09 Oct 2008

Function creep and Iceland; China and ID

Sir Bonar writes

A word about our decision to freeze Icelandic bank assets under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.

I think this illustrates an important point.

It seems like only yesterday I was a junior Cabinet Office observer, bobbing around on a a Royal Navy frigate, helping protect our cod stocks from these same Icelanders. It was a terrifying experience for a junior fast-streamer; the North Sea can get very choppy in December. The Icelanders were responsible. Ergo, they are terrorists.

Fast forward to today, and it is not British cod but dots and dashes on a British VDU screen that the Cabinet Office is called upon to protect. These ephemeral luminesences represent the value of assorted derivatve instruments and the high-risk speculations of some local authorities - more virtual than cod, but equally fishy although in a different sense of the word.

Just like the cod, they too are ours, not theirs. So our policy is the same: to freeze them. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Seventeen sick bags in three days are not easily forgotten.

But my point is this shows the effectiveness of our “function creep” policy. Under “function creep” a law passed for one purpose (in this case freezing the assets of terrorists) is extended to offer utility in a quite different one (clawing our dubious investments back from the Icelanders). It demonstrates the desirability of flexible legislation generally, including laws that can be quickly extended with secondary legislation.

While I’m dictating, let me add a word about a short talk in a local school for girls last night. My theme was “Identity and security”.

It was a very good thing I was there. The propaganda of the naysayers seems to be taking root amongst these naive sixth-formers. They seem to think all our problems relating to identity are in the online world - facial networking, logging on and so forth, except for a curious fixation they have with fishing. The head girl went so far as to say that the only real-life need they had for ID Cards was to buy alcoholic drinks. Given that they were all under age she brazenly said that fake IDs were better suited to this purpose than our own gold-standard model backed by fingerprints and other biometrics.

I had to tell them quite frankly that this was possibly the most outrageous thing I had heard in my life. I took her name and shall ask my staff to place a special administrative mark on her ContactPoint record.

The benefits of our ID card scheme are well known. It will defeat benefit fraud, fight the war on drugs and war on terror, and interdict the activities of all manner of ne’er do wells. We do not and shall not resile from that position.

After the talk a pupil of Chinese origin approached me. She said she didnt understand what the fuss was about; she loved her ID card which made it easy to cross the Hong Kong border. That is why I do this voluntary schools work: one takes such inspiration from such young people. We shall ensure that only young people such as her are invited to the forthcoming focus group on ID systems being organised at Number 10 by Fujitsu.

 
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