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Electronic identity (ID) cards have made alarming progress towardsbecoming universal around the world. Already, over 2.2 billionpeople, or 33 per cent of the world's population, have been issuedwith "smart" ID cards. Of those cards, over 900 million have

biometric facial and fingerprint systems. On present plans, over 85 per centof the world's population will have smart ID cards by 2012. Most of theremaining population won't have escaped: largely, they are already enrolledin earlier-generation ID systems, often in repressive states such as Myanmar(Burma).

Understandably, campaigns against the introduction of ID cards havetended to play up the problems with ID systems, presenting them as beingunworkable and creating unmanageable problems with privacy invasion,fraud, unauthorised database access, organised crime, unreliability ofbiometric recognition, etc. As a result, a substantial number of peoplebelieve mandatory ID cards "just won't happen".

It's long past time to stop burying our heads in the sand. There are noobstacles to the worldwide introduction of mandatory electronic ID cards.

All those problems with ID systems may be real, but they are not enoughto stop implementation, primarily because these are problems that willaffect people as individuals, not their governments—our problem, not theirs.There has been hardly any meaningful debate about one of the biggestissues of our time.

It's also time to look at what ID systems are really intended to do, not atthe public justification for them. Since governments probably always knewthat ID cards wouldn't stop terrorism, organised crime, ID theft, fraud, etc.,there has to be some other reason for their introduction—and it appears tobe a reason that governments don't want to own up to in public.

A Coordinated International ID Agenda?Perhaps we can learn more if we look at what is going on around the world.

Interestingly, nobody seems to have published a comprehensive or reliablesurvey of worldwide ID schemes, so a survey had to be compiled for thisarticle [see tables in author's original posting; Ed.].

What stands out from this survey, incomplete as it may be, is that advancedelectronic ID card systems are coming to some of the poorest nations in theworld, some in chaos, civil war and starvation, both small and large countries.They are coming to nations with vastly divergent cultures, to nations that arealmost completely pre-industrialised and underdeveloped, and coming firstto almost all Islamic nations. The few that will not have advanced electronicpopulation registration will be in a tiny minority. This is all to happen by theend of 2012. For example, on 25 June 2009, India announced it is pressingahead with the introduction of universal biometric ID cards, to be completedby 2011—to register nearly 1.2 billion people within just 18 months.

IIDENTITYDENTITY CCARDSARDSA GA GLOBALLOBAL PPERSPECTIVEERSPECTIVE

High-tech ID systems,incorporating smart

cards, biometrics andradio-frequencies andconnected to mega-databases to track

our every movement,are being introduced

simultaneouslyworldwide.

Is this a coincidence?

by Nathan Allonby© Global Research

31 August 2009

Centre for Research onGlobalization

Montreal, CanadaWebsite: www.globalresearch.ca

However, there are grey areas. For example, in somestates, such as Mozambique and Zambia, there arebiometric ID cards for voter registration which aren'tofficially national ID cards but nonetheless haveregistered the population.

"Election cards" tend to become national ID cardsimmediately after an election, as in Haiti. (How didintroducing ID cards get linked to "bringing indemocracy"?) The USA would probably be in the greyarea due to the uncertainty (deliberately not clarified)about the Real ID Act, Canada due to proposals forbiometric "enhanced drivers licenses", and Australia dueto the uncertain status of the Access Card. Anyuncertainty gets put into perspective by the "bigpicture": ID cards are coming, almost everywhere.

The simultaneous introduction of very similar ID cardsystems in so many nations seems more than acoincidence. If it were purely amatter of nations taking theirown initiative to upgradesystems, this would happenover a longer timetable asnations periodically updatedsystems once every couple ofdecades. Does this timetableindicate unseen internationalpressure applied to nations toadopt ID cards?

In the process of researchingthe list, something interestingcame out. The plans tointroduce a national ID cardsystem in Uganda were announced in a memorandum ofunderstanding, dated 20 June 2008, sent to theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF).

The impression is that the IMF was involved in thedecision long before the people of Uganda wereconsulted about their national ID card scheme.

Has the IMF required nations to adopt biometric IDcards, on the pretext of instigating financial regulationand preventing fraud and money laundering?

Again and again, in the public description of thealleged benefits of biometric ID systems, the reasonsgiven include the benefit to the banking system, inpreventing fraud, and allowing the poor to have accessto the banking system.

