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Why did privacy fail to be a defining issue in opposition to national biometric identification in Israel and the UK? Surveillance studies scholars argue that resistance to identification is centrally premised on privacy, and that states’ willingness to implement identification systems depends on the strength of their privacy commitments. Yet, in debates over national biometric identification in Israel (2008 – present) and in the UK (2004 – 2010), appeals to privacy played a negligible role in activists’ campaigns and in actual policy outcomes.
In both Israel and the UK, opposition groups to national biometric identification were primarily led by academic experts in computer science, information science, and law, along with grassroots privacy activists. While opponents in both countries cited privacy at the start of their campaigns, their focus on it diminished over time. In the UK, opponents’ focus on the costs of the program ultimately led to its cancellation in 2010. In Israel, opponents’ most central and influential argument was that creating a national biometric database will harm national security due to risks of it being leaked or hacked. Through textual analysis of reports and media produced by British and Israeli activist organizations, studies of their participation in parliamentary debates, and semi-structured qualitative interviews with the activists themselves, the paper explores how activists in both countries engaged with concepts of privacy as they built social and political movements opposed to national biometric identification. The paper shows not only how anti-surveillance movements work and influence policymaking, but also how they leverage academic expertise and reconceptualize privacy in terms of the dominant socio-political narratives of their national contexts.