| 1- Script
of Recording
ID Cards
Adapted From
The Economist
June 30th
2005
IF YOU have ever had trouble getting a book out of the library,
Tony Blair has just the thing. A national identity card, as proof
of who you are, could make life so much simplerand it would foil
terrorists, thwart benefit cheats, exclude illegal immigrants, put
an end to identity theft and improve community relations to boot.
At a cost of a mere £6 billion ($11 billion) or so, who could possibly
be against that?
Plenty of people, as it happens. As Britain rushes towards
a national identity card, civil-liberties groups and MPs have this
week been raging against the assault to the nation's ancient freedoms
and the ushering-in of a Big Brother society. They are right to
be fearful, but for a more prosaic reason.
British governments have a long history of proposing a national
ID card. This week, Labour won a parliamentary vote on an ID-card
bill. Now the legislation will pass to the House of Lords and to
Commons committees, where it will face more hostile scrutiny. The
card's parliamentary opponents levelled two charges against it:
that it imperils freedom and that it will cost too much. The threat
to privacy, they say, stems from the sinister power that a national
identity register could one day grant an overweening state. Even
if this government pledges to respect its citizens' privacy, what
about the next one?
Yet people traded their privacy for convenience long ago.
Britons walking streets monitored by close-circuit television freely
brandish mobile phones that track their movements and credit cards
that record everything they buy. A determined government can already
exploit the country's computer networks to pry into its citizens'
lives. Liberty depends upon the rules governing the use of this
data, not ID cards.
The real complaint against the cards is that they risk being
a huge waste of money. Certainly, they will be expensive, though
nobody knows how expensive. Even if the scheme costs £6 billion
over the next decade, as the government predicts, Charles Clarke,
the home secretary, needs to show it offers value for money. ID
cards can inconvenience terrorists only if they are compulsory,
but at the start they will be voluntary. Because there will be no
requirement to carry the card, illegal immigrants can abscond before
the deadline to present it at a police station. Most benefit fraud
is through fake claims, not multiple identities. Irish citizens,
who have free access to Britain, will not have the cards. Faced
with such arguments, Mr Blair was left to claim lamely that the
cards would help people get around more easily.
ID cards are a costly technology. The government must make
a stronger case before it spends its citizens' money on them.
453 words
End of Recording
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2- Essay
Question
After listening to the tape explain
the pros and cons of ID cards in Britain? You should use class information
and give specific examples to argue your points. (between 350 to
400 words)
Recordings
Dowload
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on your hard disk that you will remember easily. After you have
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Media Player, Winamp) you wish to use to listen to the audio file.
Once you have chosen your player, open the audio file and listen
away.
ID
Cards
Streaming
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ID
Cards
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