How ID cards can liberate us

On 11 September 2001 Sir John Stevens, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was on an aircraft heading for America. He was about to meet his counterpart in the FBI for talks about combating organised crime. Instead, crime organised on a scale neither of them had anticipated was being committed. Sir John’s plane did a U-turn over the Atlantic. The captain of the plane urgently sought the counsel of his eminent passenger. ‘I went to the flight deck to talk to them and give my advice. You could see the shock that they were going through with the closure of American airspace. The purser in particular was in a state of great distress. I think most of us realised the world would never be the same again.’ Immediately on arriving back at Heathrow, Sir John went into the emergency session of the security committee Cobra, chaired by the Prime Minister. He realised then that he faced a challenge which exceeded that presented to any of his predecessors.