Several nations (e.g., India) have mentioned the needto confirm that aid gets to the intended recipients andis not lost in fraud—again, something which a bodysuch as the IMF might see as a justifiable reason topromote or require biometric ID, but other peoplewould see as a mere pretext for "policy laundering".

In a different example of western promotion, theEuropean Union (EU) has financially sponsored theintroduction of biometric ID cards in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo, allegedly to help promote peace bytracking down ex-soldiers and ex-fighters. A similar

logic has been applied to a biometric scheme inSomalia.

Grotesquely, biometric ID cards are coming toRwanda. ID cards were a major tool in the Rwandangenocide. Imagine how much more effective thegenocide could have been with a computerisedpopulation register and an ID system with biometrics toprevent fraud or evasion. Rwanda's experience is anhorrific illustration of how lethal ID cards can be in anation in civil war, and raises uncomfortable questionsabout western involvement, as does the situation inCongo.

Policy Harmonisation in the EU, UK and USAThe worldwide introduction of ID cards is merely the

visible witness of an invisible process. Policies thatprofoundly affect our lives and take away our freedoms

are worked out in secretinternational deals.

In July 2005, during its six-month rotation in thePresidency of the EU, theUnited Kingdom introduced aproposal for biometric IDcards for Europe despite thefact that it had no power to doso under the EU treaties atthat time.

Legalities being no obstacle,this subsequently evolved intobinding EU policy in theHague Programme on justice

and security.However, policies introducing ID cards, evolved in

secret, go far beyond identification and security, asdescribed by Tony Bunyan of Statewatch in an article inthe Guardian ("The surveillance society is an EU-wideissue", 28 May 2009; includes quotations from Bunyan'sStatewatch report, "The Shape of Things to Come"). IDcards are only one tool, enabling a much larger schemeto track and record the life of every individual; Bunyancalls this the "digital tsunami".

'Every object the individual uses, every transaction theymake and almost everywhere they go will create a detaileddigital record. This will generate a wealth of informationfor public security organisations', leading to behaviourbeing predicted and assessed by 'machines' (their term)which will issue orders to officers on the spot. The proposalpresages the mass gathering of personal data on travel,bank details, mobile phone locations, health records,internet usage, criminal records however minor,fingerprints and digital pictures that can be data-minedand applied to different scenario[s]—boarding a plane,behaviour on the Tube or taking part in a protest.

But this isn't just coming to Europe, as Bunyanexplains, because the USA and Europe will share similar

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Has the IMF requirednations to adopt biometricID cards, on the pretext of

instigating financialregulation and preventing

fraud and moneylaundering?

policies and practices in an agenda of policyharmonisation:

...it is proposed that by 2014 the EU needs to create a 'Euro-Atlantic area of cooperation with the USA in the field offreedom, security and justice'. This would go far beyondcurrent co-operation and mean that policies affecting theliberties and rights of everyone in Europe would not bedetermined in London or Brussels but in secret EU–USmeetings.

Was this a response to 9/11? No, emphatically not.We can say this because some of these schemes have apublished history and timeline dating from muchearlier, e.g., Taiwan, 1997, and India, 1999. We can tracea continuing pursuit of ID-based databases back to theAustralia Card, which was defeated in1987. We can also say with certaintythat EU–US cooperation on securitypre-dates 9/11, as does EUdevelopment of security databaseswhich have been applied to politicalprotestors.

What Do ID Cards Do?The new cards are like a high-tech

"glue", an interface, joining togetherall the different state databases andlinking their information together.This is the significance of the "multi-functional" identity function ofthe new cards: one ID number isthe key to access all services andalso all databases. One card, onenumber, tracks a person acrossmultiple activities, across theirwhole life and everything theydo—employment, tax, health,everything. When numerousdatabases are linked together bymeans of a common interface, inthis case ID numbers, theyeffectively function as a single"meta-database".

In the Guardian (30 September 2003), home affairseditor Alan Travis wrote that the "citizen informationregister" in Britain will "bring together all the existinginformation held by the government" on its 58 millionresidents:

It will include their name, address, date of birth, sex, and aunique personal number to form a 'more accurate andtransparent' database than existing national insurance,tax, medical, passport, voter and driving licence records...

The decision to give the go-ahead to the nationalpopulation register without any apparent need for newlegislation or any public debate is in sharp contrast to theintense cabinet debate now taking place over the...identitycard scheme...

...The scheme is a joint project between the Office ofNational Statistics and the Treasury...

The idea was developed by the Treasury's public servicesproductivity panel—a group of senior business people andpublic services managers...

