Identity Cards

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Identity Cards

Advantages

  • If carried at all times, could help with identifying potential suspects of crimes. Useful for low level crimes such as fights, where police could identify them without going to the station.
  • Help prevent illegal working of asylum seekers.
  • Ensure greater national security and allow those in authority to monitor wrong-doing more effectively.
  • Law-abiding citizens who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear from such a system.

Disadvantages

  • Wouldn't help reduce fraud as most fraud cases are not identity based. Machines would have to be set up in shops to ensure the cards were not forged.
  • Wouldn't stop asylum seekers entering the country.
  • They are expensive and bureaucratic.
  • Threaten peoples basic civil liberties and freedoms and involve the government 'spying' on citizens by collecting personal information about them.
  • People have no choice if they have them or not.

Evaluation

Identity cards have not been proven to work in the countries that they are already set up in. The last time Britain considered them was in 1995. It would be an expensive thing to introduce without knowing that the effects would be positive and beneficial to society. Overall, they are not a good idea. 

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