Peter Tatchell Talk - ID Cards and the ‘Surveillance State’

In 2006, a list compiled by the the New Statesman voted Peter Tatchell 6th on their list of "Heroes of our time". I’m a fan, and was delighted to have the opportunity to speak to him in advance of his forthcoming visit to Lewes to address the issue of biometric ID cards and the ‘Surveillance State'. He wasn’t feeling great, because he’d just come back from treatment for an eye injury sustained after being beaten and arrested for attending a recent Moscow Gay Pride March. Unfortunately for him, it was the same eye Robert Mugabe’s henchmen walloped in 2001 when Tatchell and other OutRage! members stopped Mugabe’s motorcade in Brussels and tried to effect a citizen’s arrest for torture and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Tatchell keeps being attacked, but insists his injuries are minor in comparison to what victims of torture endure daily across the world. He tells me: “I don’t like being a target. But by making issues visible, you generate improved awareness and debate. Often it’s the only way to get change”. His key point against ID cards, he says, is that “they are a huge waste of public money, £10-20 billion, at a time when the government claims to have no money to improve pensions or offer new drug treatments to NHS patients”. Another concern is that: “Once the National Identity system is in place, it is easy for future authoritarian governments to misuse it to harass and victimise people who disagree with them”. EC