protests against the roll-out of the ID card scheme & database

Against the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

This is not the first time for­eign nation­als or migrants have been used as guinea pigs to test a law or tech­nol­o­gy. Exam­ples include the Asy­lum Reg­is­tra­tion Cards (ARC), which is a sim­i­lar card that asy­lum seek­ers have been required to car­ry since 2002. Once migrants have been used as a ‘road test’ for the wide­ly opposed ID scheme, the gov­ern­ment will start on the rest of us. From 2010 on, the gov­ern­ment pre­dicts that one mil­lion cards will be hand­ed out every year.

For more back­ground infor­ma­tion on how this ‘drip drip’ approach to impos­ing bio­met­ric ID cards relates to migra­tion man­age­ment and the Home Office’s points sys­tem read:

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3147
http://nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com/2008/11/defy-id-cards-no-one-is-illegal.html

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27th Novem­ber 2008
This evening approx­i­mate­ly 13 activists from No Bor­ders North East hand­ed out 200 anti-ID card leaflets to shop­pers in Cen­tral New­cas­tle. Ban­ners and plac­ards were also held, and a very pos­i­tive response was giv­en from the pub­lic.

Tues­day saw the intro­duc­tion of Iden­ti­ty Cards for non-EU cit­i­zens. No Bor­ders views this as yet anoth­er attempt to vic­tim­ize an often voice­less group, and so has orches­trat­ed a series of protests this week through­out the coun­try.

http://www.noborders.org.uk

.….

This morn­ing, dur­ing the peak rush hour time of 7.30 — 9.00 am, 4 activists from No Bor­ders North East per­formed an anti‑i.d card ban­ner drop from a bridge over one of the city’s busiest inner motor­ways. The largest ban­ner read “No To ID Cards, Free­dom For All!” and was accom­pa­nied by a small­er No Bor­ders ban­ner.

The reac­tion from the dri­vers below was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, with many honk­ing horns, wav­ing and giv­ing thumbs up.

Today sees the start of the ID card scheme, with non-EU cit­i­zens apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage, being made to car­ry a card and have their details put on the Gov­ern­men­t’s data­base. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. Under a cloud of anti-immi­gra­tion hys­te­ria the gov­ern­ment is increas­ing it’s social con­trol and attempt­ing to ush­er in unprece­dent­ed pow­ers of sur­veil­lance over the whole pop­u­la­tion.

The police came along while we were doing it, but did­nt seem to have any prob­lem with it. Inter­est­ing­ly how­ev­er, they said that an anar­chist sym­bol can be deemed offen­sive and thus remov­able under a pub­lic order act (?!). We told them that our No Bor­ders ban­ner with a large anar­chist sym­bol was­n’t in fact anar­chist relat­ed, and they believed us for some rea­son.… 😉
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York­shire Activists block­ade Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre

1.12.2008
At 8am this morn­ing a group of York­shire activists block­ad­ed the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Inter­ro­ga­tion Cen­tre at Vul­can House using bicy­cle locks and super­glue to attach them­selves to both entrances. The group are there in response to the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for non-EU peo­ple on stu­dent or mar­riage visas. They are dis­play­ing two ban­ners, one reads “My iden­ti­ty is not your prop­er­ty” and the oth­er “Noth­ing to hide? Every­thing to fear! Defy ID!”

Some appli­cants have been turned away by the Bor­der Agency staff but many were sup­port­ive of the actions the group has tak­en. Speak­ing to a block­ad­er, one appli­cant said that by intro­duc­ing com­pul­so­ry ID cards, the gov­ern­ment have shown that “they just want to con­trol peo­ple”. Bor­der Agency staff have called the police to remove the pro­test­ers but at the time of send­ing (10:30am) the pro­test­ers are still in place.

An activist from Brad­ford (who is cur­rent­ly super­glued to two oth­ers in front of the main entrance) said “The gov­ern­ment are try­ing to intro­duce ID cards through the back door, tar­get­ing some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in the coun­try.” A Sheffield activist added “If we want to save the peo­ple of Great Britain from ID cards, we must act now!”

Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion has meant that, since 25^th Novem­ber, for­eign spous­es and non-EU stu­dents who apply for, or renew, visas will be forced to attend an inter­ro­ga­tion and be issued with an ID card that will hold their name, pho­to­graph, nation­al­i­ty and immi­gra­tion sta­tus, along with a bio­met­ric chip that will hold their fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal image. The details will be held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base. Delays meant that the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre only began inter­ro­ga­tions from today (1^st Decem­ber).

