Rather amazing, is it not, that the British Conservatives, the supposed ‘right’ wing of British politics, are moving swiftly to dismantle the Big Brother-ish national identity card system introduced by the outgoing Labour Party. Although they make a lot out of noise over the estimated 4.5 billion pounds to be saved by ending the scheme, the Tories also have cast their opposition to the anti-terrorism measure explicitly as a defense of civil liberties and personal freedom from government intrusion.
Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May [above, in boots] lauded her government’s move as reducing ‘the control of the State over decent, law-abiding people and hand[ing] power back to them. With swift Parliamentary approval, we aim to consign identity cards and the intrusive ID card scheme to history within 100 days’.
Bravo! Theresa May for Governor of Arizona!
It is a sorry commentary on the deeply reactionary political culture that grips us here that our party that purports to represent workers and progressive-minded people and is currently led by a member of a once-enslaved minority group shows no similar enthusiasm for overturning the gross abuses of the Bush years and restoring the rule of law.
The Tories are also dumping a plan for something called ‘biometric fingerprint passports’, another hare-brained scheme to funnel national wealth into the hands of security companies. They further announced that the position of Identity Commissioner (you can’t make this shit up), will be abolished—perhaps along with the Ministry of Truth and the Oxford Newspeak Dictionary project.
Curiously and unexpectedly, the Tories have consistently denounced Tony Blair’s complicity with torture and the Labour government’s enthusiastic ripping up of centuries of hard-fought protections against the abuse of state power. What a contrast with the mewling whimper of faux protest issued by the bulk of the Democratic Party in the face of national disgraces like Guantánamo and the torture regime.
The Guardian reports that the data currently held in the British national identity register will be destroyed. Can we imagine their American counterparts, the National Security Agency snoops now carefully recording our telephone calls, ever agreeing to any such thing? Or ever actually destroying records even if legally bound to do so?
Au contraire, we are thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that the database state has the right and the need to know everything about us, the better to make sure that skeery terrorists with funny surnames don’t blow up our grandchildren’s kindergartens. You gotta applaud the Brits, who have far more direct experience with living under the daily threat of bombs than frightened Nebraskans, for insisting that their private lives are still worth defending.
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