06 Sep 2007
What will ID cards be for? Worryingly, despite the details published last month with the launch of the procurement process, there is still no simple answer.
Fraud, immigration and public services all come under the scheme’s panacean umbrella. As do terrorism, underage drinking and streamlined hiring procedures.
To a sceptic, such indecision looks suspicious evidence that the government will use any means at its disposal to justify a scheme that is at best expensively pointless and at worst a premeditated policy of social control.
To some extent, the ID scheme is hoist with its own petard. Because there are so many potential uses, it can be made to look ill-considered, ill-intentioned, or both.
The danger is that the potential for the scheme to have genuine benefits will be lost in a flurry of shrill narrow-mindedness.
The Home Office may bang too hard on the security drum, overlooking the fact that the majority of benefits will be commercial authentication for online banking, for example.
From the other side, the ludicrous ease with which paint-by-numbers Big Brother scare stories can be put together threatens to turn any sensible debate into hysteria before it even starts.
In fact, for the privacy debate to focus so strongly on the government is missing the point.
Google already targets adverts using people’s search profiles. And it envisions a future where it has enough information to answer questions such as: what job would suit me; or, with whom should I go to the cinema?
My point is by no means unqualified support for ID cards. But the scheme must be seen in the context of far larger developments that transcend the simple, rather infantile, government-bashing tradition.
It is unrealistic to try to hold back the electronic tide. But with that tide comes a data trail unlike anything previously imaginable.
There are, without doubt, serious questions to be asked: about how we want to interact with the state; about how we balance conflicting desires for security and anonymity; about how we live in an online world while retaining some semblance of control.
There are no easy answers. But let us at least be sure we are asking the right questions rather than just tilting at the easiest target we can find.
...Because it's a government scheme and it will therefore never work. It will go the way of Connecting for Health, IRIS, Child Benefit, Tax Credits and everything else this government has tried to build. The government has demonstrably no managerial competence and they hand responsibility over to a cabal of management consultancies who have no interest in seeing any of the projects ever completed. In 10years time there still won't be an ID card, there'll be a "scaled down" national identity register that nobody uses because it's so unreliable and the ministers and their deputies will be on the boards of the usual suspect systems integrators.
Posted by: Johnny Mnemonic 19 Sep 2007
It may well be that ID cards have commercial advantages for banks and other institutions requiring secure authentication. But in which case those financial and commercial organisations should be owning the project so that it delivers a proportionate and timely solution. The government is the last organisation that should be running it. When I logon to my bank's web site, I authenticate and do not need *identify* myself in the overweening sense that this government sees identification. I see absolutely no good reason why the National Identity Register should contain a record of every time I authenticate to my online bank. Can Sarah give me one? Or is it shrill narrow mindedness to ask such a question?
Posted by: Stephen Thomas 11 Sep 2007
The ID card does not need to be "made to look ill-considered,
ill-intentioned, or both". It is.
The ever-changing "justification" for the cards arises because
the government - yes, them - have decided to invest in a
"solution" without first identifying what problems it will
actually solve, or how their chosen panacea will address those
problems. They have decided to buy without first specifying their
requirements.
One of the first requirements one might consider when designing
an ID scheme for the modern age would be how to authenticate
someone across the internet. The Belgian government certainly
thought of this when they decided to incorporate digital
signatures into their ID cards. The UK scheme contains no such
innovation. How exactly do you expect your dream of banks using
ID cards to prevent online fraud from working? Do you expect all
customers to have tamper-proof biometric scanners at home?
There is a reason why the debate about privacy always focuses on
the government. It is only the government that can force us to
comply with its demands. If you don't like Google's privacy
policy - don't use Google. If you don't like the government's
privacy policy ...
There are indeed serious questions to be asked. Many already have
been. So far, the government have failed to answer any of
them. Next time you speak to your sources, perhaps you would like
to ask them some of the easier ones.
I'll give you a hand:
- Given that there has long been a problem of unauthorised
disclosure of information from public sector computer systems,
such as the police national computer, it must be assumed that
information will also be obtainable from the National Identity
Register. What provision is being made to ensure that victims
of domestic abuse do not have to put their address on a
vulnerable central database?
- Ministers have repeatedly made clear their desire for access to
non-emergency medical services to require checks against the
NIR, checks that will be logged in the audit trail. Will visits
to GUM clinics be recorded? Abortion clinics?
- The NSPCC have found that many teenagers would shy away from
using family planning services or GUM clinics if they could not
be entirely confident of anonymity. What measures will the Home
Office put in place to combat the reduction in use of these
facilities by the young?
- Illegal immigrants with contagious but curable diseases will be
unlikely to seek treatment from the NHS if they are required to
present ID cards. Will the Home Office guarantee that such
people will not be deported, or are they preparing to accept an
increased risk to public health?
- What will the cost of linking to the NIR be for the NHS? How
much will be taken from the schools' budget to fund Ministers
desire for access to education to be restricted through ID
control?
- How will UK ID cards be more effective than the ones in Madrid
at stopping terrorism?
- How will UK ID cards be more effective than Italian/Scilian
ones at tackling organised crime?
- What are the greatest benefits of ID cards - and precisely
***__HOW__*** will they be obtained?
Posted by: Geraint 07 Sep 2007
Ms Arnott apparently acknowledges that people are entitled to privacy but would rather we didn't make too much of a fuss about it... so that she can go shopping.
It might be less disingenuous to call the real threat of Big Brother hysterical if the Government...
1. Hadn't systematically avoided real safeguards against it.
2. Wasn't currently dismantling the Data Protection Act.
3. Wasn't constantly being deceitful about the supposed benefits and real threats.
4. Was prepared to debate the issue in public.
5. Wasn't currently building unnecessary and highly abusable databases for our medical files and children.
If we want real safeguards against mass surveillance, we can demand them, and then implement them in law. And then Ms Arnott can shop without threatening the entire country.
Posted by: Dave Gould 06 Sep 2007
The National Identity Scheme (NIS) stands or falls on biometrics. If the biometrics are reliable, the NIS could work. Take away the biometrics, and there is nothing left of the NIS. The ID cards and biometric visas and ePassports would be no better than all the other fallible forms of identification we suffer from. There would be no reason to spend billions of pounds on them and to upset the children with nightmares about 1984.
What biometrics are on offer? The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) offered three. Biometrics based on facial geometry, fingerprints and iris prints. These three were the subject of the UKPS biometrics enrolment trial.
The results are there for every adult to see. 31% of able-bodied participants could not prove who they were on the basis of facial geometry. 19% could not prove who they were on the basis of their fingerprints. 10% could not even register their iris prints in the first place, let alone use them to prove who they were. Which may explain why IPS have dropped iris prints from the list.
Let's look at the better-performing biometric -- fingerprints. There is a 19% false non-match rate. What does that mean? It means that 19% of people will have trouble proving that they have the right to work legally in the UK. It means that 19% of people wil have trouble getting state education for their children and non-emergency state healthcare. That is unworkable.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee asked IPS what were the acceptance criteria for fingerprints. The answer -- a 1% false non-match rate. 19 is greater than 1. So fingerprints are unacceptable.
That's what a grown-up would conclude. But not IPS. They are proceeding with fingerprints. With their eyes tight shut and their hands over their ears and calling their detractors hysterical and immature, they are going to burn billions of your pounds and mine on a scheme which they know cannot work.
One of us needs to grow up. IPS? Or the campaigners against ID cards?
Posted by: David Moss 06 Sep 2007
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