in infrastructure for gathering and analysing data about them. By 2004, Wal-Mart had gathered 460 terabytes of information about customers, or more than twice the total information on the Internet (1). Where did this data come from? The majority from loyalty cards. Governments have adopted electronic ID cards because stores have demonstrated what powerful and effective technology they are. Not merely effective, but cost-effective. Unlike defence equipment, such as those missiles that sometimes don’t really work, commercial sector technology has to work, and to pay for itself. Stores have demonstrated they can track and profile their customers, to find their spending habits, their weaknesses and suggestibility, what advertising works on them. The technology they use not only had to prove it could work, but also that it could pay for itself. If supermarket corporations invest as much as they do, you know the technology has to be very effective. Powerful and effective software has been developed for analysing stores’ loyalty card data, such as ChoicePoint and LexisNexis. Now we find some of those systems in use at the FBI, to shortlist suspects (2). Governments have realised that this same profiling technology works and can also be applied to finding terrorists, ‘extremists‘, political dissidents or any other category of interest to the state. Some of those companies also help in data-gathering. When the US government obtained personal data about voters in 11 different Latin American states, for unspecified purposes, that data was obtained by private corporations, including ChoicePoint. It has been reported that the majority of US intelligence data-gathering is outsourced and that about 70% of the budget goes to private corporations. Although the majority of this spending goes to military-defence corporations such as SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton, consumer corporations also take their place. Do we see an evolving symbiosis between government and private corporations, where they share technology and tools, and co-operate in data-gathering? RFID - a powerful tracking technology
RFID is a tracking system, originally developed to track stock in the supply chain and warehouses. Tiny chips allow a serial number and potentially other data to be read from a distance of up to several feet. When an RFID tagged item passes a reader, its number is recorded. When RFID readers are connected to a network, it is possible to compile a record of the movements of an object (or person), by listing the times and places when their RFID number was recorded. RFID in loyalty cards allows the holder’s name and all the personal information on the card to be read from a distance of several feet, potentially without the card-holder's knowledge. Stores can read your identity from your loyalty card as soon as you walk in, using RFID, without you realising. Now we are being issued with government ‘loyalty cards’, which will identify us by RFID. Stores also realised, by placing readers at various locations, they could use RFID to track customers’ movements inside stores, for example, to see the products they looked at but did not buy, in addition to those they did. Very quickly, stores realised that RFID in products, such as clothing, could be used to track the movements of the people who bought them. Unlike bar codes, RFID identifies each item with a unique serial number, differentiating identical items. Store chains’ huge databases allowed them to keep a tally of which objects had been bought by which customers - putting names to RFID serial numbers. This extra information was very powerful in ‘profiling’ customers - for example, they started to get data about who was standing next to them - they could guess whether customers shopped alone, with their husbands or wives, or with someone else.. Soon, they will be able to read the RFID serial number in your national ID card, in much the same way, and government is going to sell ID confirmation, to cross-reference the serial number on your ID card with your name and address. Stores spend a lot of money acquiring data, so knowing customers’ names and addresses, with certainty, has really got to be worth something. Customers will no longer be able to hide their identities, or give false names on loyalty cards. Employers use profiling
By enabling ubiquitous tracking and profiling, could ID systems herald a corporate culture of conformity, enforced by redundancy for those who don’t fit the right profile? There have been widespread examples of employers discriminating against individuals on grounds of political or union affiliations. The UK Information Commissioner found many very large and respectable companies had engaged in illegal practices to do this. What would happen if employers used data gleaned from ID systems and social networks analysis to profile staff, to find their friends and associates, and any affiliations? Perhaps it should be added that the organisation in this complaint had, historically, as the Economic League, been linked to MI5, Britain’s state security service, and had been used for political purposes. (3) What would it mean to society and political culture if corporate employers could identify and discriminate against political and union activists, so that they could find it hard to get a job? Would that be compatible with democracy? Hidden Power - ‘Inverted Totalitarianism’
A good example of the management of opposition would be the downfall of Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York and a critic of the financial policies of the Bush regime. On Feb 14, 2008, Spitzer had criticised the government over the financial crisis: - “the widespread nature of these [predatory lending] practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.
Less than 3 weeks later, by 6 March, Spitzer had been forced to resign due to a call-girl scandal, revealed by government surveillance of his bank account, using (or rather, abusing) anti-terrorism powers granted by the USA PATRIOT Act. Federal agents had tracked down transactions of less than $4,000. Strangely, the government doesn’t seem able to use to use this same facility to track down the $ hundreds of billions that flow in international drug transactions - money that finances terrorism. Had Spitzer not been forced to resign in disgrace, it seems hard to imagine the $ multi-trillion bank bailout could have gone ahead. Criticism of the banks and of Bush was greatly weakened by the silencing of this prominent critic. Imagine if the power of the surveillance state was applied to controlling political dissent, especially in an environment of merger between state and corporate power. Imagine dissidents being driven from their jobs, or perhaps more subtly, just denied promotion. Imagine how detailed files on the psychological weaknesses and vulnerability of all individuals, generated by profiling, and records of any past indiscretions, could be used to apply pressure upon opponents to government policy. China - the pattern for international development?
