Stockwell Day, Canada’s new minister of public security, has raised the prospect of creating a national ID card. Again. This issue was a pet project of former Liberal Minister Denis Coderre, who pushed for a national ID card that would be expensive, provide little additional security, create new privacy risks, and would remove rights to remain anonymous. The national ID card proposal garnered little support from a Commons committee and even less from the privacy community.
Nevertheless, Day says the national ID card is inevitable since "we want good, law-abiding people to have smooth and quick access at all border points." There will apparently be lots of time to debate this issue. In the meantime, read then Privacy Commissioner Robert Marleau’s analysis which remains as relevant today as it was in 2003.
ID Cards
What your government should do, IMHO, is watch the unfolding of an expensive and unworkable system in the UK (where, sadly, the Government has again rejected the numerous and well-made arguments against their preferred option and voted in favour of these cards) and then consider the issue again. I think the card is about controlling the sheep (those of us who are on the whole law-abiding) rather than uncovering the wolves.
Bah!
And once again, the arguement “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is used to make people who argue for their own rights not to be sheep appear to be “bad people”.
Well, I tell you what.
If this comes into play, I plan on running around and peeing on my neighbour’s trees in the dead of the night. Then, I’ll have something to hide, so that I can feel good about not getting on board with a national ID card.