Update — 11 activists were arrest­ed (sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than were thought to be locked on) after hold­ing the block­ade for more than three hours. All released with with ver­bal cau­tions.

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Iden­ti­ty Cards Protest, Lunar House, Croy­don

26.11.2008
On the cor­ner of George Street in Croy­don, Lon­don, a Novem­ber sun was warm­ing the shop­pers and office work­ers on their lunch breaks, but a few hun­dred metres north on Welles­ley Road a bit­ing Siber­ian wind seared the demon­stra­tors out­side Lunar House. It seemed appro­pri­ate that such a freez­ing blast should sur­round the UK head­quar­ters of the Bor­der and Immi­gra­tion Agency and indeed be gen­er­at­ed by its twen­ty sto­ries of the grim ear­ly 1970s office com­plex. After all its rai­son d’être is to give would-be immi­grants and asy­lum seeks an extreme­ly cold recep­tion.

Its bleak anonymi­ty is also a warn­ing of things to come for all of us in a Brave New Britain of state sur­veil­lance and con­trol whose infra­struc­ture is increas­ing­ly with us through secu­ri­ty cam­eras, the inter­cep­tion mobile phone sig­nals and elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the planned intro­duc­tion of uni­ver­sal ID cards.

The pick­et, called by Lon­don NoBor­ders http://london.noborders.org.uk and NO2ID http://www.no2id.net/, marked the start of Bio­met­ric ID cards, which are being issued from today, 25 Novem­ber 2008, to all non-EU stu­dents and spous­es apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage. The cards will have a pho­to­graph with name, date of birth, nation­al­i­ty, immi­gra­tion sta­tus and bio­met­ric details, includ­ing fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal facial image will be stored on a chip on the card as well as being held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base.

Soon all for­eign nation­als in the UK will be required to have these cards, which will be rolled out to oth­er groups includ­ing stu­dents who want a stu­dent loan by 2010. And from 2011 you will need to get one – and have your details on that data­base — if you want to renew or get a pass­port.

What wor­ries many of us is not just the use to which our own gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty ser­vices might make of such data – link­ing to face recog­ni­tion soft­ware work­ing on images from secu­ri­ty cam­eras and mobile phone data would enable our every move to be tracked – but the cer­tain­ty that it will get into oth­er hands – such as those of our US friends in the CIA, as well as crim­i­nal and com­mer­cial organ­i­sa­tions who will have their own ideas about how such all-per­va­sive data might be used.

Among those at today’s demon­stra­tion was David Mery http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html a man who has achieved a small per­son­al vic­to­ry against the jug­ger­naut data­base state.

Mery was stopped by police enter­ing South­wark tube sta­tion on 28 July for being “calm on arrival, almost too calm” and hav­ing a lar­gish ruck­sack and a strong French accent. It was three weeks after the Lon­don bomb­ing – and — per­haps luck­i­ly for him, six days after the shoot­ing of Jean Charles de Menezes. This time at least the police didn’t shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er, but his treat­ment in the months and years fol­low­ing the event can most favourably be described as Kafkaesque. He final­ly (or at least prob­a­bly) suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing both his fin­ger­prints and DNA record removed from the police data­bas­es, but it took over two years of fight­ing. His blog http://gizmonaut.net/ and arti­cles are essen­tial read­ing for any­one who won­ders why civ­il lib­er­ties are impor­tant.

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Leeds NO2ID have burnt a mock ID card in protest at the intro­duc­tion of the ID card scheme for for­eign nation­als

Video — video/quicktime 13M

Around 20 activists braved the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and rain to gath­er in Leeds last night on the eve of the intro­duc­tion of ID cards for for­eign nation­als.

The protest was made my burn­ing a mock ID card in pub­lic.

The Protest passed off peace­ful­ly with­out the pres­ence of West York­shire Police.

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Liv­er­pool anti-ID pick­et: No One Is Ille­gal

20 stu­dents and No Bor­der­s/an­ti-ID cam­paign­ers from Man­ches­ter made their way to Liv­er­pool on 25th Novem­ber, the day that the gov­ern­ment intro­duced ID cards for non-EU nation­als liv­ing in the UK. There they joined a group of 30 Mersey­side activists out­side Reliance House to protest at the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for inter­na­tion­al stu­dents and non-EU spous­es on that day.

