h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some time over the last two years or so, the DVLC stopped issuing paper driving licences. Instead you need to get a photo-ID card and a seperate paper licence to go with it.
The photo ID card may also be used as identification in other circumstances....is this a National Identity card by the back door?

If you specified what country you were referring to, it might make for a more useful conversation.


Mikey

I suspect Dunc means the UK, if I'm wrong he's bound to tell us.

For many years we (the UK) have been one of the last few countries which didn't have a photograph on the licence.

You are right of course - the DVLC is the UK driver and vehicle licencing authority.
(Mind you, if we had "flags of the world" smileys as I suggester earlier, this would be so much easier )

I fully support flag smileys and I suspect the beeb has a file of them somewhere that could be easily accessed. Mind you there's nearly 200 nations at the UN now and that doesn't include some of the best flags - like the cross of Saint Andrew, the south american aboriginal rainbow, the Acadians (who came to Canada first), the black panthers, the north american Indian Warrior, a white flag, the checkered flag -
but yeah we should have at least Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, NZ... well lots more but we probably won't need 200.

In Canada we have a national Social Insurance Number card (no picture yet), a provincial Medical Insurance card (no picture yet but it shows blood type and organ donor options and has a swipe code to access all personal and medical data), and a provincial driver's license photo ID which is the main ID used.

It's not quite a proper ID card, but it's certainly very useful... I mean, how many people carry their passports around all the time? They're about the only other form of photo ID that's accepted for most important and legal purposes, so it's a wonderfully useful thing to have around. Obviously there are concerns that they're going to be misused, for instance by the police, but if everyone knows what their rights actually are instead of making them up as they go along, things like that become more difficult.

Of course, I'm very much a person who trusts the police (mostly, anyway), so my viewpoint won't be shared by all.

YES, THEY ARE- RESIST IN ANY WAY YOU CAN. ie tape the old piece of paper together until it's completely sticky tape. Do not carry it with you unless you have been summoned to present it at a police station.(In the UK you can drive without having the licence with you physically)Or dig up a really old photo that doesn't look like you any more. Who are these people asking you to prove your identity?
IDENTITY CARDS ARE EVIL I've worked in several places where you have to carry them (including my present abode) They are sources of corruption (easy money for the poorly paid police),fear ( the only people stopped are the poor and uneducated) and open the possibility for nasty population controls (SA pass laws and internal imigration laws in various communist countries for example). Both the last British government and the present one keep making noises about bringing in proper identity cards to stamp out illegal immigration, which to me means that geuine asylum seekers are also being targetted.
Computerisation makes the whole thing infinitely worse. Like the Girl called Ben, I am wary about places where it is _impossible_ to commit a crime. All the local police have to do is put your ID through their portable swiper. OK for border controls, but in that case it's called a passport.
Sorry for the shout - but this is a deeply-held conviction. ()

Couldn't agree more Wand'rin Star.

They _will_ be used to harass people who look as if they might be from an ethnic minority. And that is just the start.

Nuts, it's all down to your own decisions.

Not everyone is ever going to drive so it can't be a National Identity card by the back door. If you CHOOSE to drive then you are also opting to get the relevant documentation.

Phones and Plastic are much more useful if you're looking for hidden ID cards, with the added bonus that they can be used to track your movements. There are also more people with them than there ever will be with driving licences, but again it's a matter of choice.

OK you could argue that the four letter word means you must have one, two, or all three items, but no one forced you into that job.

Well, yes. If we are talking Drivers Licences that stay as drivers licences and don't kreep upon us as id cards which everyone must carry and produce on demand.

Which is what I suspect is slowly being worked around towards.

There was already talk of this at least 4 years ago. Drivers licences with photos, later to be combined with a sort of inta-european passport/id card and, I dunno, we'll probably get around to forcing you to gain the proper residential stamp to let you live in London rathgere than Liverpool; sometime in the next five years.

I believe that this effort came unstuck largely because the English/Irish/Welsh and Scottish couldn't agree what flag to have on it. And nobody wanted the Euro flag, which was, apparently, nessecary for it to be accepted outside of Britain.

Drat, sorry sorry. Organize your thoughts woman.

We all know that we are all rediculously easy to track around using plasic cards, computer documentation etc etc. The point about id cards is that they are an unnecessary lever for harrassment on the street, as WS pointed out.

Now ID cards you don't have to carry with you and which can't be demanded without good reason... how about those?

Why though?

I know who I am and that's grand. My bank have ways of validating who I am and that's grand. My social security/national insurance number/PRSI numbers also identify who I am and they are all grand. My passport identifies me at a border checkpoint and that works fine - why do I need yet another identity document?

Info on the photo driving licence:
1. Surname
2. First name(s)
3. Date and place of birth
4a. Date of licence commencement
4b. Date of licence expiry
4c. Photo id issuing office
5. Driver number
7. Signature
8. Home address
9. Licence classification.

The astute will notice that:
(1) Your place fo birth is of no relevance to driving
(2) There is no item 6. Also the regulations for the signature (must fit entirely within the white box) and photo (about 20 different rules). Why? Because it is being stored in a database, of course.
(3) Issuing office is always "DVLC" - why do they have such a field? Because these IDs can then be used by other issuing authorities without changing the database.