[The Home Office] admitted a national identity cardscheme will have to be 'underpinned by a database of allUK residents' and asked for views on whether the citizensinformation register should be used for this purpose...

The Indian ID scheme is another major example.According to an article in the Hindu (26 June 2009):

...the UID [Unique IDentification] numbers and thedatabase will be linked to agencies such as the ElectionCommission of India and the Income Tax Department,

which...issue...voters photo identitycards...

In addition, it will be used forproviding services under governmentschemes such as the publicdistribution system, and the NationalRural Employment GuaranteeScheme for families living below thepoverty line...and for deliveringfinancial and other assistance to theneedy.

This is the new model for e-government around the world.

Historically, this isn't the firsttime we have seen systems likethis. It is very similar in conceptto the Nazi ID system, as it finallyevolved, with a Reich PersonnelNumber to link all otherdatabases.

The system of compiling theinitial population register fromrecords in existing, earlierdatabases is, again, very similarto Nazi practice.

Why should this be significant?Why should there be any big deal

about the government collecting together data that italready has?

As reported by Henry Porter in his Guardian blog (25February 2009):

'Once an individual has been assigned a unique indexnumber, it is possible to accurately retrieve data acrossnumerous databases and build a picture of thatindividual's life that was not authorised in the originalconsent for data collection,' says Sir David Omand in areport for the Institute for Public Policy Research...

In 2006 Sir David Varney, the head of TransformationalGovernment, predicted that the state would know 'a deeptruth about the citizen based on their behaviour, experience,beliefs, needs or desires'.

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...one ID number isthe key to access

all services and alsoall databases...

When numerousdatabases are

linked together by means of a

commoninterface, in thiscase ID numbers,they effectively

function as a single"meta-database".

Loyalty Cards and Data-GatheringLet's not talk about a police state, let's talk about

supermarket loyalty cards. There isn't much differencebetween them in terms of technology, and modern IDcards seem to be close descendants of loyalty cards,intended for a similar purpose: gathering informationabout people. To be able to track someone, first youneed to identify them.

Corporations want to know as much as they can abouttheir customers, for marketing purposes, and have madean incredible investment in infrastructure for gatheringand analysing data about them. By 2004, Wal-Mart hadgathered 460 terabytes of information about customers,or more than twice the total information on the Internet.1

The majority of this data came fromloyalty cards.

Governments have adoptedelectronic ID cards because storeshave shown what powerful andeffective technology they are—notmerely effective, but cost-effective.Stores have demonstrated that theycan track and profile their customersto find their spending habits, theirweaknesses and their suggestibility,what advertising works on them.

The technology they use not onlyhad to prove it could work, but alsohad to prove it could pay foritself. If supermarketcorporations invest as much asthey do, the technology has to bevery effective.

Powerful and effective software,such as ChoicePoint andLexisNexis, has been developedfor analysing stores' loyalty carddata. Now we find some of thosesystems in use at the FBI toshortlist suspects.2

Governments have realisedthat this same profilingtechnology works and can also be applied to findingterrorists, "extremists", political dissidents or any othercategory of interest to the state. Some of thosecompanies also help in data-gathering.

When the US government obtained personal dataabout voters in 11 different Latin American states, forunspecified purposes, that data was obtained by privatecorporations including ChoicePoint.

It has been reported that the majority of USintelligence data-gathering is outsourced and thatabout 70 per cent of the budget goes to privatecorporations.

Although the majority of this spending goes tomilitary-defence corporations such as SAIC and BoozAllen Hamilton, consumer corporations also take their

place. So, do we see an evolving symbiosis betweengovernment and private corporations, where they sharetechnology and tools and cooperate in data-gathering?

RFID: A Powerful Tracking TechnologyOne of the tools that has migrated from loyalty cards

to ID cards is RFID (radio-frequency ID). It's in the newChinese ID card and it's going into all the new "smart"ID cards.

RFID is a tracking system, originally developed to trackstock in the supply chain and in warehouses. Tiny chipsallow a serial number and potential other data to beread from a distance of up to several feet. When anRFID-tagged item passes a reader, its number is

recorded. When RFID readers are connected to

a network, it is possible to compile arecord of the movements of an object(or person) by listing the times andplaces when and where the RFIDnumber was recorded.

