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| ID Cards Will Not Save us From Acts of TERRORISM |
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| Prime Minister John Howard’s floating of a balloon on the national ID card issue before he left to go overseas last week
reminded me of a temporary job I once had deputising for the swimming pool manager at Pontin’s holiday Camp on the Isle
of Wight. He went off for a week’s leave and left me with the chemicals for the pool and instructions on how to add them.
Within days, the pool had turned bright green. |
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He, of course, returned after a week and sorted out the problem, leaving him looking good, and me looking incompetent. PM Howard, too, will soon return and restore order - and of course underscore his leadership credentials. |
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Anyway, is a national ID card desirable? Australians last had ID cards during World War II. Re-introduction of a national ID card was seriously considered in the 1980s, when the Hawke Government proposed an Australia Card to be carried by all Australian citizens and permanent residents. The main aim then was to crack down on tax cheats. |
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Early polls showed 70 per cent support for the proposal. This gradually dissipated as influential individuals like Justice Michael Kirby stated, “If there is an identity card, then people in authority will want to put it to use ... What us at stake is nothing less than the nature of our society and the power and authority of the state over the individual.” By the end of 1987, the proposal was politically dead in the water. |
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| What has changed since then? The most obvious changes are in the national security and crime environments, and in biometric and security technologies. |
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| People worried about national security post-9/11, Bali and London now see a national ID card as providing some protection from terrorism. The reality is that ID cards will not prevent terrorism. What they will do is make it more difficult for terrorists to move around and adopt multiple identities. Identity fraud has been present in about one third of terrorist incidents in Western countries; in the remaining two thirds (as in Madrid and London), the perpetrators kept their own identities. |
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| Source: Security Solutions Magazine - Issue 37 |
