12 December 2008

A new poll conducted by ICM for NO2ID [1] shows that support for ID cards is significantly less than the latest Home Office push-poll [2]. More significantly, it indicates that the public opposes government data-trafficking by a majority of 2 to 1. This difference has prompted NO2ID to launch a hard-hitting video campaign on YouTube to highlight the database behind the card and what it will do to real people’s lives.

NO2ID [3] has periodically asked an identical unbiased question about ID cards since June 2005 – an approach described by UK Polling Report
as ‘admirable’ [4]. During that time support for the idea has steadily declined to 48%.

Asked by ICM what they thought of ’storing information [on large computer systems] and sharing it between different parts of government’, 65% said they thought it was a bad idea, while just 31% said it was a good idea. Slightly more women (67%) than men (64%) were opposed.

The online video campaign dramatises the real personal dangers of such ‘information sharing’. Confronting the myth that ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear’ from being identified, the film ‘Take Jane’ shows a glimpse of one woman’s story, in a future Britain where the omnipresent databases make hiding impossible [5].

The grim message is that the ID scheme isn’t simple and isn’t safe.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s national co-ordinator, said;

Support for ID cards is already under 50%. Even the government’s own biased surveys now show falls in support. The more people know, the less they like it. Once it is common knowledge that the ID scheme is designed to pass around the information it collects about you, then the scheme is politically doomed.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1001 adults aged 18+ by telephone between December 3rd-5th 2008. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. Further information at www.icmresearch.co.uk

The poll data will shortly be available online, but if you require a copy of the results in the meanwhile please contact Phil Booth directly on national.coordinator@no2id.net

2) The Home Office ‘tracking studies’ achieve nominally positive ratings for the ID scheme by asking people to list possible (and not necessarily realistic) benefits of the scheme *before* asking them what they think of ID cards. Until NO2ID made a Freedom of Information request for them, the Home Office did not publish in full the questionnaires used in the quarterly study. It still does not publish the results data.

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of database state initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

4) See http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/279 – ‘Majority against ID cards’, UK Polling Report, 26/7/06.

5) The video is on YouTube at:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v1JqlvnZANA
It may be freely redistributed. NO2ID’s website explains more at:
http://www.no2id.net/TakeJane/
Broadcast-standard video is available for TV or theatrical performance. Please contact press@no2id.net

6 December 2008

A secret Home Office document leaked to campaign group NO2ID yesterday shows that the thousands of workers on the ID scheme face the possibility of having their homes entered and searched on the say-so of the Home Secretary. The papers were passed to NO2ID’s national co-ordinator, Phil Booth, in the aftermath of the furore over the police raid on Damian Green MP’s office.

The document is the Non-Disclosure Agreement that was signed by those companies bidding for work related to the National Identity Scheme (the ID card programme). It was drafted in 2007 and has been signed by the five companies [1] on the supplier short-list, one of which (Thales) has since been awarded a multi-million pound contract to start work on the scheme.

Clause 5 of the document provides the grounds upon which the Home Office can secure access to the property, computers and records of the company, its employees and subcontractors. Such access would be at the ’sole discretion’ of the Home Secretary. No search warrant or judicial oversight would be required.

This would mean, for example, if an employee of a software company working on the ID scheme took a work laptop home with them, they could face having their home entered and personal [1] property searched without a warrant (or indeed, without any suspicion of a crime having been committed).

Similar searches of commercial premises would, of course, imply the ability to look at every file stored on a computer or in a filing cabinet – not just those marked ‘NIS’ – compromising the commercial confidentiality of any other clients.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s national co-ordinator, said:

This is quite extraordinary, especially when you consider how careless and untrustworthy the government is with ordinary people’s personal information.
Some serious questions must be answered – for example, has every employee of these five companies, and all of their subcontractors, working on the ID scheme been made aware of the fact that their homes could be entered and searched without warrant at any time in the next 25 years? How do they feel about this? Were they given a choice? Under these conditions, doesn’t working on the National Identity Scheme also mean sacrificing any promise of commercial confidentiality these companies have made to their other customers?

–ENDS–

Notes for editors

1) The five companies still in the running are: Computer Sciences Corp (CSC), EDS, Fujitsu, IBM, and Thales – who were awarded the £18 million contract for the interim ID database for airside workers and young people in August 2008.

The three that pulled out are: Accenture and BAE Systems in Jan 2008, citing ‘political and commercial reasons’, and Steria in Feb 2008.

2) The clause says ‘any and all records, computers and other property of the Company and such Individual Recipients containing or including any NIS information’ – but, in practice, how are those doing the search to know what property or computer or bits of paper will or will not contain any of the information the are looking for? How can
someone prove that files have been ‘destroyed permanently’ unless every page of every document, every folder or thing that looks like it could contain information and every file on every hard drive has been checked?

The full document is at
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/UK_Home_Office_ID_Scheme_Non-Disclosure_agreement%2C_2007

4 December 2008

The UK government’s defeat today in the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of ‘S’ and Marper, was warmly welcomed by privacy campaign NO2ID [2].

The men at the heart of the case were not found guilty of any offence, but have had an eight-year fight to get records of their DNA removed from the UK’s National DNA Database. Because the Home Office and police insist on keeping samples for ever from almost everyone arrested, the database is by far the world’s biggest[3].

Phil Booth, NO2ID National Coordinator said:

This is a victory for liberty and privacy. Though these judgements are always complicated and slow in coming, it is a vindication of what privacy campaigners have said all along.
The principle that we need to follow is simple: when charges are dropped suspect samples are destroyed – no charge, no DNA.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7764069.stm

2) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.netdbstate.php for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

3) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/using-science/dna-database/