Different Types of Identity

Identity cards, to be introduced for British nationals and residents circa 2009, will contain identity information, including biometric data. Both its legal requirement and the inclusion of this biometric data have caused a great deal of consternation.
Identity theft is, in actuality, a very broad term that defines many different types of crime. For the purpose of this essay this author shall restrict themself to the most common three forms as identified by Cole (Cole p 133). Financial identity theft involves using a victims identity to create new credit lines to exploit for financial gain.” Criminal identity theft occurs where, a person awaiting arrest or charges using another’s identity to evade legal ramifications. Identity cloning occurs when imposters create a whole new life for themselves using another’s identity. This can include everything from job, marriage, schooling to taxes and pensions and all under the assumed identity of another individual.

“When identity can be stolen like an automobile, a purse, or a credit card, then it must be a thing of this world, a piece of private property, an asset of some sort, a material possession.” (Poster p87) In part this essay shall determine whether or not this statement is indeed true. If it is and identity is indeed reducible to a material commodity that can be stolen then it is clear that identity theft has unquestionably effected personal identity. If not then perhaps identity theft is a moral panic whose effects, at least on personal identity, are minor.

To understand the effect of identity cards and identity theft on personal identity, personal identity itself must be defined. It is to be noted that personal identity can also be regarded as sense of self or selfhood. The Freudian model of personal identity is rooted most firmly within Freud’s conception of the structures of the mind, the conflict between instinctual id drives and the superego repression of society mediated by the ego. Personal identity is, in part, a result of this conflict. “Briefly, ego psychology altered psychoanalytic theory by diminishing the importance of the instincts, marginalising the role of the unconscious, stressing position of the ego, and introducing a new preoccupation with social aspects of individual psychology.” (Poster p107) These social aspects can perhaps be best illustrated by a brief examination of the work of Erving Goffman.
“The word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. It is a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role…It is in these roles that we know each other, it is in these roles that we know ourselves.” (Goffman 1990 p30) For Goffman the Shakespearean adage that the world is a stage resonates as a real truth. In essence Goffman states that in every interaction, those involved adopt the role that the situation demands. An individual throughout just a day will play or act many different roles, lover, father, worker, friend, each one of them will be a self. “We may practically say that he has as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares…Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents…swears and swaggers…among his ‘tough’ young friends.” (Goffman 1990 p57) Personal identity is defined by Goffman as deriving from these roles, from these social selves. Social interaction is the driving force of society and for society to function actors have to be on the same page. Thus there are rules, norms, roles to be followed. “The key factor is the maintenance of a single definition of the situation, this definition having to be expressed, and this expression sustained in the face of a multitude of potential disruption.” (Goffman 1990 p246)
Goffman argues that “it is . . . against something that the self can emerge. . . Without something to belong to, we have no stable self, and yet total commitment and attachment to any social unit implies a kind of selflessness. Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wider social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull.” (Goffman 1961 p12) It is very possible that part of the distinct lack of appeal inherent with any suggestion of identity cards as a legal requirement is that such mandatory forms of identification represent total commitment and attachment to a social unit. Orwellian notions of big brother and governmental interference seem highly plausible when one considers the types of information such cards could well contain. Perhaps more than this, the very fact of being forced to carry such identification at all is an uncomfortable total commitment to a cause that many are suspect of.
In Goffman’s social landscape, no one is powerful enough to escape the judgement of others, and those judgements are often the most crucial aspect of social life. The outcast is only an outsider because other people deem them to be. “So personnel live in constant fear of exposure and ‘inadvertent self betrayal’. Whether appearances are acceptable is now the issue, a more important one even then whether the role being played actually works or is useful.” (http://www.arasite.org/gouldner.html) Particularly strong and powerful in passing moral judgements are agencies of the state. Involvement of governmental and law enforcement agencies in discourses concerning identity theft is particularly noticeable and the message is clear, it is up to the individual to act to protect their own identity. “When consumers inevitably fail to enact all these daunting measures, they will be prone to blame themselves for identity theft.” (Cole p145) Cole explicitly describes the current discourse on identity theft as a moral panic. “The overarching effect of the identity theft panic is less one of propagating fear, as in the classic case of moral panics, as it is of creating self-blame and pushing the problem downward. In this sense it directly corresponds to Ryan’s classic conceptualisation of ‘blaming the victim’.” (Cole p 144) Personal identity can be affected in so many ways by this moral panic. The climate of fear can induce classification of waiting victim status in an individual and perhaps worse still that when the theft occurs it was their own deficiencies that precipitated the crime. This can not be conducive to a stable and happy identity. Self classification as a victim can skew personal identity.