RFID in loyalty cards allows thecardholder's name and all thepersonal information on the card tobe read from a distance of several feet,without the cardholder's knowledge.Using RFID, stores can read youridentity from your loyalty card as soon

as you walk in, without yourrealising. Now we are beingissued with government "loyaltycards" which will identify us byRFID.

The stores realised that, byplacing readers at variouslocations, they could use RFID totrack customers' movements—tosee, for example, the productsthey looked at but did not buy, inaddition to those they did.

Very quickly, the stores alsorealised that RFID in products

such as clothing items could be used to track themovements of the people who bought them. Unlike barcodes, RFID identifies each item with a unique serialnumber, differentiating identical items.

The chain stores' huge databases allowed them tokeep a tally of which objects had been bought by whichcustomers—putting names to RFID serial numbers.This extra information was very powerful in "profiling"customers; for example, they started to get data aboutwho was standing next to them, and they could guesswhether customers shopped alone, with their husbandsor wives, or with someone else.

Soon the stores will be able to read the RFID serialnumber in your national ID card in much the same way,and governments are going to sell ID confirmation to

14 • NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2009

Soon the storeswill be able to read the RFID

serial number inyour national

ID card in muchthe same way,

and governmentsare going to sell ID confirmation

to cross-referencethe serial numberon your ID card...

cross-reference the serial number on your ID card withyour name and address. Stores spend a lot of moneyacquiring data, so knowing customers' names andaddresses with certainty has really got to be worthsomething. Customers will no longer be able to hidetheir identities or give false names on loyalty cards.

When Employers Use ProfilingSome corporations already apply psychometric

profiling to their staff and potential employees to get aworkforce with the "right" profile, the "right" attitudes.Imagine how RFID tracking and profiling could facilitatethis, profiling individuals' whole lives.

By enabling ubiquitous tracking and profiling, couldID systems herald a corporate culture of conformity,with enforced redundancy for those who don't fit theright profile?

There have been widespread examples of employersdiscriminating againstindividuals on the grounds ofpolitical or union affiliations.The UK InformationCommissioner's Office foundthat many very large andrespectable companies hadengaged in illegal practices todo this.

What would happen ifemployers used data gleanedfrom ID systems and socialnetworks analysis to profilestaff, to find their friends andassociates and any affiliations?What would it mean to society and political culture ifcorporate employers could identify and discriminateagainst political and union activists, making it hard forthem to get a job? Would that be compatible withdemocracy?

Emeritus Professor Sheldon S. Wolin, a politicalphilosopher at Princeton University, USA, has warned ofthe danger of "inverted totalitarianism", as he calls it,which "lies in wielding total power without appearing to,without establishing concentration camps, or enforcingideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissidentelements so long as they remain ineffectual". Suchpower, as in the USA, shows "how democracy can bemanaged without appearing to be suppressed". (ChellisGlendinning, "Every Move You Make",CounterPunch.com, 19 June 2008)

Imagine if the power of the surveillance state wereapplied to controlling political dissent, especially in anenvironment of merger between state and corporatepower. Imagine dissidents being driven from their jobsor, perhaps more subtly, just denied promotion.

Imagine how detailed files on the psychologicalweaknesses and vulnerabilities of all individuals,generated by profiling, and records of any past

indiscretions could be used to apply pressure uponopponents to government policy.

Population Surveillance and Social ControlChina has become a laboratory for both capitalism and

the development of new technologies for surveillanceand "homeland security". Naomi Klein has writtenextensively about this in her book The Shock Doctrine(Picador, 2008) and in articles such as "China's All-Seeing Eye" and "The Olympics: Unveiling Police State2.0" (www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008?page=1).

Some powerful people appear to have decided thatcapitalism works best in conditions of inequality andinjustice. A by-product of this is instability: bitternessand resentment due to the appropriation of land andresources and forcing peasants off the land to becomesweatshop workers living in unbearable slums.

This is about the rich getting richer by robbingordinary people, co-opting thepower of the state to do so.This is the reason for the highincidence of riots,"disturbances" and socialtension in contemporary China.None of this troubles the West.

What the West has tried todo, however, is guaranteeChina's stability and help keepa lid on any trouble byproviding China with access tothe latest surveillance andsecurity technology, to make ita more effective dictatorship.

New technologies that are found to work in the sociallaboratory of China can be adopted and appliedelsewhere.

A good example of this would be facial recognitiontechnology, supplied to China by the US, illegally butwith a nod and a wink, to make it easier for the Chineseauthorities to identify troublemakers in a crowd orsimply follow the movements of people of interest andperhaps identify any people whom they meet and talkwith. Recognition systems now can match one face in amillion, good enough to find one face in a city. Howneatly this dovetails with the database of digital imagesprovided by China's ID system.

