Chipping away at freedom

The country may be evenly split over ID cards but opposition to radio-based tracking is overwhelming.
By Frank Fisher
The Guardian
Dec. 06, 2006

As the build-up towards ID cards implementation nears, the British public is increasingly sceptical of government claims on the usefulness and security of both the cards themselves, and the ID database. Today's poll by YouGov and The Telegraph demonstrates that not only are millions prepared to face fines and jail, rather than submit to scanning and fingerprinting, they're also a lot more clued up on the damage errors on the ID database may cause. Identity theft is problematic if the ID thief clones your Visa card, if your ID is switched at the database, half your life will be turned upside down - it's a credit to the public that they have grasped this when the Government seems unable to comprehend what a tempting target their ID database will be.

Even so, 50% still favour introduction of the cards. However, when survey respondents were asked about a number of issues surrounding our developing surveillance society (a term, incidentally, that most felt appropriate) a fascinating element leaps out. That 50% faction suddenly shatters when the possibility of being tracked via ID cards is posed. Now, anyone who has made a thorough examination of the system knows that any widespread use of ID cards at points of sale, or to authorise cheques, bank payments or other transactions, or to permit access to specific areas or even computers, will permit easy, if partial, geographic tracking via database queries. But I'm guessing that this isn't what alarms the public - and in fact the YouGov question specifically refers to the use of "chips in identity cards to track movements". Looks like the tortured evasions of the Home Office, marvellously exposed here by The Register, have all been for nothing; the public have figured out what RFID chips are for, and they don't like it.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips are tiny transponders, unpowered, that emit an identification signal when interrogated by a transmitting device - the "tags" vets inject into dogs, cats and livestock are RFID chips. But the chips are also fitted to many consumer goods during manufacture and distribution, and to travelcards such as London's OysterCard, security passes and, now, passports and ID cards. The Home Office like to call the chips "contactless" identifiers, and will claim they have a maximum range of just two or three centimetres - that's never been the case, as the Guardian found out when hacking RFID-enabled passports; a thirty foot detection range, through brick walls too. Studies with distribution chain RFID tags -typically used to monitor goods in transit or storage - find ten metre ranges are readily achievable without expensive equipment and this, folks, is with ancient chips - in computer terms, from the Neolithic. Who'd like to bet a 50m range won't be happily achievable with the next gen items fitted to our ID cards?

Even the existing 10 metre range will make detection and tracking across urban areas an easy task - but then the public knows this. They've seen Enemy of the State - they don't need Polly telling them they're paranoid, and to take another nosepeg, when they've already clocked Arnie tugging a transponder out of his nose in Total Recall.

No doubt the allusions to science fiction depictions of surveillance societies will add "fantasist" to the paranoia charge - but we can learn a lot from SF imaginings of our future, as the past fifty years have demonstrated. And don't forget, geeks read SF, then they go out and develop the toys they've read about.

The point is, when the public imagine the uses and abuses of this kind of technology, they can see a downside. They understand their own views, they are in touch with how they feel, and they feel that it is desirable to avoid 24/7 surveillance - and in a democracy, aren't simple opinions and desires permitted? Do we have to provide structured and proven arguments for every intuition, or be dismissed as cuckoo?

Regardless of the legitimacy of their fears - and the increasing police use of OysterCard records suggest this really isn't a baseless concern - if 70% of the population really do consider that RFID tags will lead to monitoring of their movements then ID cards could turn out to be an even harder sell than imagined. There's something primeval, perhaps, in the fear of being tracked that gets to the gut in a way that popping up on a thousand distant databases doesn't. Maybe we still carry that hardwired instinct to avoid the hunter, back from the days when we were more often prey than predator. Whatever the reason, it's clear that while a narrow majority feel being asked to prove their identity on demand poses no immediate threat, they're not yet willing to be herded and tracked like cattle.