ID Cards

Specialized ID cards, with a photograph of the card holder and other identifying information, are becoming more and more important and ubiquitous in our security-conscious world. Many businesses and schools now require a photo ID card for entry.

You can enhance your company or school's safety, security, and even its efficiency and productivity by providing a durable, attractive photo identity card to every employee or student, visitor, and contractor. Alpha Card Systems offers a complete line of ID card systems for quickly and easily creating photo ID cards for all your needs - from a simple photo ID card printed on one side in black and white to a double-sided, full-color smart card with custom holographic overlaminate for added security.

Identification Cards

Our economical Starter System for creating ID cards includes printer, digital camera with stand, easy-to-use ID card software including database, and more. Other systems that we offer range from the Basic System and Entry-Level System through several more-advanced systems, including custom systems tailored to your school or company's specific purposes.

Organizations use a variety of technologies for access control, including picture ID cards with magnetic stripes, smart cards, proximity cards, and biometrics. We provide full compatibility with all these technologies - you can implement our solutions without replacing your current access control systems.

We also offer software programs that enable you to verify identities as people enter your facilities. For example, if people forget their ID cards, you can retrieve digitized images from your database to verify their identities - and make sure they're still authorized to enter the building.

ID cards not only support the security and integrity of the workplace or school, but also enable a sense of community, functioning like name tags at a social event. In addition, they provide a simple way for your employees or students to help enforce building security as they enter and exit, by noticing when people without ID cards attempt to enter.

ID Cards Background and the Future

An identity document is a piece of documentation designed to prove the identity of the person carrying it. Unlike other forms of documentation, which only have a single purpose such as authorizing bank transfers or proving membership of a library, an identity document simply asserts the bearer's identity. If an identity document is in the form of a small standard-sized card, such as an ISO 7810 ID Card, it is called an ID Card or an Identification Card.

ID Cards can be controversial, as depending on the way they are used by government (under which circumstances they must be produced; whether/how information about use is stored on databases) can make government surveillance of citizens much easier.

Types of ID Cards

Modern ID Cards bear little resemblance to the traditional "photograph on piece of cardboard" and are often hi-tech smartcards capable of being encoded by a computer.

Where Government ID Cards are issued by the State, it asserts a unique single civil identity for a person, thus defining that person's identity purely in relation to the State. New technologies allow ID Cards to contain biometric information, such as photographs, face, hand or iris measurements, or fingerprints.

Other information typically present on the cards — or on the supporting database — includes full name, parents' names, address, profession, nationality in multinational states, blood type and Rhesus factor.

Legal impact

Laws usually limit who is authorized to require an ID card (for example limiting security ID Badges to police, immigration officers, etc), though practice usually broadens the range to many public and private entities: for example, a shopkeeper or cashier may request an ID Card to be shown by a client paying with a credit card or check. Similarly, in circumstances where law enforcement can legally ask for identification, not being able to show an ID Card, though legal, may result in being taken to a police station for further identification, depending on the jurisdictions. This can lead to functionality creep whereby carrying a card becomes de facto if not de jure compulsory.

In many cases, other forms of documentation such as a driver's license, passport, or Medicare card serve a similar function, identifying the bearer in a variety of contexts. However, possession of these documents is typically optional from a legal point of view.

Not carrying a required ID Card can be beneficial for people who wish to avoid detection, such as innocent citizens who value their privacy. It may also help in some illegal dealings; for instance, in certain countries, the procedures for deporting illegal immigrants whose age, identity or nationality cannot be formally established are more complex than those for whom they can be readily asserted, giving the illegal immigrant more time to prepare his or her defense.

Arguments for and against ID Cards

Argumentation about ID Cards is largely limited to anglosaxon countries. In most countries where an ID system is present, it is seen as a commonplace item that nobody argues about.

Especially in the USA and the United Kingdom, state-issued compulsory ID Cards are a source of great controversy. Some people regard them as a gross infringement of privacy and civil liberties, whilst others regard them as uncontroversial.

Usually, mainstream criticism is actually directed towards possibilities of extensive abuse of identity documents; central databases with storage of sensitive data are especially feared. While such systems have been proposed in some countries, in most countries with identification documents they have not been implemented.

In favor

Supporters of ID Cards argue that:
ID Cards would be a useful administrative tool that will increase government efficiency and cut down on crime;

opposition to ID Cards would be caused by the necessity of having "something to hide"; opponents counter that also law-abiding citizens can want information to remain confidential for various reasons (as a person trying to make their whereabouts unknown to a stalker);

if the State doesn't issue ID Cards, private companies will require equivalent documents, such as a driver license, which are not properly suited for identity purposes;

crimes such as identity theft would be drastically reduced, and are indeed unknown in countries where ID Cards are required to open a bank account.

Against Economic and social liberals have a generally negative attitude towards ID Cards, on the principle that if society already works adequately without them, they should not be imposed by government, on the principle that "the government that governs best, governs least". Some opponents have pointed out that extensive lobbying for ID Cards has been undertaken, in countries without compulsory ID Cards, by IT companies who will be likely to reap rich rewards in the event of an ID Card scheme being implemented.

