No to ID cards; no to ID culture

Maybe leaving it over two weeks to blog about a tech conference is missing the point. But I’ve just dug out my notes from this year’s OpenTech and I thought I would share them here.

The first talk I went to was billed as “NO2ID: tales from the battlefront”. Phil Booth, NO2ID’s national coordinator, was concerned that this sounded too much like an old soldier telling stories of the past. He assured us that his talk would be “more like dispatches from an all-too-active front”.

His point, hammered home with plenty of examples, was that the battle is not over. It’s great news that the new government have abolished the ID card scheme, but ID culture – the state using personal information to control people – is alive and well. Although the Identity Cards Act has been repealed, the Home Office is still going ahead with a scheme to create a biometric visa system for the UK: essentially, 'ID cards for foreigners'. This means that the infrastructure for creating biometric ID cards is not only still intact, but actually in current use.

Phil gave examples of successful NO2ID campaigns, such as The Big Opt Out, which encouraged people to opt out of NHS summary care records. The government originally didn't plan to give people any choice about summary care records, but The Big Opt Out compelled them to give people the option. Now information about opting out is on the NHS website.

How to be a successful civil liberties campaigner

He also shared various lessons he's learnt over six years fighting the database state:

• Never compromise on principles, but do be practical.
• Grab people's attention. You do need a hook to help people understand why an issue matters.
• Know your stuff. "Read everything. Then read it again." Especially if it's written by a civil servant: the language can be precise but still misleading. For example, "Transformational government" means the opposite of what you think: it means government staying the same and trying to transform us. "I've pulled the rug out [from people] many times by quoting or even reading from the relevant Act!"
• Keep it simple.
• Plan for success. What does success look like and what would it mean in practice? How can this success be built on?

New dangers

The final part of the talk was about the latest threats to freedom in the UK. The biggest danger is perhaps the outsourcing of the database state, as with the recent partnership betwen Experian and the DWP. Outsourcing means that government and its partners can "use commercial confidentiality as a shield", to stop us demanding answers about what's happening to our data.

And the British government still isn't taking enough care with our data. It may seem hard to believe, but there is no centrally held list of the databases that contain our personal information. NO2ID campaigners have repeatedly asked Cabinet Office to supply this information and they have been told that there is no such list. In other words, nobody in government has full knowledge of where, why and how our personal information is being held.

So NO2ID are going to do the job for them. As Phil put it, "We could keep shooting alligators, but we want to drain the swamp. And for that, we need a map." They've begun the job of mapping where our data is held by using Freedom of Information requests, but there's still a lot of work to do. The next step is to use data subject access requests where individuals request all the information being held on them personally. The requested information tends to come through in dribs and drabs as various civil servants dig it out from the electronic equivalent of dusty filing cabinets.

Phil emphasised the importance of being persistent; if you're given a couple of pieces of information and told that's everything, don't believe it. Keep coming back and asking for more.