Reliance House is where inter­view­ing, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing will take place from 4th Decem­ber before being issued with a bio­met­ric ID card. It is also Liverpool’s report­ing cen­tre where those seek­ing asy­lum have to ‘sign in’ on a reg­u­lar basis while their claims are being processed. If their claims fail they can be held, with­out pri­or notice, in the immi­gra­tion deten­tion facil­i­ty in the same build­ing for up to 7 days.

It is thus imper­a­tive to make the con­nec­tion between ID cards and the assault on the rights of non-EU nation­als want­i­ng to live, work and study in the UK. Peo­ple from Man­ches­ter No Bor­ders had brought along plac­ards and ban­ners pro­claim­ing that “no one is ille­gal”. Where the state rein­forces the divi­sion between legal and ‘ille­gal’ peo­ple our sol­i­dar­i­ty must extend to those most affect­ed by the scheme.

Some men­tion in the news:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2008/11/25/protests-in-city-over-id-cards-100252–22330184/
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2470740.0.Protests_as_first_ID_card_scheme_launched_in_Britain.php
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/11/26/protesters-say-no-to-introduction-of-id-cards-for-foreign-students-64375–22341365/

(Dur­ing the pick­et of Reliance House, some first con­tact was made with indi­vid­ual No Bor­der activists from Liv­er­pool, Mersey­side and North Wales. If you are from this region and want to get active in a No Bor­ders group, please email us, so we can get you in touch)

manchesternoborders@riseup.net
http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk

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Over 60 peo­ple attend­ed our protest against the intro­duc­tion of Bio­met­ric ID Cards for non-EU stu­dents and spous­es on Tues­day. The demon­stra­tion was held for a cou­ple of hours at mid­day out­side the Cardiff office of the UK Bor­der Agency at 31–33 New­port Road. Peo­ple the gov­ern­ment is forc­ing to car­ry ID cards will have to attend this cen­tre for inter­ro­ga­tion, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing.

We dis­played ban­ners, held plac­ards, waved giant mock ID cards and dis­trib­uted 600 copies of this leaflet — the reac­tion from passers by was com­plete­ly sup­port­ive. Many peo­ple used their lunch­break to join the protest for a short while before return­ing to work or study. This protest was part of a nation­wide day of action out­side UKBA cen­tres by No Bor­ders Net­work who, along with Defy ID, NO2ID and oth­er groups, held protests in Croy­don, Liv­er­pool, Glas­gow, Soli­hull, and New­cas­tle. Though many of these protests around the coun­try got into local news­pa­pers, Welsh media cov­er­age has been min­i­mal.

This protest appears to be just the start of resis­tance to ID Cards, the British Air­line Pilots’ Asso­ci­a­tion (BALPA) has threat­ened indus­tri­al action if the gov­ern­ment goes ahead with it’s plan to impose ID cards on air­port work­ers next year. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have signed up to NO2ID’s pledge not to reg­is­ter for a card, even if that means going to prison. No Bor­ders South Wales will be protest­ing out­side the Bor­der agency again, on Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber when the Cardiff office will start to reg­is­ter peo­ple, join us if you can.

“These new ID cards are not only a repres­sive mea­sure against non-EU stu­dents and spous­es, they are the first shot in an attack against everyone’s lib­er­ty. In tar­get­ing a large­ly voice­less migrant group, who have the least chance to com­plain and the most to lose, the gov­ern­ment is fol­low­ing a famil­iar path of repres­sive regimes through­out his­to­ry. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. By resist­ing the repres­sion of migrants, we defend the free­dom of every­one!“

For links to leaflet, video and oth­er stuff, see http://noborderswales.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/cardiff-protest-against-id-cards/
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Soli­hull protest against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards on migrants

26.11.2008
Yes­ter­day Nobor­ders Birm­ing­ham protest­ed against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards at the UK Bor­der Agency Office in Soli­hull. They were met by a puz­zling dis­pro­por­tion­ate police response at Domin­ion Court, 41 Sta­tion Road, Soli­hull — around 12 police offi­cers, includ­ing 3 police vans and an evi­dence gath­er­er. This may have some­thing to do with the polic­ing of a pre­vi­ous protest around the cor­ner at Sand­ford House, the home office report­ing cen­tre, where hun­dreds of Con­golese demon­stra­tors fac­ing mass depor­ta­tion occu­pied the main road http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/04/368076.html

A ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘Free­dom of Move­ment for All’ was held by the entrance of the UK Bor­ders Agency Office. The police offered to ‘facil­i­tate’ our protest by a seem­ing­ly polite offer to arrange for a met­al bar­ri­er to hang our ban­ner from. How­ev­er, we realised that the six foot high hedge in front of the build­ing would make our protest invis­i­ble to almost every­one, so instead we hung our ban­ner by the main road and dis­trib­uted around 600 leaflets to some very inter­est­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Fol­low­ing a con­cerned report from a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty police offi­cer ear­li­er in the day, two equal­ly com­mit­ted coun­cil work­ers from the envi­ron­men­tal and health depart­ment at Soli­hull Coun­cil turned up in their lunch hour to ensure that the lit­er­a­ture being dis­trib­uted was of a polit­i­cal, rather than com­mer­cial, nature and thus would not run afoul of local bye-laws on littering/flyering (no one seemed quite sure). This fol­lows sev­er­al oth­er inci­dents known to us in cen­tral Birm­ing­ham where coun­cil offi­cials have attempt­ed to apply sim­i­lar bye-laws (with accom­pa­ny­ing threats of fines and court appear­ances) to dis­suade peo­ple from hand­ing out polit­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. It has been not­ed before that the par­lia­men­tary leg­is­la­tion which serves as the basis of these bye-laws specif­i­cal­ly exempt­ed mate­ri­als of a polit­i­cal nature. The coun­cil work­ers also showed some inter­est in the ban­ner, rais­ing con­cern over the man­ner of its attach­ment to some local shrubs and some­thing else about pri­vate prop­er­ty, but in the end they seemed to decide that nei­ther the pub­lic nor the shrubs were at any risk (poten­tial, real, or oth­er­wise) and returned to what remained of their lunch hour.

Two stu­dents from Pak­istan informed us that they had to book an appoint­ment to begin the bio­met­ric ID card process and they could­n’t return home until this had been com­plet­ed. They claimed today they were told by staff that they would be required to give blood sam­ples and have iris scans for their bio­met­ric cards so if they com­mit­ted any ‘crimes’ in the UK they could be iden­ti­fied imme­di­ate­ly. It appears that the pri­vate com­pa­ny con­tract­ed to the tune of £5.6 bil­lion, and entrust­ed with sen­si­tive bio­met­ric data, are already doing their best to impress upon appli­cants that ID cards will be effec­tive at ‘fight­ing crime’. Lib­er­ty, the civ­il lib­er­ties and human rights organ­i­sa­tion, have already expressed con­cern about the Government’s abil­i­ty to safe­guard individual’s inti­mate details on the Nation­al Iden­ti­ty Reg­is­ter after Gov­ern­ment depart­ments last year lost 30 mil­lion pieces of per­son­al data, includ­ing those of 25 mil­lion child ben­e­fit claimants. ‘We have ID cards in our coun­try but they aren’t bio­met­ric’ said one of the stu­dents. ‘It feels very dis­crim­i­na­to­ry that we are being tar­get­ed first. Why aren’t they pro­cess­ing UK nation­als first?’ The inter­na­tion­al stu­dents also point­ed out that this was cost­ing them a great deal of mon­ey. Not only did they have to pay exor­bi­tant fees for their cours­es but on top of that they have to pay £300 for their visas and now they have to pay for their bio­met­ric ID cards and they are only per­mit­ted to work 20 hours a week. They also added that these mea­sures would serve to put over­seas stu­dents off study­ing here cit­ing Aus­tralia as a more wel­com­ing alter­na­tive.

The use of for­eign nation­als as guinea pigs for the more wide­spread intro­duc­tion of ID cards is a strat­e­gy to run a test­bed for the tech­nol­o­gy on peo­ple with­out a voice. It has become appar­ent that the gov­ern­ment is like­ly to pick off cer­tain sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty in Britain one at a time. This divide and rule strat­e­gy has been used through­out his­to­ry, most notably by the Nazi regime in Ger­many.

When the British gov­ern­ment came for the migrants,
I remained silent;
I was not a migrant.

When they came for the air­line work­ers,
I remained silent;
I was not an air­line work­er.

When they came for the con­victs,
I did not speak out;
I was not a con­vict.

When they came for the health work­ers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a health work­er.

When they came for the stu­dents,
I did not speak out;
I was not a stu­dent.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

nobor­ders-brum @ riseup.net

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http://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/

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Also in the news:

ID ‘read­ing’ machines on Cana­da and Mex­i­co bor­ders
‘Smart’ CCTV in Portsmouth