Very often, opposition to ID Cards is born out of the suspicion that they will be used to track anyone's movements and private life, possibly endangering one's privacy; for instance, a person will probably not want others to know he or she is attending meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous. In countries currently using ID Cards, there is no mechanism for this. However the proposed British ID card will involve a series of linked databases, to be managed by the private sector. Managing disparate linked systems with a range of institutions and any number of personnel having access to them is a potential security disaster in the making.

Opponents argument also that some nations require the card to be carried at all times. This is not necessarily impractical, as an ID is no more cumbersome than a credit card. However, opponents point out that a requirement to carry an ID Card at all times can lead to arbitrary requests from card controllers (such as the police). Even where there is no legal requirement to carry the card, functionality creep could lead to de facto compulsion to carry.

Some opponents make comparisons with totalitarian governments, which issued ID Cards to their populations, and used them oppressively.

They point out that the issuing of unique biometric identities was taken to its logical conclusion within living memory by the Nazis, when they tattooed unique concentration-camp detainees numbers on the arms of people taken to be processed by the Final Solution.

More recently, the apartheid-era government of South Africa used pass books as internal passports to oppress that country's black population.

ID Cards in Britain

Compulsory ID Cards were first issued in the United Kingdom during World War I, and abandoned in 1919. They were re-introduced in World War II, but were abandoned seven years after the end of that war, in 1952, due to widespread public resentment culminating in a court case of Willcock v Muckle, where Clarence Henry Willcock refused to supply his card after being stopped by a policeman for a routine driving infraction. Although he lost the case, the court concurred with his view that ID Cards had become inappropriate.

Nevertheless, several Home Secretaries have since proposed reintroducing ID Cards, under various pretexts and, in 2003, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett stated that the British government intends to introduce a national ID Card scheme based on biometric technology, together with a database to track the resident population, to be made compulsory by 2013. To that end, the ID Cards Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on November 29, 2004; the bill failed as it was not passed before the UK general election, 2005, but was reintroduced soon after.

The Home Office argues the card will frustrate international terrorists, 35% of whom travel under a false identity. More recently, the government also claims the cards will help to prevent illegal immigration, "health tourism", benefit fraud and identity theft, and that bimetric passports will make it easier for British citizens to travel to the US.

Critics oppose the bill on the grounds of: civil liberties, spiralling costs; issues with the database and audit trail (unprecedended amounts of personal data linked by one number and tracked on every use of the card, an unwarranted invasion of privacy leading to a "surveillance society"); potential for discrimination (stop and search already targets and marginalises ethnic minorities) despite government assurances to the contrary; inability to stop terrorism, illegal immigration, or identity theft (which could be aided by linking all the information to one number); the risks involved (eg. inconvenience of errors and mismatches, government history of IT failure). Thousands people have signed a pledge stating that they will refuse the register for an identit card if 10,000 other people also make the same pledge (http://www.pledgebank.com/refuse).

The TGWU has said that ID Cards have the potential to become Labour's Poll Tax.

ID Cards in the United States

There is no true national ID Card in the United States of America, in the sense that there is no federal agency with nationwide jurisdiction that directly issues such cards to all American citizens. All legislative attempts to create one have failed due to tenacious opposition from libertarian and conservative politicians, who regard the national ID Card as the mark of a totalitarian society.

ID Cards worldwide

According to Privacy International, as of 1996, around 100 countries had compulsory ID Cards. They also stated that "virtually no common law country has a card".

For the people of Western Sahara, pre-1975 Spanish cards are the main proof that they were Saharaui citizens as opposed to recent Moroccan colonists. They would be thus allowed to vote in an eventual self-determination referendum.

Some Basque nationalist organizations are issuing para-official ID Cards (Euskal Nortasun Agiria) as a means to reject the nationality notions implied by Spanish and French compulsory documents. Then, they try to use the ENA instead of the official document.

Countries with compulsory ID Cards

The compulsory character may apply only after a certain age.

Note: the term "compulsory" may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Often, a ticket can be given for being found without one's identification document, or in some cases a person may even be detained until the identity is ascertained. In practice, random controls are rare, except in police states.

Belgium: State Registry (in Dutch, French and German) (first issued at age 12, compulsory at 15)
Estonia: id.ee (in Estonian)
Germany: Personalausweis (in German) (It is compulsory at age 16 to possess either a "Personalausweis" or a passport, but not to carry it.)
Hong Kong, China: Immigration Department (Children are required to obtain their first ID Card at age 11, and must change to an adult ID Card at age 18)
Israel: Teudat Zehut (first issued at age 16, compulsory at 18)
Italy: Carta d'identità
Poland: Dowód osobisty (18 years)
Singapore: Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (15 years)
Spain: Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI)
Also Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Portugal and Thailand.

Countries without compulsory ID Cards

Australia ("citizenship certificate"), Austria, Canada ("Certificate of Canadian Citizenship"), Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland have non-compulsory ID Cards.

Denmark, Norway, the United States, the Republic of Ireland and Iceland have no official national ID Cards.

Note: As noted above, certain countries do not have national ID cards, but have other official documents that play the same role in practice (e.g. driver's license for the United States). While a country may not make it de jure compulsory to own or carry an identity document, it may be de facto strongly recommended to do so in order to facilitate certain procedures.

Non-national ID Cards

Some companies and government departments issue Employee ID cards for security purposes, they may also be proof of a qualification. For example, all taxi drivers in the UK and Hong Kong carry ID cards.