“Our sense of self and social participation have always depended on validation from others – on seeing ourselves in, and through, their eyes.” (Marx p46) Personal information, in this most digital of ages, has become the currency, according to Marx, of this validation. “Volunteering one’s data and being digitally recorded and tracked is coming to be taken for granted as a means of asserting selfhood.” (Marx p46) Assuming the validity of this assumption, the humble ID card can become an intrinsic part of identity itself. Along with other forms and means of data an Id card would have the power to help define who you are as a person as an identity. Validation, from other individuals but also, and perhaps more importantly, from the state, could be in part dependent upon the information contained on that card.
“The abundance of new opportunities for self-expression offered by contemporary technologies must be considered alongside the lessened control we have over information and models in distant computer systems. Data shadows and ghosts based on tangents of personal information (stripped of context) increasingly affect life chance.” (Marx p46) This is a crucial site where identity theft and identity cards can have a meaningful impact upon personal identity. Certainly one can understand the notion that life chances help shape identity given that, as we have seen through the work of Goffman, societal pressures, roles, norms and thus life chances, inextricably influence identity. Thus bad credit, caused by identity theft, can have a very real effect on a persons life chances and in turn this effect can help define that persons identity. If one is told enough times that one is unworthy of credit, then it is not the longest of leaps to envision that person considering themselves unworthy of other things too. “It implies that people with credit are necessarily ‘good’ and that those without it are necessarily ‘bad,’ which, in both cases, is not necessarily true.” (Cole p129)
“There is a chilling and endless regressive quality in our drift into a society where a person has to provide ever more personal information to prove that he or she is the kind of person who does not merit even more intensive scrutiny.” (Marx p47) Are identity cards an end in themselves or a means to force acceptance of still further reams of personal information into the public and governmental sphere? Mandatory fingerprinting, DNA sampling, location at all times, if security demands identity cards, what is to say that risk and threat may not, in the future, demands these things too? Where does a regime’s need to track its citizenry stop when the first step has been taken? The fear of many is a never ending list of demands for personal data which, one might suppose, would end in personal identity being public identity, every facet and aspect of individuality catalogued, categorised and available for download to the relevant and interested parties. And of course, the more personal information makes the public sphere, the more personal identity would be defined by that information.
“In the first place, it is rather an odd thing to think an ‘identity’ is possible to ‘steal,’ in that it is generally thought to be something that inheres to an individual and, therefore, is nontransferable.” (Cole p127) Identity theft is something of a misnomer. Identity isn’t stolen so much as duplicated. Financial gain is the primary motivating force. Whilst in some cases the cost to the victim is huge, “In other cases, the financial burden is rather modest…Because credit card companies are – at least at this point in time – obliged from the point of view of customer relations to cushion the financial blow of identity theft, retailers absorb a significant portion of the actual losses.” (Cole p127-128) How much this financial burden strains personal identity is open to debate.
“The true damage lies in the sense of personal violation, psychological trauma, possible medical care, family issues, and other ill effects, which of course include the time and expense involved in trying to restore one’s financial identity.” (Cole p128) The psychological impact of identity theft is no doubt real and can be severe. It is possible to conceive of a victim reaching the realisation that identity is reducible to a few strings of numbers and a mother’s maiden name. That maybe ones sense of self is, in this digital age, inextricable tied to sequences of numbers. However, this author finds it unlikely that many would suffer greatly from this most existential of concerns. Maybe the intellectual implications will filter and diffuse throughout society and influence, maybe create, whole new conceptions and senses of self. Maybe future personal identity will in fact be influenced, nay defined, by credit card numbers and maiden names. This author has neither the time in this essay, nor the psychological understanding to even attempt to elucidate the possible ramifications of number defined identity, however this author does feel qualified to comment that, for now and for most, identity theft is an economic and criminal experience, not an existential crisis shaking the foundations of personal identity to its core. Identity theft’s impact upon personal identity would seem minimal to this author, certainly at the present time though, of course, an impact is felt. It is possible that the effects of said impact may grow and spread and, given time, duly effect conceptions of personal identity.
Identity is not stolen like a purse or automobile. Thus it would be easy to say that identity theft and identity cards are nothing more than criminal acts and a passport that one is forced to carry. However that is an oversimplification. “The term ‘identity’ is the historians, not that of contemporaries. Status, kinship, metier, and place defined individuals in early modern Europe, not identity. If identity theft was impossible at that time, so, more importantly, was the self defined as ‘identity’.” (Poster p103) Definitions of identity and self shift through the ages. Identity is mutable, transient. It is very possible that identity theft and identity cards may challenge the comfortable notions of personal identity in the near or distant future. For today they are an irritant, at worst, a horrible crime, for the future maybe personal identity really will be defined by those long sequences of numbers. I for one would hope not, but times march is inexorable.