Surveillance State may put us inadvertently in danger

1 July 2005

Grantham Journal article

After the Second World War we created the Welfare State – some of which is now visibly flaking away, especially in the NHS, in pensions and with increasing means-testing. In the last decade we have been building a Nanny State – endless regulation and a vast expansion of the bureaucracy in quangos and local and central authorities to administer it.

Are we now about to construct the Surveillance State? We have more and more CCTV cameras. Last month the Transport Secretary outlined proposals for constant G.P.S. surveillance of road traffic. On Tuesday we had the Second Reading of the Identity Card Bill.

The Bill sounds innocuous – designed to counter terrorism and benefit fraud.

What is actually proposed is however something much further reaching. The idea is that within a decade it would be compulsory to apply for an identity card – and to pay for it (the Government’s estimate of the cost is around £90 per person, independent estimates are £140 - £190).

Much more sinister, a large range of data, personal and financial information, as well as criminal records (presumably including traffic offences) would be entered electronically on the card and stored in a national data centre. The Inland Revenue, the police, the Benefit Agency and other Government organisations would have access to it. Every time the card was checked – by the police stopping a vehicle for instance, or by a bank issuing a credit card, or – a point made in the debate – just by the holder taking a book out of a public library and being asked for the card, an entry would be recorded.

The Government would know where you had been, and with whom you had been doing business – that is if you had not already been recorded on a surveillance camera, or by the electronic tagging of your car.

Of course I don’t believe Tony Blair really wants to create the world depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 – a police state with surveillance cameras everywhere, and signs warning “Big Brother is Watching You”.

But in free societies more evil is done inadvertently than by deliberate intention.

There are no prizes for guessing how I voted.