The contention:
We need Big Brother to beat this virus
Don’t let the civil liberties lobby blind us to the fact that greater state surveillance, including ID cards, is required
Such dark warnings seem strangely out of date in an age when we all endlessly volunteer data about ourselves, unthinkingly click “I agree” to the box that pops up with every website we visit, and send information about our wants and desires to big tech companies, who monetise this information. To be comfortable selling our digital souls to Facebook and co and not to our government — which has a clear and life-saving reason for wanting some basic information — would be nonsensical.
Someone incapable of noting the difference between a choice and an imposition is too dim to walk and fart at the same time. Perhaps Ms. Foges played too much of her football without a helmet.
The creation of a national ID card system would not exactly be fast work, but who knows how long this crisis will continue or if future pandemics will occur? Besides, this a good idea beyond the current crisis; a stone to kill multiple birds, from voter fraud to welfare abuse, identity theft to illegal immigration (once citizens need a card to access bank accounts, housing and healthcare it will be much harder to melt into anonymity). There will always be high-profile huffing and puffing about such measures, but under that noise is the quiet pragmatism of the British public, who understand that some mild incursions on our privacy may be necessary for the sake of public health. The most recent poll on the subject found that a majority would support even the compulsory carrying of ID cards.
Ah, no, I’ve got it. She’s Tony Blair in drag, isn’t she?
As someone or other pointed out in that same paper 15 years back:
His predecessor, David Blunkett, was no better. On the subject of identity cards he once said: “No one should fear correct identification.” Those words always remind me of one the more distressing details of the Eichmann trial: how he told his executioner that the fate of those killed in the Holocaust was sealed by their answers to the 1939 census on religious background recorded on paper for a Hollerith machine, an early mechanical computer. Quite literally, their cards were marked.
And that picture up top is marked “Tutsi” which didn’t work out well either, did it?
I already need a card to access my bank account – my bank card.
The fact that your bank needs to know who you are before doling out funds from your account, and that the Supervisor of the Check-List ought to know who you are before handing you a ballot, is not an argument that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should know who you are when you browse Wikipedia.
Age requirements for a variety of purchases have numbed us to having to prove our identity, and even the advocates of identifying voters rely heavily on “two wrongs make a right.”
IIRC the machine in question was in Holland, and that’s what condemned the Dutch Jews. By 1939 the German Jews knew what was coming, and anybody at that point unidentified as such wouldn’t voluntarily have done so. The point still sounds though. ID Cards are one of those things which are never going to fully go away. They exist in a de facto form anyway, just try to open a bank account without some form of id. But there formalised existence would fundamentally change life in this country. As a CYA exercise they would need to be produced for virtually… Read more »
And the real damp-trouser merchants would be demanding they be the active key to accessing anything. Oh no, you shouldn’t be spending your money on that, transaction cancelled. No you can’t have any petrol, walk you lard arse. That’s got sugar in it, authorisation refused.
“I’m sorry, sir, the System isn’t letting me complete your purchase.”
You do remind me of a trip I made to Perth many years ago. The young lady on check-in wished to see my drivers licence for some unknown reason.
Fortunately she hadn’t been instructed what to do if I didn’t have it with me, so eventually the ever-increasing queue persuaded her to let me on the plane.
Whenever anybody says about fascism “it couldn’t happen here”, point them towards an opinion poll about ID cards.
If we can disregard the Constitution and impose outrageous social norms over a CHEST COLD, then everything is in play, and would-be tyrants know it.
Quite how carrying a piece of plastic issued by the state confers immunity from disease is beyond me.
Is she a fascist? Do you really need to ask that question?
A certain blogger on political economy frequently tells us that TANSTAAFL. Because resources are limited, economics is about trade-offs, although resources have a funny way of springing into being when there is a need for them. The profit motive and all that. So how do we decide what is worth trading off? A cost/benefit study. Cost: Someone’s brother/sister/xer-in-law is going to make a truckload out of printing ID cards. Someone’s niece/nephew/xot is going to make a truckload to the power of three out of putting it all on computer. It’s vaguely possible that you will not physically be allowed to… Read more »