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NO2ID have launched an e-Petition against the Government's Orwellian, intrusive, impractical and immensely wasteful ID cards and identity register proposals. Please take the time to visit http://www.no2id-petition.net/ and sign it - these people already did:

Spy Blog

UK Indymedia

Samizdata.net

Globalise Resistance

boingboing

UK ID Cards at Blog City (thanks, Trevor!)

Chris Lightfoot gets in a shameless plug

Blogdial

UK Crypto

ID Unknown, a p*ssed off punter whose individual response to the 2003 HO consultation (via Stand) was treated as a petition...

Shout99

Above Top Secret

Suspect Paki courts controversy...

electricinca.com

the Warzine blogsite

Fruitless Labour (short, but to the point!)

Protein Feed

SteveC's 'not funny' archive

Spinneyhead seems to be having a few problems, but he's got the right idea...

perlmonger

The England Project

Steve: Developing on the Edge

Samwise returns...

What You Can Get Away With

Atomic Razor

(Far from) Random and Irrelevant

Malbac

Tom at Random Etc

Simon's blog

And, of course, you could always buy the T-shirt while you're at it!

Devil's Advocate

Martin Brampton acts as an excellent Devil's Advocate in his article, Does the UK need ID cards? on silicon.com. The comments are starting to reflect people's growing concern with Blunkett's scheme - and I have to say, despite my inevitable bias, that I think the con's are being far more coherently argued than the pro's. "It'll be more convenient" and "Shut up, the polls say people want 'em" vs. growing suspicion of politicians, proven bureaucratic inefficiency, valuing liberal society, being considered safer by countries that have 'em, dubious 'benefits', prosecution by database, a tax on the forgetful, and analogies to the Weimar Republic.

Maybe the tone of the debate (what little there has been) is shifting - it's certainly time for more people to join in...

e-Borders? More like a surveillance charter

John Lettice's comprehensive overview of the government's newly-announced e-Borders initiative, Blair's Britain vies with US in ID snoop wars, is in turns both terrifying and depressing. Blair, Blunkett et al. are steaming ahead with a scheme that far exceeds even US-VISIT (read Privacy International's analysis of that here) in its scope for surveillance of the general population.

And they're not even trying to walk before they run.

Project Semaphore, also announced yesterday, intends to track SIX MILLION people - beginning by the end of this year! I know the US is applying pressure on every other country to issue their citizens with biometric passports by the end of 2005 (we got a year's grace when the chips weren't ready in time), but emulating and then exceeding the worst aspects of Homeland Security has got to be the daftest response ever.

How much is this all going to cost? If just smartcards for UK citizens and one database will cost £3.1 billion (and the rest!) then the cost of e-Borders must be truly enormous. Where's the cost/benefit analysis? What *are* the benefits? And if it's intended to link in with ID cards (which it is) then just how much MORE of our personal data will be transferred to other countries for them to do with as they see fit, every time we travel?

Let's cut to the chase

Philip Chaston's, It's the Database, Stupid! on both White Rose and Samizdata.net raises some good points about what a couple of the speakers said, most notably:

Both were unable to provide a convincing story as to why the government was introducing this measure. Without understanding the motives behind the development of the ID scheme, it will prove far more difficult to halt or reverse.

Uncovering the government's (not so) hidden agendas is one line of attack - and, as Philip acknowledges, there is no one simple answer. New Labour are very definitely fans of 'centralising control through data' - but I am certain that all governments fall prey to this, to some degree. It's the nature of any bureacracy to perpetuate itself, and managing everyone's identity is pretty much the mother of all bureaucratic moves. So much so that it takes a large step towards authoritarianism, even totalitarianism...

I don't believe that there is some highly organised plot in the UK (or globally) by a sinister 'them' who wish to control every aspect of our lives. Rather I think that opportunist politicians, heavily influenced by companies who stand to make enormous profits and civil servants who sniff a gravy train in the making, are being fooled into thinking that technological 'quick fixes' can dig them out of problems that are either of their own making (through poor management or bad decision-making) or so complex that no single initiaive can hope to have any effect.

Those in power are rarely smart enough to understand the full implications of what they are doing, and even if they are they know that (a) they are nowadays unlikely ever to be held accountable for their actions, so long as they are fairly near the top of the Westminster pile, and (b) it's probably worth doing anyway as a step towards making their name, gaining position or garnering a lucrative Directorship or two when they leave office - the public/media memory for all but the biggest cock-ups being so short.

Of course, individuals such as Blunkett and Blair are driven by a more messianic sense of self-belief than most and are therefore doubly dangerous. But they are not actually evil, and I'm sure that they genuinely believe that they are doing things for the best. They're deluded and wrong, and lots of us know it - which is why we have to do something about it.

What might be the possible motives / agendas behind the current ID scheme, then? Here's a list, in no particular order:

1) Stephen Harrison, Katherine Courtney, et al. at the Home Office see a chance to head up a multibillion pound department of 1,000s (if not 10,000s!) in a job that will make them for life - and probably come with a gong or two if they don't spectacularly screw the pooch in the meanwhile.

