30 June 2009 – Members' evening and AGM
On the first anniversary of the day nine members were arrested, the group held a "members' evening".
John Welford, David Muxworthy and John Wood were again re-elected as Edinburgh group coordinator, secretary and treasurer respectively.
Robots
Chris Halliday gave a demonstration of his robotic street theatre act and was brilliantly frightening as robot QWERK.E1.
It was interesting to discover that his main enjoyment in performing as a robot was to observe the responses and body language of the members of his audience.
Databases
David Muxworthy concentrated on his experience of maintaining databases of personal information, such as mailing lists and a large organization's internal telephone directory.
This led him to believe that the government's implicit assumption that the National Identity Register could be maintained so as to be continuously up to date was thoroughly misguided.
He also drew attention to a powerful speech against compulsory ID cards by Alistair Darling in the Commons in 1989; even twenty years ago Darling was concerned about the security of information held on computers.
History
John Welford drew attention to 'The Information State in England: The Central Collection of Information on Citizens Since 1500' by Edward Higgs (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
After describing the contempt for MPs shown by Oliver Cromwell in dismissing the Rump Parliament in 1653, he said that ID documents had been introduced first during the first world war in 1915. They were reintroduced in 1939 and abandoned only in 1952 after the famous Clarence Willcock case.
Great Britain being an island, compared to the Continent there was less fear of intrusion by foreigners and less need for people to be able to prove their identity at short notice. Why were ID cards being reintroduced now? It seemed that it was a consequence of 9/11.
If politicians learnt anything from the lessons of history, then during the past ten years the key recommendations which should have been listened to were:
- Stay away from Iraq
- Stay away from Afghanistan
- Stay away from ID cards
Who's Watching You?
Tia Halliday had provisionally been invited to show her NO2ID campaign film but she was not able to attend.
Instead a short extract was shown of the recent BBC programme "Who's Watching You?" which covered ID cards, the DNA database and the storing of email and telephone communication data.