Snodgrass - Your friendly local spy
Telegraph | News | No identity card? You could be fined £2,500
Town hall bureaucrats are to be given sweeping new powers to investigate homes for identity card evasion and to impose heavy fines on occupants found without one.
The revelation, in an obscure Whitehall consultation paper, calls into serious doubt the Government's repeated promises that planned ID cards, already hugely controversial, will be voluntary and that no one will be forced to carry one.
The chief principle of a well-regulated police state is this: That each citizen shall be at all times and places ... recognized as this or that particular person. No one must remain unknown to the police. This can be attained with certainty only in the following manner: Each one must always carry a pass with him, signed by his immediate government official, in which his person is accurately described. There must be no exception to the rule.
-Johann G. Fichte, THE SCIENCE OF (TM)GHTS_ Originally published 1796. Translated from the German by A. E. Kroeger. London: Trubner and Co., 1889, pp. 378-379 [1].
We need to create an atmosphere such that each citizen feels that without [his government papers] he will be unable to travel anywhere, that the single document confirming his identity is [his government paperwork]. The first question you must ask a detained citizen is show me your [government id].
-Genrikh Yagoda, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, in a top-secret speech of April 16, 1935 at a conference convened by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) [2].