Identifying Citizens E-Book

David Lyon

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Themes for the 21st Century Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 357

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

New ID card systems are proliferating around the world. These may use digitized fingerprints or photos, may be contactless, using a scanner, and above all, may rely on computerized registries of personal information. In this timely new contribution, David Lyon argues that such IDs represent a fresh phase in the long-term attempts of modern states to find stable ways of identifying citizens.

New ID systems are “new” because they are high-tech. But their newness is also seen crucially in the ways that they contribute to new means of governance. The rise of e-Government and global mobility along with the aftermath of 9/11 and fears of identity theft are propelling the trend towards new ID systems. This is further lubricated by high technology companies seeking lucrative procurements, giving stakes in identification practices to agencies additional to nation-states, particularly technical and commercial ones. While the claims made for new IDs focus on security, efficiency and convenience, each proposal is also controversial. Fears of privacy-loss, limits to liberty, government control, and even of totalitarian tendencies are expressed by critics.

This book takes an historical, comparative and sociological look at citizen-identification, and new ID cards in particular. It concludes that their widespread use is both likely and, without some strong safeguards, troublesome, though not necessarily for the reasons most popularly proposed. Arguing that new IDs demand new approaches to identification practices given their potential for undermining trust and contributing to social exclusion, David Lyon provides the clearest overview of this topical area to date.

Leseprobe

Identifying Citizens

This book celebrates the lives of four small but special people, Hannah, Molly, Fin and Ezra. May their identities never be overshadowed by their identifications.

Identifying Citizens

ID Cards as Surveillance

DAVID LYON

polity

Copyright © David Lyon 2009

The right of David Lyon to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5590-1

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Printed and bound in the United States by Maple-Vale Books

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

Demanding Documents

2

Sorting Systems

3

Card Cartel

4

Stretched Screens

5

Body Badges

6

Cyber-Citizens

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

For some time I have wanted to research and write in a focused way about identification systems, and so I am grateful for several opportunities that have helped me devote attention to this. Working with the Surveillance Project at Queen’s University has provided both context and colleagues for studying ID systems, within groupings under the rubric of ‘Globalization of Personal Data’ (GPD) and, more recently, ‘The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting’ (affectionately known as ‘NewT’). Each is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to which I am indebted. A further boost came in the shape of a Killam Research Fellowship (2008-2010) that allows me to concentrate on questions of identification and of which this book is the first fruit.

A previous product of this research interest was the book Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective (Routledge, 2008), co-edited with my long-time research colleague Colin Bennett, under the GPD aegis. This contains a number of illuminating chapters from many countries around the world, some of which I have drawn upon in this present book, making it in some ways a companion volume. I also continue to work on this theme, partly in conjunction with another network of researchers, known as IdentiNet, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (UK) and led by Jane Caplan and Eddy Higgs.

The chapters of this present book have each seen the light of day in some prior context or format, at conferences and workshops, but also in earlier published versions from which these have been revised and expanded. Chapter 1 was originally prepared for a conference on ‘Technologies of InSecurity’ at the University of Oslo in 2007 and the version made for that occasion appears in a book of that title (Routledge, 2008) edited by Katja Franko Aas, Helene Oppen Grundhus and Heidi Mork Lomell. Chapter 2 has a pre-life in TechnoCrime (Willan, 2008) edited by Stéphane Leman-Langlois. The idea of the ‘card cartel’ was tested at the British Sociological Association meetings at the University of East London in 2007 and again at the International Sociological Association Forum in Barcelona in 2008. Much of chapter 5 appeared in an earlier form as an article entitled ‘Biometrics, identification and surveillance’ in Bioethics, 22:9, 499–508 (2008). I am grateful to that journal, the International Association of Bioethics and Blackwell Publishing for the use of this article. Finally, ideas for chapter 6 had their first public airing at a symposium on ‘Technology and Democracy’ arranged by Darin Barney at McGill University in 2006 and in another form at a conference on ‘Surveillance and Democracy’ organized by Kevin Haggerty and Minas Samatas at the University of Crete in 2008; proceedings of this latter conference, including my own contribution, are available in a book of the same name co-edited by the organizers (Routledge, 2009).