What the West has tried to do, however, is guarantee China’s stability, and help keep a lid on any trouble, by providing China with access to the latest surveillance and security technology - to make China a more effective dictatorship. New technologies that are found to work, in the social laboratory of China, can be adopted and applied elsewhere. A good example of this would be facial recognition technology, supplied to China by the US, illegally but with a nod and a wink, to make it easier for the Chinese authorities to identify troublemakers in a crowd, or simply follow the movements of people of interest, and perhaps identify any people they meet and talk with. Recognition systems now can match one face in a million, good enough to find one face in a city. How neatly this dovetails with the database of digital images provided by China’s ID system. RFID also has applications to the state security apparatus. China is issuing hand-held RFID readers to its policemen, so they can take people's identities from their ID cards. China has the highest incidence of riots of any country in the world, due to the severe social conditions and inequality. China has adopted the practice of containing disturbances, rather than wading-in to break them up - instead of arresting rioters on the spot, the police merely identify them, to arrest one-by-one at their convenience. CCTV and surveillance technologies are used for this identification. RFID has an obvious application to this - the identities of everyone in a crowd could be collected by one plain-clothes policeman, with an RFID reader, mingling with the crowd. The RFID facility can also be useful to states with mobile populations. India is anticipating the migration of large numbers of the rural population to the cities. India plans to use a combination of RFID and “GPS-based Geographical Information Systems (GIF) to automatically record the voter migration or shifting of residence”, to automatically update databases such as the electoral register. One can also see how useful this would be to the Chinese authorities, with large numbers of rural peasants migrating to cities, illegally, to work as an untraceable, unstable underclass. So, is this the model to be applied elsewhere - increasing inequality, increasing slum populations, and unrest controlled through security? As we have discussed above, India’s ID system has explicitly anticipated tracking migration of a shifting population. India’s leaders admire the Chinese economic model, and want to shift India’s society from one that is predominantly (60%) rural, at present, to one that is 80% urban. That means 400 million extra people are going to be forced into India’s already overcrowded slums. And yes, the World Bank has an explicit role in promoting this, saying that urbanisation and migration are good and necessary things. Many neo-liberal economists say that slums are a ‘necessary stage’ in urbanisation, but that ultimately, by promoting industrialisation, this will lead to increased living standards. The fact that hundreds of millions of Indians don’t want this doesn’t seem to count in their democracy. Does it ring true, that the reason for tracking these people is so that their voice can be heard, at elections? Such displacement is a global phenomenon, as described in Professor Mike Davis’ book Planet of Slums - already, a huge part of the world’s population lives in slums - a symptom of growing inequality and increasing exploitation. It’s a trend that is ramping-up. There have been increasing reports of a ‘neo-colonialist’ land-grab in Africa, with large tracts of land being acquired by overseas corporations, based in Asia (e.g. Korea) and the West. Some of the world’s largest slums are in sub-Saharan Africa. Expropriation of land from peasants is a recurring theme in ‘economic globalisation‘, around the world, as discussed in this essay by James Petras. Could there be a relationship between some poor Chinese or Indian family being forced off the land, into the sweatshop, and someone in hometown USA losing their job to outsourcing, losing their home shortly thereafter? Sometimes the relationship is simple and direct, such as relocation of factories, often it isn’t direct or visible, but competition for jobs is part of globalist economic strategy - the connection is real and intended. However, in 2009, the US Census Bureau plans to find even the people who have lost their homes, by employing 140,000 temporary workers to look for hidden and improvised housing units, finding GPS coordinates for every ‘front door’. A current legal case may make that data available to private sector corporations. The worldwide implementation of systems for population surveillance and monitoring has to be significant. It doesn’t sound like it is part of making the world a kinder, nicer place. Fighting Back
Ÿ ID cards are being introduced as a coordinated, international programme, organised at a level above national governments and beyond democratic oversight; Ÿ This is only part of a larger project to transform the nature of governments - in Britain. actually called ‘Transformational Government’ - gathering more information, to manage our lives more closely; Ÿ A vast new apparatus for surveillance, monitoring and control is being introduced at the very moment democracy is being side-lined and made impotent; Ÿ Government policies will be made internationally, above the level of democratic governments - effectively superseding democracy as we know it; Ÿ Our lives will be changed by a pervasive invasion and oversight. It’s not a happy scenario, is it? We shouldn’t close on such a bleak note of pessimism, because it simply isn’t true there is nothing we can do, although we have left it pretty late. We have a good chance, if we recognise what’s going wrong. 1) Organising Internationally
