ID cards are the most pernicious threat to our freedom

Rafael Behr: What liberty means to me: Unlike the citizens of Russia, we do not need the state's permission to walk the streets

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• 
• • Rafael Behr
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Monday July 7, 2008
  • Article history

I learned the meaning of civil liberty when I was a correspondent (for a different paper) in Moscow. Reporting on Russia had its unique charms: the merry scorn which officials showed to the very idea of telling journalists, especially foreign ones, anything other than big, fat, Soviet-scale lies; the dispiriting submission of most of the population to constant low-level oppression, as if that was the only way power could be exercised; the disgusting cynicism of the cover-ups that, were they not so appalling, would almost be funny. I remember one case of a border police official with a reputation for fighting corruption being reported as having "accidentally shot himself several times in the head while drunk".

But of the petty indignities suffered by Moscow residents who look a bit foreign, the most common is the arbitrary identity check. You are walking down the street and a Kalashnikov-toting policeman pulls you to one side and mutters a single word: "Dokumenty!" Show me your papers. You hand over your passport (no one is fool enough to walk around without it). The bullet-head stares incredulously at it for a while and then thrusts it back at you with a gesture that says, "OK, Brit. Walk on. You were lucky this time."

If you are not British, if you are a Chechen or an Uzbek, or a Russian without the correct stamp indicating your right of residence in the capital, being lucky would mean getting away with paying a bribe. Being unlucky would mean a beating in the back of the police van. And a bribe.

Being stopped for ID, even when your papers are in order, is an intimidating experience. For a second, you shrink dramatically in scale. You are an ant and the boot of arbitrary state power hovers over you. Then you scurry on and gradually resume your stature as an autonomous individual, but not a free one.

The essence of the identity check is to reinforce a false idea of permission. The street belongs to the state and you need to prove your right to walk down it. In Russia, that relationship is hardly questioned by citizens. Of course you depend on the Kremlin for its indulgence in allowing you to move around the country.

But in a democratic society, permission should work the other way round. We, as free citizens, give our consent to a small group of people, chosen from among us, to wield power for a fixed term and on the condition that they don't abuse it. If we get up to no good, we give them licence to intervene – to use force if necessary – to stop us. But the rest of the time, we do not need permission. That is why, of all the various erosions of civil liberties introduced by New Labour, I find the idea of compulsory ID cards the most pernicious. I do not need leave from the government to walk the streets. They need permission from me to police the streets – my streets, our streets.

Fortunately, Britain is immeasurably freer than Russia. The police generally do not wander around harassing people for ID to remind them who owns the place. Let's keep it that way.