As well as thanking the thoughtful listeners and readers in those contexts, I must mention my gratitude to several others who have shown interest in this project and who have kindly read part or the whole of the text. These are Katja Franko Aas, Colin Bennett, Krista Boa, Ayse Ceyhan, Andrew Clement, Catarina Frois, Alex Galloway, Kevin Haggerty, Bob Pike, Charles Raab, Mark Salter, Nick Spencer, Irma van der Ploeg, Dean Wilson and Elia Zureik. Add to this Andrea Drugan, my unfailingly patient and positive editor at Polity Press, and the anonymous reader she engaged. Emily Smith, Research Associate at the Surveillance Project, has given generously as a researcher, reader and organizer. Of course, whatever blemishes and blunders remain are mine.

Family members are the most long-suffering of supporters, and I simply do not know where I would be without them. My mother, Jean, in her ninetieth year, takes a keen interest in my work, as do each of our children. Sue, my life-partner, is a constant source of succour and wisdom, without whom I could not do what I do, but who also helps me know when to stop doing it. The book itself, though born in the struggles of this generation, is dedicated lovingly to four members of the next.

Introduction

‘Identities’ float in the air, some of one’s own choice but others inflated and launched by those around, and one needs to be constantly on the alert to defend the first against the second . . . .

Zygmunt Bauman1

‘May I see some ID?’ We hear this every day. It is so commonplace that we take it for granted. But much hangs on what we produce. Being able to enter some workplaces, or join the fast-track line at the airport, or simply withdraw cash from an ATM – each of these depends on having ID. Equally, without the right ID you may be refused emergency medical attention, denied access to a secure website, or turned away at the border. In this book I offer an overview, a general guide to issues raised by the current trend towards the production of ‘new’ ID systems and especially national IDs. As the title suggests, the crucial connections are between ‘identification’ processes and ‘citizenship’ and between ‘ID cards’ and ‘surveillance’.

Citizens have always been identified, and in modern times this has been rationalized with records of personal details such as birth and residence, and sometimes with identification documents. Today, however, ID cards containing microchips, biometrics and other machine-readable features are being proposed and promoted, sometimes as ‘national ID’ systems. This involves connections to databases, enabling vastly expanded organizational access to personal data and, hence, more surveillance. Not only are identification practices changing, innovations like machine-readable IDs and automated citizen access to government information help to alter the nature of citizenship itself.

The book explores the theme of ‘identifying citizens’ from a number of angles, historical, technical, political and sociological, with a view to showing why new ID systems raise urgent new questions for analysis, ethics and policy. We have made a world of global trade and consumption that depends heavily upon computer and communication technologies to organize and coordinate everyday life, and ID systems often contribute to its greater efficiency and convenience. But the same systems often replicate and sometimes exacerbate the inequalities and injustices of that world, and they do so in ways that are subtle and that may not be intended by their promoters. These are not the IDs of ‘one’s own choice’ so much as those ‘inflated and launched’ by others, in Zygmunt Bauman’s opening words above. So as well as investigating the rise of the ubiquitous ID, this book also offers critical tools for being ‘constantly on the alert to defend the first against the second’.

Today’s New IDs

Although I have never held a national ID card, I am asked from time to time for some proof of citizenship. I must include my Citizenship Card in the package when applying for a new passport, for instance. For crossing the border from Canada to the USA, my driver’s licence used to suffice, but for most ‘citizenship’ purposes I would now have to produce a passport. The most obvious moment for citizenship checks is in airports, both on departing from and on arriving in a country. As well, one is often required to show a passport in foreign hotels. In Lebanon recently my passport was demanded at numerous internal military checkpoints, as it had been decades ago when I visited the old ‘iron curtain’ countries of Eastern Europe. So where and when might I need a ‘national ID card’?