Biometric ID is now compulsory for all non-EU citizens residing in the UK. With this bodily ‘entry examination’ now no longer restricted to borders, but able to happen anywhere, borders are moving from their traditional location around nations, and being re-inscribed onto the human body.

These technologies treat the body as an information source, which can be stored and tagged to other pieces of information. As ID and border security is fused in this way, the border can effectively be carried with us everywhere.

But does this merger between our identity and the state’s security concerns force us to accept practices that we have previously considered exceptional and confined only to ‘the borders’? The claim of ‘exceptional circumstances’ can be used to justify pretty much anything, as the ‘war on terror’ continues to demonstrate: detention without charge, attacks on free speech, ‘enhanced interrogation’ (i.e. torture), and ‘extraordinary rendition.’

The label ‘exceptional’ seems to place such practices beyond debate and outside democracy. Yet joining together identity, the body and the border has serious political consequences. To reject the identity allocated to us we will have to fight through bodily manipulation – remember Tom Cruise’s character in the film Minority Report?

Our bodies will become directly involved in the operations of state power, as they become physically the place in which our identity as ‘citizen,’ ‘immigrant’ or ‘terrorist’ is determined.

This may not initially provoke much resistance amongst ‘citizens.’ However, if a citizen’s ‘status’ is changed – to criminal, or terrorist, say - their physical features could become a direct stake in survival.

Democracy is supposed to be a community of equals, free to participate in society and contest ideas about how society should be run. We should be wary of changes that alter levels of participation according to our bodies themselves.