RFID also has applications in the state securityapparatus. China is issuing hand-held RFID readers toits policemen so they can take people's identities fromtheir ID cards. It has the highest incidence of riots ofany country in the world, due to the severe socialconditions and inequality.

China has adopted the practice of containingdisturbances rather than wading in to break them up;instead of arresting rioters on the spot, the policemerely identify them—to arrest one by one at theirconvenience.

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RFID has an obviousapplication: the identities

of everyone in a crowdcould be collected by one

mingling plain-clothespoliceman with an

RFID reader.

CCTV and surveillance technologies are used for thisidentification. RFID has an obvious application: theidentities of everyone in a crowd could be collected byone mingling plain-clothes policeman with an RFIDreader.

The RFID facility can also be useful to states withmobile populations. India is anticipating the migrationof large numbers of the rural population to the cities. Itplans to use a combination of RFID and GPS-basedGeographical Information Systems (GIF) toautomatically record the voter migration or shifting ofresidence and to automaticallyupdate databases such as theelectoral register. One can also seehow useful this would be to theChinese authorities, with largenumbers of rural peasants migratingto cities, illegally, to work as anuntraceable, unstable underclass.

So, is this the model to be appliedelsewhere: increasing inequality,increasing slum populations andunrest controlled through security?

Such displacement is a globalphenomenon. And yes, the WorldBank has an explicit role inpromoting this, saying thaturbanisation and migration aregood and necessary things.

As described in Professor MikeDavis's book Planet of Slums(Verso, 2007), a huge part of theworld's population lives inslums—a symptom of growinginequality and increasingexploitation. It's a trend that'sramping up.

In the USA, cities are dying,with whole neighbourhoods andin some cases whole districts being bulldozed, theirinhabitants dispossessed. The plight of Detroitresidents is reminiscent of post-Katrina New Orleans,with private military contractors assuming governmentpowers in Urban Management Zones designated forwholesale clearance. This is the western manifestationof a global pattern. In 2009, the US Census Bureauplans to find even the people who have lost theirhomes, by employing 140,000 temporary workers to lookfor hidden and improvised housing units and obtainGPS coordinates for every "front door". A current legalcase may make that data available to private sectorcorporations.

The worldwide implementation of systems forpopulation surveillance and monitoring has to besignificant. It doesn't sound like it is part of making theworld a kinder, nicer place.

What Can We Do?We shouldn't close on such a bleak note because it

simply isn't true that there is nothing we can do,although we have left it pretty late. We have a goodchance if we recognise what's going wrong. We need to:

1. Organise internationally. One campaign group isslightly ahead in this area: CASPIAN (ConsumersAgainst Surveillance, Privacy-Invasion And Numbering).It has an international membership, works closely withother groups in different nations and addresses the

bigger picture, including corporatedata-gathering and RFID. The authorsuggests CASPIAN as a good initialhub for contact.

2. Raise awareness, engage thepublic. It's time to raise this issue atevery opportunity to get peoplethinking about the direction of publicpolicy, to draw their attention to what’sgoing on.

3. Expose the mindset of peopleimplementing this scheme. The aimof ID cards is to create a detaileddigital record of everywhere you go,

everything you do. The aim of theRFID industry is Total Mobility—continuously tracking themovement of all significantobjects and people. What kind ofmind and personality would wantsuch a thing?

4. Don't use cards, use cash.It's incredible how much peoplehave willingly cooperated inhanding over their personalinformation, cooperating in thesurveillance of their lives. Try notto leave a digital record. Don't let

your card identify you. ∞

Endnotes1. Albrecht, Katherine and Liz McIntyre, Spychips: Howmajor corporations and government plan to track your everypurchase and watch your every move with RFID, NelsonCurrent, 2005, p. 64, "There's a target on your back" 2. Gellman, Barton, "The FBI's Secret Scrutiny: In Huntfor Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of OrdinaryAmericans", Washington Post, 11/06/05

Editor's Note:This is an edited version of Nathan Allonby's article "IDCards – A World View", posted on the Global Researchwebsite on 31 August 2009. For the full text, includingtables and hyperl inks, go tohttp://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14992.

16 • NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2009

It's incredible howmuch people have

willinglycooperated in

handing over theirpersonal

information,cooperating in the

surveillance oftheir lives.