26 Nov 2007
Since HMRC lost 25 million records, public trust in the government’s introduction of ID cards is fading and alternative schemes are growing in appeal.
UK Biometrics Ltd has proposed a scheme where an individual’s biometric data would be stored on their smart card chips in their credit cards, and there would be no need for a centralised national identity database.
“When required by police or authorities to positively identify themselves the card holder would slot their smart card into a hand held biometric scanner, place their fingertip onto the reader and have their identity confirmed,” said the firm.
The solution would help eliminate fraud as well as giving the ownership of data to the individual.
Matthew James, UK Biometrics Managing Director, said “In the event that someone loses their smart card, their fingerprint cannot be reproduced from the encrypted data held for comparison on the chip.”
'The solution would help eliminate fraud as well as giving the ownership of data to the individual.' -- I'm not sure about that in this example, but 'ownership' and 'control' of personal identity seems, to me at least, to be at the heart of what we should be concerned to protect in all this.
I would certianly begin to have some sympathy with the idea mentioned here if in authenticating my 'ID' using the card what was grabbed by the card reader was either a small randomised portion of my biometric data, or better stil a hash of a small portion.
Whatever is in place has to protect me/us from accident and abuse by legitimate users as well as illegal ones, i.e. we must not allow the Govt./state to come into the position of owning/controlling what is quintessentially ours.
It's the old servants of the people, not servants of the state argument.
Posted by: ursy 27 Nov 2007
Most of us who object to the government's ID cards scheme find fault with the database rather than the card itself. A "self-checking" card that does not need access to a database is to be preferred, provided that the terminal device does not itself keep records of cards it has verified. If you give confidential information to the government and they store it in a database you might as well publish it on YouTube.
Posted by: Simon Evans 26 Nov 2007
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