book published today

Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective
edited by David Lyon and Colin Bennett, and published by Routledge today.

There's some good stuff in this book, written by some cracking folk. Scott Thompson's chapter on wartime UK identity cards is an example of good, historical scholarship, and is part of the important caveat we need to place on claims to novelty in the face of shiney new technologies.

The collection of case studies and analysis in this book demonstrates the importance of identity technologies to contemporary governance schemes. Identity card schemes represent a drive to technologically fix identities. Given that identities are multiple and used for differing purposes, and with differing characteristics, this authoritative, attributed, external identity, whose make-up is a product of unargued-for, undebated governmental priorities, combined with the optimum inputs of technological systems, this is likely to cause social problems.

I haven't got my copy yet. I'm worried it might have been sent to my old address. Actually, I'm assuming I'm getting a copy!

Part 1: Setting the Scene

1. Playing the ID card: Understanding the significance of identity Card Systems David Lyon and Colin Bennett

2. Governing by Identity Louise Amoore

Part 2: Colonial Legacies

3. The elusive panopticon: The HANIS project and the politics of standards in South Africa Keith Breckenridge

4. China’s second generation national Identity Card: Merging culture, industry, and technology for authentication, classification, and surveillance Cheryl L. Brown

5. Hong Kong’s ‘smart’ ID card: Designed to be out of control Graham Greenleaf

6. A tale of the colonial age, or the banner of new tyranny? National identification Card systems in Japan Midori Ogasawara

7. India’s new ID card: Fuzzy logics, double meanings and ethnic ambiguities Taha Mehmood

8. Population ID card systems in the Middle East: The case of the UAE Zeinab Karake Shalhoub

Part 3: Encountering Democratic Opposition

9. Separating the Sheep from the Goats: The United Kingdom’s National Registration Program and social sorting in the pre-electronic era Scott Thompson

10. The United Kingdom identity Card scheme: Shifting motivations, static technologies David Wills

11. The politics of Australia’s "Access Card" Dean Wilson

12. The INES biometric card and the politics of national identity assignment in France Laurent Laniel and Pierre Piazza

13. The US Real ID Act and the securitization of identity Kelly Gates

14. Toward a national ID card for Canada? External drivers and internal complexities Andrew Clement, Krista Boa, Simon Davis and Gus Hosein

Part 4: Transnational Regimes

15. ICAO and the biometric RFID passport: History and analysis Jeffrey Stanton

16. Another piece of Europe in your pocket: The European Health Insurance Card Willem Maas