Intrusive “passport” interviews step towards ID database, says NO2ID
17 February 2007
NO2ID [1] has dismissed claims from the Identity and Passport Service (“IPS”) [2] that its new programme of interrogating applicants based on detailed personal dossiers is a necessary procedure for passport security. They say it is only a pretext for building up centralised official files on individuals as the basis of the planned National Identity Register. The scheme is to be rolled out at 69 new interrogation centres during 2007 and used first on new applicants for passports, who are mostly teenagers contemplating travelling alone for the first time.
Prior to interviews described as deliberately ”intrusive” by Home Office documents, large amounts of information will be collected on passport applicants, who then be cross-questioned on personal details. Those seeking their first adult passport will be asked to provide many more details about themselves in the new forms than people currently are [3], such as their previous addresses, and official references used for other government services. New powers, in regulations under the Identity Cards Act 2006 [4],will be used to make other public authorities provide private information they hold on the person corresponding to those details, which will be compiled into a single file.
IPS plans published last year [5] show that this procedure is intended to be extended gradually to the entire population, as a step towards creating the ID cards database. While it applies to passports (or other official documents such as residence visas) it is being officially regarded as “voluntary”. Many more interrogation centres will eventually be required. [6]
Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator said:
"Claims that this is an essential independent passport programme are tripe. The IPS’s own publications, even it’s own name, make it completely clear that it is a pretext to build the ID scheme. The only reason your private life is to be raked over by officials in this way is to collect and connect all official information about you for National Identity Register. The spin is intended to be reassuring, but the real message is clear: If you want to travel, you are a suspect.”
Guy Herbert, NO2ID’s General Secretary said:
“As for ‘security’, it is at best ridiculous gold-plating. Passport applications are already checked with credit reference agencies to see that the person concerned has a ‘footprint’ in society. That’s cheap and straightforward: a problem for privacy, but not a big one.
“But at worst it this a major new threat to the security of the individual. Leave aside that it is thoroughly unpleasant to have a bored clerk poke into your private life. The Government is deliberately collecting in one place all the information, and more, you’d need to take someone’s identity for fraud, or for an enemy to track and to persecute them. State security and personal security are different things.”
-ENDS-
Notes for editors:
1) NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. NO2ID is affiliated to by the National Union of Journalists:
http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=1595 Scroll down NO2ID’s front page http://www.no2id.net for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that the campaign is working to actively oppose.
2) No longer “the Passport Office”. The clue is in the name. The new agency was created on 1st April 2006, two days after the Identity Cards Bill 2006 became law.
3) The IPS announcements have minimised these changes, but they are very significant. Currently passport applications seek to verify only that you are the person applying. Where you live only matters to return the passport to you. Passports themselves do not include address details, and there is very limited information supplied on the form that could be useful to a third party. See a form at any Post Office.
4) s38(1) “38. Verifying information provided with passport applications etc.
“(1) Where it appears to the Secretary of State that a person on whom a requirement may be imposed under this section may have information in his possession which could be used-
(a) for verifying information provided to the Secretary of State for the purposes of, or in connection with, an application for the issue of a passport, or
(b) for determining whether to withdraw an individual's passport, the Secretary of State may require that person to provide him with the information.”
5) See IPS, Corporate and Business plans 2006-16, published 21st April 2006.
http://www.passport.gov.uk/downloads/IPS_Corporate_Plans06.pdf [pdf]
6) The British Computer Society in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in
2004 estimated that 2000 centres would be required to issue ID cards. That was before the details of the elaborate interrogation process had been announced.
For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839, Guy Herbert (General Secretary,
general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308, or Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166.
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