Friday, March 03, 2006

Database society will slow business growth

The forthcoming ID system in the UK will literally imprison 1 million people who for various reasons cannot get one or do not want to reveal past identities or are not entitled.
Because of the compulsive measure of having to have an ID card to get a passport, passports will not be issued to large numbers of people.
It is well known that travel restrictions on large numbers of the population, particularly economically active ones, have a braking effect on economic activity. Look at the old Eastern bloc models.
These people will also be forced into the black economy which will increase in size with more intense government intrusion. Workers will lose their protection from exploitation and wages will fall.

Access to Health and Education services will be restricted to these people as well. The Bill has not taken into account the people who are living in the UK already under a shadow. I personally know a family who have been here working, paying tax for 17 years and have no formal paperwork. These people will be a true underclass with even the status of their children in the hands of a whimsical government that obviously has no respect or care for them.

A general amnesty should be given to all people here already who want to remain.

We are told that this is needed for anti-terrorist purposes but the reality is that more people are killed by falling down the stairs in the UK then by terrorism. The classic purpose of terrorism is to cause a government clampdown on the population and ride the subsequent revolt.

There will be determined opposition to the ID schemes and to government intrusion generally, and this will increase in the future. At some point a line will be drawn and beyond that line is outside the domain of government. The line will start with an assumption that your first thought in the morning is yours, safe inside your head, no business of anybodies. Then it is written on a page and put in a sealed envelope in your pocket, Is it still yours? Does the government have the right to know what it is. Then put it on a website (your private website,)
Is it still your property? Now show it to a like minded friend , and so on..
The current rush by governments to moniter everything will bring this debate to the fore.
I would predict that political movements will appear which will want to limit the power of governments in these areas. Will they be treated as terrorists or heroes?