The article published by the UK home office presents the initiatives by the British Home office to introduce the national ID system. The article presents reasons for the need for the implementation of the national ID system. The paper presents an exploration of the import of the article on the concepts of ethical dilemmas.
Moral choice is deemed to be crucial for honorable administrators. It normally consists of three equally important criterions such as being:
- disciplined people,
- active participants in their organizations
- independent judges.
Given the benefits incurred to both individuals and organizations, administrators in every single organization should employ—besides technical skills—“moral choice” to effectually lead the organization of the society, as well as resolve any problem in scenarios related to the governance of people.
Organizations particularly in public administration are bound to lead people in morally acceptable ways by charting and adhering to ethical manners of getting core goals and objectives accomplished. Such organizations have to place their key policy and ideology on the succor of values and morals governing normal human conduct and behavior. Values in this conceptual precinct are perceived as those ideas regarded as worthy, estimable, and important. By extension, values can be viewed as those concepts that govern human behaviors like freedom, equality, education, etc. Ethics are thus held as objective since these set the basis for a pattern of universality in the manner in which human conduct can be classified as ethical or unethical, moral or immoral. The implementation of the national ID system has presented ethical dilemmas on various fronts for the UK home office especially on the aspects of personal data security.
On privacy concerns, it is worth noting that on the second of February in 2005 the Parliament’s Joint Committee on human rights queried and questioned the compatibility of the National Identity Card Act with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which underscores and defines the right to respect for the privacy of life. The Act was also criticized and questing in light of Article 14 which underscores the right to non-discrimination. What was emphasized in the deliberations was the fact that the two statutes on privacy and dissemination are on the contrary entailed in the UK Human Rights Act?
On the legality and legal implications of the implementation of the National ID, act concerns are brewing over hints by the government as entailed in eth cited article from the UK Home Office and some security stakeholders that the ID database will be used in collaboration with the Biometric database details to compare the biometric database details against unresolved 900 000 crimes. Christopher Hope (2008) notes that the opposition to this abuse of private data by opposition parliamentarians is not baseless give that such use entailed the breach of promises given during the Commons debate and deliberation underscoring that there would be adequate safeguards to protect the misuse of abuse of ID card data fro fishing endeavors.
What exacerbates the extent of the privacy concerns about the NIR database is that upon the fact the Home office has indicated that the amount of data that can be stored is unlimited, according to the cited article the Home office portends that 265 government departments together with as many as 48 000 authorized private sector organizations would be granted access to the database. Upon the foregoing, a further 163 million identity verifications or even more may be necessitated each year. This is triggering serious privacy and data confidentiality worries on the general populace and especially those who have been privy to the dynamics of the proposed national ID system. Major concerns are on the fact that the security of sensitive data can not be guaranteed if the data will be availed to so many persons. (Lynne Featherstone 2006)
The proponents of the national ID system have claimed that the system is needed to gag the escalating costs of Identity theft. Nonetheless, security pundits have expressed that given eth amount of unlimited data that can and will be held in a single Identity Document, the system will rather make it easier for identity thieves to obtain sensitive identity data as they will have to only focus on the ID cards as their sole target. This is due to that the ID cards will be the ultimate data holders of sensitive personal or private data. The other security and privacy concerns are the false obtaining of such a facility will become highly valuable since the high sounding notions on the ‘security of the system will make people less likely to question its validity. (Lynne Featherstone 2006)
Lynne Featherstone (2006) notes that pubic opinion has been characterised by a sustained shift from positive to negative on the stature and implications of the National Identity Card system. Security expert Lord Hansard; (2005) states that the shift has also been influenced by the impact of the data loss debacle by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. He cites that another poll conducted by YouGov and Daily Telegraph results of which were made public on the 4th of December showed that support for the identity card element was at 50percent while the there was 29percent of opposition. On the other dimension support for the national database came put weaker with only 22 percent of those surveyed happy and the 78 percent unhappy with the matter of having their personal or private data recorder and stored in the national database. The statistics quoted by the scholar show that 11 percent of the surveyed population indicated that they trusted the government to keep the sensitive data confidential while on the other axis 3.12 percent of the interviewed respondents indicated they are willing to undergo a protracted prison sentence in the stead of having a card. This is an indication of the attitude of the general citizens who fraught the national Id system with skepticism.
Proponents of the national ID system have been leveraging much o the reasoning for the implementation of the Identification model as well as the national database on the logic of enhancing means to fight crime and terrorism as well as highlight the convenience and other merits tat come with the use of the national ID card. In an antithetical tone British Terrorism Act expert Lord Carlie (2008) has expressed that the national ID card may be of nominal value in the protracted fight against terrorism. Upon the foregoing the expert also challenged parliament to make sound judgment on the matter of the introduction of the national ID card system in light of its dreaded potentialities of curtailing the treasured liberties of the populace. David Carl (2005) has downplayed the raised concerns over the limitedness and the ineffectiveness of the system arguing that the national ID card system will enable the government and other concerned stakeholders in matters of crime and identification to up their fight stratagem against crimes such as identity theft and money laundering.
It seems even if the public opinion has been bullied by escalating crime statistics as well the growing instances of terrorism there has been much from the lobbying by the state to win convincing public opinion on the need and the feasibility of the national Card system. The system comes with serious confidentiality and personal data privacy breaches and security loopholes some of which have been highlighted above. These have sustained the gulf between the government and the citizens over the need and feasibility of the national ID card system despite the assertions by the government that the system will enable the government to implement various justice delivery forms in various justice scenarios enlisting corrective and commutative justice scenarios.
References
Parton, N. Some Thoughts on the Relationship between Theory and Practice in and for in Governance, 2000.
Lord Carlie.Law and order. Millen Pushing. 2008.
David Carl. Ethical Issues in Governance, NcGraw Hill, USA. 2005.
Lynne Featherstone, Cranford, Ethical Dilemmas, Hiram E, 2006.
Gary R. VandenBos, ed. APA Dictionary of Law, 1st ed, Washington: American Law Association, 2007.
Christopher Hope, Governance and constitution, Oak Press, UK. 2008