Jon Agar of Cambridge University has produced a paper on Identity cards in Britain: past experience and policy implications. I've just had time to scan the executive summary but it looks well worth a read. The paper looks briefly at the two previous ID card systems in the UK in the 20th century and idenitfies some features which could inform the debate on the government's planned system. Extract from the executive summary:
"The first national register (1915-1919), and accompanying identity card, was a failure, and the second (1939-1952) a partial success. The success of the second system was secured by analysing the causes of the failure of the first.
Universal registration systems have repeatedly been proposed as solutions to short-lived moral panics. But there is little evidence that national registers effectively resolve such panics.
Public indifference or hostility to identity cards was managed by building 'parasitic vitality' into the second experience. In particular, the system of national registration was intimately connected to the system of food rationing. Without similar 'parasitic vitality', contemporary proposals can be expected to struggle to win acceptance.
However, such interconnection encourages the phenomenon of 'function creep': eventually the pattern of disclosure and use of personal information is markedly different from that originally declared."
He goes on to say in the body of the report:
" the administrative operation of - and public response to - the historical card systems reveal features that should make all parties in the contemporary debate pause for thought. For example, the relative technological simplicity of the old card systems made a considerable contribution to their effectiveness: the simplistic equation of technological sophistication with effectiveness should be resisted."
As I say to my students, we should look to use the best available technology, including pencils and paper.
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