Hands off our fingers!
Now that the police want to take our prints by the roadside, we must put a stop to the apathy that enables this oppressive behaviour.
Henry Porter
Wednesday, 22 November 2006
Guardian Cif
The news that police are demanding the right to fingerprint people by the roadside and to arrest them if they refuse - whereupon fingerprints, DNA and a photograph will all be taken - is perhaps a footnote in the account of the slide of rights in Britain. However it does underline that we have all become suspects; that the onus is increasingly on us to prove our innocence to an overbearing, officious and meddlesome state.
It must be clear that if the police are demanding fingerprints today, they will be asking for our papers (ID cards) tomorrow, a notion that would have been unthinkable in Britain 10 years ago. Yet now we seem to accept that the authorities have these new rights over us and that we must simply roll over and go along with this oppressive behaviour.
Every part of me recoils from these developments. I go on complaining and making the case that a profound change is under way which is not a matter of debate, but of actuality. We are living this revolution. Our apathy and complacency enables it. One day our children and grandchildren will look back and wonder what on earth was going through our minds; how we lost our faith in liberty, which when it comes down to it will be the story of how we lost our self-respect as citizens.
Unless many more understand what is going on with the nightmarish clarity that afflicts some of us, and they start campaigning and doing everything they possibly can to reassert individual rights, the fight will eventually be lost. I never tire of quoting Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union: "There is a lot of room for the Unites States to become a meaner, less open and less just place without any radical change in government." That is true of Britain too and it will happen if we don't do something.
My chief worry is that the media's record is so poor on this issue. The newspapers for the main stayed away from the subject of civil liberties. There have even been contributions from a couple of columnists - in the Times and Guardian - who have briskly exclaimed they do not understand what the fuss is about. These are people who do not think of themselves as journalists but as quasi non-governmental policy makers. They affect responsibility by flattering authority and they do not represent out interests.
Surely the matter of police fingerprinting anyone they wish on the roadside should enrage us. But out there you can hear a pin drop.
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