ABSTRACT
Debates over national ID card systems are well situated within contemporary prevailing discourses and associated assemblages. The preoccupations with various securitizations and related “insecurities” that follow from particular articulations of the “war on terror”; associated moves to increasingly govern through risk, risk assessment and technologies of risk (see Aradau and van Munster 2007); a continued commitment to the promise of a supposedly “borderless world” of neoliberal free markets, mobile labor and endless commercial growth (Sparke 2006; Ong 2006) are all framed within a ubiquitous discourse of “modernity.” As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has noted: “The real issue here is not privacy or cost, it is modernity. We face some new problems. Biometric technology offers new solutions” (Blair 2006). Of particular importance here is the extent to which perceived challenges to “securing identity” – whether one’s identity as a citizen, client, traveler or myriad other identities are believed to be most appropriately dealt with by biometric technologies. In other words, debates over ID card strategies are rarely distinguishable from debates over specifically biometric ID card strategies. In effect, the move to secure identities vis-à-vis ID cards is simultaneously a move to secure identity itself with biometrics. As a promotional flyer from Accenture reveals, the question of identity is increasingly inseparable from questions of security and/or “identity assurance”:
A knock at the door, followed by “Who’s there?” This most basic question of identity is older than the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. But with new virtual doors opening online – and as a growing number of clever cyberwolves hide their identities – the answer has become more complex and costly.
