- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 15/Jul 09:32

Mandatory ID a poor fit

WHEN POLICE swooped down on a Gonzales family on July 10 – smashing the phone of a 58-year-old father, arresting his 25-year-old son and 27-year-old daughter after pushing her into a drain and searching, without warrant, the son’s car – at no point did any officer proffer identification. That was not by accident. It was by design. The family’s repeated requests were ignored. This incident captures why we believe the government’s mandatory ID card proposal is a poor fit with our country’s norms. If police do not present ID when confronting citizens, why should citizens carry theirs? Until trust and confidence in the service – now at just eight per cent – is restored, police killings addressed and body cameras worn, we believe this measure an ill-timed expansion of police authority. It is certainly disproportionate to the narrower policy aims that have ostensibly given rise to it, namely the limiting of booze, ganja and gaming among youths. Those aims can be achieved largely through discrete co-operation with businesses and do not demand widespread civil liberty incursions. In another world, the government’s proposal might not raise eyebrows. People already carry ID cards and driving licences. Venezuelan migrants show credentials. Diego Martin North/East MP Colm Imbert has described the move as “draconian.” But in countries like Belgium, Colombia, Germany, Italy, Peru and Spain, mandatory identification systems exist without hullabaloo. Nonetheless, assuming cops will be able to detain someone who cannot produce a card, then this measure would amount to an astonishing shifting of the burden of proof from the state onto the citizen. Instead of the default position being that an individual is entitled to constitutional rights, a national would, effectively, be required to prove that they are a bona fide person. That is no small thing. Further, when tied to biometric databases, national ID card systems also take on completely different complexions. DCP Operations Junior Benjamin has already let slip some indications that the ID card system could involve such a database, saying on July 13: “When we have the data, that data can go into a particular data bank and it is going to help us.” Yet, according to the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, “there is little evidence to support the argument that national IDs reduce crime. Instead, these systems create incentives for identity theft. They also create extreme risks to data security.” It’s easy to imagine errors, fraudulence and police abuse galore. Most tellingly, how will this policy work at Carnival time? Will cops be stopping young masqueraders in all-inclusive bands and arresting them if they don’t have documents? Not only is current policing culture inimical to this idea, but our general culture as well. It’s a bad fit. Government should rethink. The post Mandatory ID a poor fit appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.