Just a few thoughts....

I don't use a credit card. I use a mobile _only_ for phoning from here (HK) to UK.I don't drive (one of the greatest days of my life was when the elder son got a licence and I didn't have to do it any more)but, ironically, I have a UK national identity card.()

You need another ID document to show that you can drive, or have passed the test anyway.

Your place of birth is of no relevance to your driving, but it is relevant as to where your records are held. I seem to remember that it also appears on your passport, but I haven't had one of them for donkeys so can't be sure. At a guess I'd say it's an anti-fraud measure, we can't have people who've been dead three years driving around can we?

Dunno about item 6, possibly it's used in Europe for your ID card number. Now that would be a nice touch of irony.

DVLC. In case of possible privatisation/regionalisation/pan-europe licence? Haven't a clue.

Here are a few more thoughts.....

3500 are killed, and 40000 injured on UK roads each year and you wonder why you need a driving licence? Without a licence what do you suggest happens to banned drivers, they have their passports withdrawn or their National Insurance increased?

If you want to worry about being held on a database, try worrying about the register. The roadkills aren't on that one through choice.

Having got back on my chair, which I fell off after reading Wumbeevil's name (well, I hadn't seen him around for a good while ), I wish I could help you with No. 6. Only very recently did I fill in a form for a new German driving licence (I had bought a nice new small handbag and decided that the old driving licence was too big, so I changed it for the plastic card. Honestly - that's the reason!) Anyway, I only wanted to say that I can't remember what else was asked on the form. As far as I remember, it wasn't my passport number (which would be my only equivalent of the German ID card number, which local nationals would fill in)

Anyway, I have since noticed that the new driving licence no longer states that (a) it expires on my 70th birthday or (b) that I am only allowed to drive vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes, as opposed to the 7.5 tonnes a normal German driving licence permits.

My paper licence which I had to apply for within 9 months of moving to Germany (in those days), had both of these conditions typed onto it. Do they no longer apply? (I would have no idea how to drive a 5 tonne truck, but now am legally allowed to do so.)

Another loophole: I still have a British licence (Passed my test in England in 1973). The Germans used to make a note on your licence that you had another licence from another country, so that if they took away your German licence, you couldn't drive using another one.

But, on this new plastic card, there is no way they can stamp it.

Plus which, as from Nov 1999, all European driving licences are valid all over Europe. Which means I don't really need a German driving licence any more anyway.

So, thee-yo-retically, I could lose my German licence and still drive using my British one and would not be obliged to produce a local one ever again. Mind you, I don't think I want to lose my German licence - it's got a nice new picture on it and it cost me DM 47!!

Or have I misunderstood something?

But I can't understand why people are so worried about having ID cards. Most countries have them anyway now, and if you've got nothing to hide, what does it matter if people can find out your date and place of birth or when you went through a police check or crossed a border? Perhaps I have seriously misunderstood something in that case?

I don't know... there seem to be two main things against ID cards:

1) guilty consciences
2) paranoia - fear of a police state, etc. etc.

Neither of which I suffer from. Not unless it became compulsory to carry ID at all times and to produce it on demand for no reason.

IIRC, a police officer cannot demand your driving licence without a good reason (obviously, if they've pulled you over for something they're perfectly within their rights to do so, but not if they bump into you walking somewhere - although there are probably one or two obscure and rarely-used reasons where they could do it then), and I see no reason why ID wouldn't be any different. Even if they do ask you to produce it, and they're legally allowed to do so, there's still the fallback of being able to take it to the police station within seven days or whatever (for certain things, anyway).

I think the point is that the worry is that these new driving luicences will slowly mutate into the sort of id cards which do have to be carried around all the time.

Now, I live in Russia (sorry, sorry, sorry. I managed to go a few posts without mentioning it). Moscow, to be specific. Here we all carry id, which in my case happens to be a passport and seperate visa. Militsia can pull you out of the crowd at any time and check your documents. If you don't have them, or there is something wrong with them, you are taken to prison until it gets sorted out (usually, in my circle of friends, with a bribe).

As it happens I have never been stoppedm but this is appallingly unusual for russians/foreigners alike. And I'm not saying the police are particularly nasty when they stop you either. But here are some reasons for getting stopped.

One of my friends was stopped and told to get a haircut and smarten himself up a bit if he didmn't want to be constantly stopped. If you look a bit 'alternative' you are a lot more likely to be stopped.

You are a bit tipsy. Again, being a bit tipsy (and alone) makes you an easy target for bribe extraction (if you are foreign) and an Undesirable Element if you are not.

You are of a swarthey (?) compelexion (mediterranian coulouring). Especially if you are male, this marks you out as a possible Chechen Terrorist. You will be stopped far more often than anyone else, ever.

etc etc.

I can just hear you thinking "Stupid woman, that's Russia she's talking about. It would never happen Over Here."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I am going for the record in afterthoughts here.

I forgot to mention that those without the required 'you may live in Moscow' stamp on their documents can deported from the city. This was used a few years ago to wholesale round up all the homeless people/gypsies (sorry) and dump them 80 miles away in the country. There was going to be a celebration and the mayor didn't want these people cluttering up the streets.