1- Text and Recording

ID Cards

Adapted From The Economist June 30th 2005

IF YOU have ever had trouble getting a book out of the library, Tony Blair has just the thing. A national identity card, as proof of who you are, could make life so much simpler—and it would foil terrorists, thwart benefit cheats, exclude illegal immigrants, put an end to identity theft and “improve community relations” to boot. At a cost of a mere £6 billion ($11 billion) or so, who could possibly be against that?

Plenty of people, as it happens. As Britain rushes towards a national identity card, civil-liberties groups and MPs have this week been raging against the assault to the nation's ancient freedoms and the ushering-in of a Big Brother society. They are right to be fearful, but for a more prosaic reason.

British governments have a long history of proposing a national ID card. This week, Labour won a parliamentary vote on an ID-card bill. Now the legislation will pass to the House of Lords and to Commons committees, where it will face more hostile scrutiny. The card's parliamentary opponents levelled two charges against it: that it imperils freedom and that it will cost too much. The threat to privacy, they say, stems from the sinister power that a national identity register could one day grant an overweening state. Even if this government pledges to respect its citizens' privacy, what about the next one?

Yet people traded their privacy for convenience long ago. Britons walking streets monitored by close-circuit television freely brandish mobile phones that track their movements and credit cards that record everything they buy. A determined government can already exploit the country's computer networks to pry into its citizens' lives. Liberty depends upon the rules governing the use of this data, not ID cards.

The real complaint against the cards is that they risk being a huge waste of money. Certainly, they will be expensive, though nobody knows how expensive. Even if the scheme costs £6 billion over the next decade, as the government predicts, Charles Clarke, the home secretary, needs to show it offers value for money. ID cards can inconvenience terrorists only if they are compulsory, but at the start they will be voluntary. Because there will be no requirement to carry the card, illegal immigrants can abscond before the deadline to present it at a police station. Most benefit fraud is through fake claims, not multiple identities. Irish citizens, who have free access to Britain, will not have the cards. Faced with such arguments, Mr Blair was left to claim lamely that the cards would help people “get around more easily”.

ID cards are a costly technology. The government must make a stronger case before it spends its citizens' money on them.

453 words

End of Recording

2- Essay Question

After listening to the tape explain the pros and cons of ID cards in Britain? You should use class information and give specific examples to argue your points. (between 350 to 400 words).