Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance

"Lyon's view is nuanced and he is conscious of the multiple expressions of citizenship beyond identification. He carefully details the increasingly interoperable databases which sustain identification cards, reiterating throughout that the card itself is only the tip of the iceberg."
Canadian Journal of Sociology

"Lyon brilliantly mixes precise distinctions with experimental inferences to make legible the current status of technology-driven identification systems and their future potential for sorting citizens."
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, and author of Territory, Authority, Rights

"ID cards are an issue of growing concern in many countries. David Lyon provides fresh perspectives and many new insights into the way these systems work and the consequences they have for individuals and society. The clear, compelling and informative writing makes the book attractive to both specialists and the general reader."
Charles Raab, University of Edinburgh

"With an admirably lucid and clear style David Lyon shows how new technologies of identification govern new divisions of citizens and their others (strangers, outsiders, aliens) by decoding (biometric) and sorting (categorical) bodies. It also brilliantly illustrates how struggles for citizenship must now be also fought through databases (increasingly owned and controlled by 'card cartels') that make such technologies possible."
Engin Isin, Open University