Unfortunately, this is where it gets scary - as yet, there is no international resistance. No-one has yet started building real links between ID opponents in different nations. It gets worse - many nations don’t even have a national opposition, just a scattering of a few isolated activists, not linked by any group or network. This isn’t just true of Africa and ‘new democracies’ - this is even true of a lot of Europe. Having tried to find and link with some of these opposition groups, the author of this article found many groups are too over-stretched in their own fight to find time to network or see the bigger picture. Unfortunately, as a generalisation, many are difficult to contact, fragmented and over-stretched, if not demoralised. Try to look on this as the good news - we haven’t failed, so much as just failed to get organised. However, unless we get organised pretty soon, this will become an irreversible defeat for freedom and democracy. The other side is going to win without ever having to fight a battle, not only because have we no army to fight back, but because the public haven‘t even realised there is a war. Hopefully, people will respond to reading this, and start to organise more effectively - by linking together, for mutual support and coordination. It’s time to network! It’s time for groups and activists in different nations, to start building an international network of opposition. There is, however, one campaign group slightly ahead in this area - CASPIAN (Consumers Against Surveillance, Privacy-Invasion And Numbering), which has an international membership, works closely with other groups in different nations and addresses the bigger picture, including corporate data-gathering and RFID. The author suggests CASPIAN as a good initial hub for contact. Alternatively, please contact the author of this article. For those readers not already in a campaign, CASPIAN is one of the best organisations out there - and it’s free to join. 2) Raise awareness - engage the public. The worldwide ID database and surveillance project has only progressed this far because of lack of public awareness. It‘s time to raise this issue, at every opportunity, to get people thinking about the direction of public policy. Public awareness is vital. We have to draw attention to what’s going on. Unfortunately, many campaign groups have been side-tracked into fighting ID legislation, instead of fighting for public awareness. Lobbying in legislatures is depressing and ultimately fruitless - the real decisions are being taken in a whole different framework, out of public view. The overall scenario is that institutions and legislatures no longer respond to democracy or public opinion. In reality, politicians see that campaign contributions, ‘hospitality’ and ultimately political success are linked to their ability deliver a pre-arranged programme that suits corporate financial backers. Their success depends upon overcoming opposition to that programme, by managing and controlling opposition, by appearing to listen and appearing to give concessions. Their job is to waste your time and energy. The good news is, the public recognise this, and they don’t like it - it’s just they don’t know what to do, because no-one is offering any alternative. Some groups have been looking for more effective alternatives. For example, CASPIAN has been fighting corporate data-gathering via consumer protests and boycotts. It’s a strategy that has been successful - international corporate giants fear consumers and hate bad publicity. Legislators are more inclined to listen to someone successfully hurting their corporate sponsors. In capitalism, sometimes we have more power as consumers than as voters. This empowering example of direct engagement with the public, unmediated by appeals to politicians, shows the way forward. 3) Expose the mind-set of the people implementing this scheme.
What kind of mind and personality would want such a thing? Wouldn’t you have to be disturbed to want this? The book Political Ponerology (4) describes the mind-set of such politicians - they aren’t embarrassed by exposure of their actions, but can’t stand exposure of their psychology. Say what’s going on, you risk being labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’, but if you say our leaders are immoral, corrupt and capable of anything, nobody doubts you. What reason have they to be so paranoid about us? Why do all we have to be watched? What’s wrong with their heads, that they need to place us all under suspicion and treat us all like criminals? Why are they so misanthropic? Why are ordinary people so dangerous and threatening? 4) Don’t use cards, use cash.
Think of this as the first step on a larger journey. References 1) Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move, by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, Nelson Current, 2005, p64 ‘There’s a target on your back’ 2) The FBI's Secret Scrutiny, In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans, By Barton Gellman, 11/06/05 "Washington Post"
“…Ashcroft's new guidelines allowed the FBI for the first time to add to government files consumer data from commercial providers such as LexisNexis and ChoicePoint Inc. Previous attorneys general had decided that such a move would violate the Privacy Act. In many field offices, agents said, they now have access to ChoicePoint in their squad rooms.” 3) On The Record : Surveillance, Computers and Privacy - The Inside Story, Duncan Campbell and Steve Connor, Michael Joseph Ltd 1986, p288-290 4) Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew M. Lobaczewski (Author), Laura Knight-Jadczyk (Editor), Red Pill Press 2006, 2009 Appendix
Schemes Already Implemented
Schemes to be implemented by 2012
'Maybe' category
Nations with earlier generation ID systems
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