Abstract
Almost everyone should have a certain type of ID card in contemporary society. It can be a driver’s licence, passport, or social security card. Although small, thin and portable, ID cards are such basic tools of state membership. However, the logic and technology of the system on which they are based is not easy to observe comprehensively. In this book, David Lyon gives subtle but striking narratives that overview issues which are raised by the current trend towards protection of national ID systems. Covering history, politics and sociology, the author claims that the nature of citizenship in the 21st century is changing, and shows how the ID systems serve that change.
In Chapter 1, ‘Demanding documents’, Lyon traces some historical background of national identification systems. Identification systems can be historically traced back to the late medieval period, but famously the French Revolution linked citizenship to documents (les papiers) which identified persons as legitimate citizens. But generally IDs started out as a means of identifying only certain parts of the population, such as travellers and criminal suspects. In modern times, internal identification documents developed sporadically and patchily, paralleling the passport as an external identification document. Further documentation techniques evolved in the context of colonial managements.
The second chapter, ‘Sorting systems’, explores the novelty of today’s ID systems. Confronting directly the questions of ID cards as surveillance, the author points out that to introduce a national ID system is to employ a triage, a sorting system, that puts citizens into categories to be better seen and thus differently treated by the state. Such division of population can be put into action only through searchable databases and software protocols. Overall and through several related mechanisms like these, new ID card systems often seem to favour more exclusionary and less inclusive notions of citizenship, by sorting out ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ populations. In a globalizing world where many people are on the move, ID systems are sought that classify them according not only to citizenship but also to status. This can be a product of negotiation between state and citizens, but is often favourable to states and results in differential treatment across groups as defined by governments.
Chapter 3, ‘Card cartel’, investigates the ‘oligopoly’ that provides and supports ID card systems. The author notes that missing from many accounts of new ID card systems is a political economy perspective that explores the corporate as well as administrative and governmental aspects of national identifications. According to the argument, the role played by outsourced agencies is considerable, and is influential given the dependence of relevant government departments on their expertise and advice, especially as IDs become more technology-dependent. ID card systems may be seen as an ‘oligopoly of identity’ or ‘card cartel’ of such different actors as government, technology producers, enterprises, consumers and workers, all of whom drive the development of ID systems at internal and international levels.
Chapter 4, ‘Stretched screens’, is about the growing globalization of identification practices. It focuses on the national and international circulation of identifying information. Here the word of ‘screen’ has several meanings; it signifies stretched international use of personal data and, literally, computer screens that show the data not only within a state but also between or among states with thorough techniques of interoperability. In the fifth chapter, ‘Body badges’, the author argues that biometrics, being seen as a solution to the increasing need for identification, now plays an inevitable role in national ID systems. It is already in use in many existing and proposed ID systems in the USA. Frequent and international travel and transaction accelerate further the use of biometrics, which suggests great confidence in IDs based on it on the part of both corporations and government agencies. Questioning ‘how humanness is defined in a digital era’ (p. 130), the author argues that biometric identification is just one dimension of the quest for new IDs that would harmonize their mixed historical background.
The last chapter, ‘Cyber-Citizens’, goes back to the central question of this book: what do new ID systems mean for citizenship? Addressing citizenship as well as democracy, the author argues that ID cards express at least two new senses of citizenship. They speak of the actual forms of governance emerging today, and they also help to create the subject as a citizen, especially through the social and demographic categories by which citizens are sorted. Giving its historical origin, national ID cards have a contradictory relation to citizenship. On the one hand, they represent the tissue linking citizens to their rights and entitlements. On the other hand, they may be experienced as a means to exclude, restrict or prohibit the participation of certain groups. Here ‘sorting systems’ also works; in a globalizing world with high mobility rates, more and more people are associated with states, but not necessarily with nations. As far as citizenship is concerned, the characteristics exhibited by new IDs make it clear that citizenship is generally circumscribed, related to nationality but also to country of origin, ethnicity, gender and even religion. Surveillance, democracy and citizenship are closely connected to national ID systems.
Written in an accessible language, this book should be useful for both specialists and general readers, including sociologists, historians and social activists. It explores the contradictory relationship of citizenship and surveillance, and in the process shows that the technology that secures citizenship identification can also be a means of surveillance combining every piece of personal information unlocked by a national ID card. Moreover, arguing that national ID systems are sought not only in the dual relationship between a state and citizen but also in collaborations of industrial firms, banks and consumers (‘card cartels’), this book offers new perspectives in studies of surveillance, migration and nationalism. It may be seen as a variation on Foucault’s study of governmentality, paying more attention to small, mundane innovations that can be used by states, churches and global corporations.
It is also worth noting that the author attaches a special weight to the social dimension of sorting out people. No matter how elaborate the biometric identification technology may be, the technology sorts people out largely on the basis of categorization that can never be politically neutral. As the author points out in the last chapter, the criteria of citizenship is always a result of multiple categorizations including nationality, place of origin, religion, race, residence status and so on. Since the author discusses social dimension of identification, it might be regrettable that this book offers little empirical research, thus lacks persuasiveness on how identification technologies and sorting systems work out in practice.