Paper short abstract:

Based on rhetoric culture theory, this paper explores the processes by which citizens are persuaded by government advertising to take part in biometric identification schemes, focussing on portrayals of fictional persons, and narrativisations of potential card usage applications by those persons.

Paper long abstract:

Based on textual and media analyses and (auto)ethnography, in this paper I explore the processes by which citizens are persuaded to take part in voluntary biometric identification schemes. Focussing on portrayals of fictional persons (human/quasi-human), and based on rhetoric culture theory (Strecker & Tyler 2009, Carrithers 2005, 2009), the paper shows how powerful narrativisations of potential card usage applications are used to encourage citizens to become engaged scheme participants. With special reference to the German 2010-introduced enhanced biometric card, and my own participation in the short-lived UK National Identity Card scheme, I show how the increasingly-prevalent commercial technique of using named persons to sell commodities is appropriated by governments in advertising their security-promoting ID cards. Based on printed and online media, I highlight how temporary Schützian quasi-consociates, represented by named 'persons', provide narratives which permit citizens to imagine themselves as similarly liberated, yet safe and secure, cardholder-citizens, both in physical and virtual worlds. Whereas it might be argued that such efforts mitigate potential insecurity-engendering alienation in face of creeping securitization and control of citizens' bodies, I demonstrate how the technique may have negative effects, e.g. in the creation of potentially unusual and off-putting 'fingerprint people' created by the UK's Identity and Passport Service. I argue that while this may display an arguably accurate portrayal of the scheme's biometric-recording intentions, such persuasion represents a morally-insecuritising move towards normalisation of state power to (in)authenticate citizens' identity via physical means.