West End Forum: They are robbing us of our privacy - The debate on ID cards

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Published: 29 January 2010

Helen Marcus says that government measures on ID cards and more will transform a once free country into an ‘Orwellian nightmare’

GOVERNMENT is destroying our freedoms. Those who still believe we live in a democracy governed by consent under the rule of law are in for a nasty shock over the next few years, unless they do something about it now. 
You think I exaggerate? 
Think again.
Through a trivial incident, a letter demanding £60 from the G24 company who run B&Q’s car park in Cricklewood, claiming I “contravened” their parking regulations, I uncovered layers of government deceit hiding the way in which our civil rights and liberties are being systematically abolished. 
I was never parked in their car park. 
It is used by hundreds of people every day as a through route from Cricklewood Lane to Edgware Road – there is no notice to say you may not. 
Cameras record cars only driving in and out – not actually parked. 
It is a free car park so there are no machines to record whether you parked. 
B&Q admitted they were wrong. 
But how did they get my address? 
The DVLA sold them my details. 
Yes, the DVLA is allowed to sell our private details, supposedly protected under the Data Protection Act. 
Thousands of people receive these bogus demands for money every year and the DVLA, as their website puts it, “helps them enforce their terms and conditions”. 
If there is real evidence that the law has been breached, then it should be for the statutory agencies, police, the courts or the local authority, to deal with it. It is not for the DVLA to take sides. 
These are the sort of tactics one might expect in a mafia state, not in a democracy that is supposed to respect the rule of law.
But what I discovered when I tried to find out why this is allowed was even worse. 
Kept well out of the public eye, and disguised with weasel words about “efficiency”, the “transformation of public services for the benefit of citizens”, giving “citizens choice, with personalised services”, this government is constructing a sinister multiple-layered identity management system and data-trafficking regime that will change forever the relationship between the state and the citizen. 
Gordon Brown appeared last year to say that the ID scheme would be dropped. We were lied to. 
The truth is that the Identity Cards Bill became law in 2004, demanding 50 categories of information about you, introducing a level of state control which attacks our liberty and choice and will destroy our basic freedoms. 
It established the National Identity Register (NIR) which will be a “Single Source of Truth” for every British citizen, a data processing term which this government is now applying to our identities. 

The NIR and the data-trafficking regime are at the heart of the government’s Transformational Government (TG) programme introduced by Tony Blair in 2005. Under Gordon Brown Whitehall has actually speeded up the process. 
It will be irreversibly embedded in administration by 2011, with compulsory registration for everyone and an all-encompassing surveillance system. The DVLA activities are just one small part of it.The introduction of all these measures signals the end of privacy for any British citizen and will “transform” this once free country into an Orwellian nightmare. Just read the act. 
Why would something portrayed as being “voluntary” require a provision for the imposition of civil penalties (Section 33 of the Identity Cards Bill) specifying fines for those who fail to keep their records up to date? 
Section 15 provides power to make public services conditional on identity checks: eventually you won’t be able to renew a passport, driving licence, register to vote or with a doctor, or even have your rubbish collected unless you are on the register. And just to be sure there is a power of Secretary of State to require registration (section 6) and rules for using information without individual’s consent.
Meanwhile Gordon Brown continues spouting his cynical claptrap with pronouncements such as: “strengthening the role of citizens and civic society” and “giving people the tools they need to help shape services and to hold government to account”. (Putting the Frontline First: smarter government, December 2009).
I tried to hold them to account. 
I wrote to the DVLA, Lord Adonis, Jack Straw, and the Office of Data Protection. 
Will it surprise you to know that I haven’t received a proper reply from any of them? 
No doubt they’re too busy planning more prisons to hold us all when we refuse to co-operate in their police state plans. 
The Identity Cards  Bill can be found at:
www.publications. parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmbills/008/05008. i-iv.html

Information about the campaign against id cards is at: www.no2id.net