2) David Blunkett 'sees' an opportunity to be seen to be tackling a whole bunch of issues. His Christian Stalinist (paternalistic / authoritarian) principles mean that he's entirely comfortable with trampling over the rights of the (good) many in pursuit of the (bad) few. The problem is that he can't actually show how what he's doing is actually going to help, and can't make a strong and consistent case for ID cards without keeping secrets - the figleaf of 'commercial confidentiality' - or making wild assertions, retracting them, then alluding to them again - e.g. on terrorism. ID cards, then, as political panacea.

3) Who in government gets to control citizen IDs? Maybe the various schemes currently in development - the Children's Bill, ONS's Citizen Information Project, etc. - reveal some sort of intragovernmental struggle for supremacy. Whichever department ends up running the database will effectively 'own' the population: HO vs. IR/Customs vs. DH vs. ??? Even the new e-Envoy Chief Information Officer, Ian Watmore, is saying that the government's plans look nothing like 'joined-up thinking'!

4) New Labour are, by now, incapable of making an objective decision about any technology-based scheme - having been lobbied so hard by suppliers and the mega-consultancies, who stand to make enormous profits from any scheme that goes ahead. The tech companies are falling over themselves to land this one, which may explain why Mr Blunkett's costings are so commercially sensitive - they don't want anyone knowing how deeply discounted (and therefore unrealistic) some of the costs actually are. You would think that by now someone in government would be smelling a rat, with all the overruns and overspends on IT projects. Wake up! These companies may quote you a low price, but we all know it's going to cost several to many times more by the time the job's 'done'.

[This one's been sitting in Draft for too long, but it seemed worth publishing as is. Please add any other motives or agendas that you think may be involved...]

We have lift-off!

Our friends at Spy Blog and White Rose both wrote up the NO2ID public launch on Saturday. WTWU's account, NO2ID campaign launched to the public even has pictures - well, one at least: here.

Philip Chaston's, It's the Database, Stupid! on both White Rose and Samizdata.net goes into more detail and raises some good points, which I shall address in another post...

NO2ID launch

Come to NO2ID's launch event as advertised on Upcoming.org, Indymedia and the NO2ID site.

Kick-off is at 11:00am on Saturday 18th September at The Corner Store, 33 Wellington Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 7BN (nearest tube, Covent Garden - although Embankment, Temple and Charing Cross are all only about 5 mins walk away). There'll be speakers, etc. in the a.m. followed by lunch, then folks will be heading off to various parts of central London to do campaign-y things...

T-shirts, badges & stickers will be available on the day - as will shed loads of our shiny new leaflets. Come along, show your support and hit the streets. Let's get things started!

Fraud down, theft up

Just when the banks would have you think that Chip'n'PIN was going to save your bacon...

Market analyst Datamonitor warns "that as it became more difficult for fraudsters to commit card fraud, they [are] likely to turn their attention to identity theft."

BUT as card-not-present fraud is one of the most common forms of fraud in the UK, how do they expect new cards of any type to tackle this? Remember, Chip'n'PIN is not primarily about fraud at all - it's about liability shift: from the banks to the retailers, and thence to you...

The banks have done a lot of successful and quite sensible stuff to combat fraud, including the use of AI pattern-detection to identify unusual transactions. Following up on these automated alerts with a phonecall to the account holder (I've had a couple myself) makes for pretty good two-way 'authentication' of the transactions: "We think you've just bought something expensive in France", "I have, I'm on holiday there", "OK, have a good time" vs. "We see you've bought something expensive in Turkey", "Turkey?! I've never even been there", "Aha - we'll stop the transaction, then, and issue you a new card".

In many ways, the Home Office will actually be playing into the hands of the identity thieves by bringing in ID cards 'hot on the heels' of chip'n'PIN - providing the professional criminals with an ideal opportunity to accumulate multiple identities before their *real* owners even come to register!

Why is it that neither the banks NOR government in this country are looking seriously at Digital Certificate-based identity schemes? Is it because DCs don't pretend to be anything other than what they are - i.e. an identity token - and the powers that be are (a) too dumb to realise that this is all that any ID technology can *really* offer (i.e. a more or less secure/costly token), or (b) motivated by agendas other than those that they promote - e.g. reducing fraud liability to increase shareholder value rather than preventing fraud (and thereby saving us, the customer, money) for the banks, and being able to digitally surveil the entire population and being seen to be doing something about some intractable social problems rather than actually preventing anything for the government?

You decide.

Bingo! Ever heard of Private Credentials?

Dave Birch gets it.

From Second sight in Thursday's Guardian:

The identities within these national ID computers [i.e. smartcards] used to transact business (in the general sense, such as voting, shopping, booking a squash court and every thing else) in terminals, over the internet and via the television set are therefore not "real" identities (whatever they may be) but virtual identities: a kind of identity that exists only inside computers. Identity management in the physical world using national ID computers will have to converge with identity management in the rest of the virtual world.

...

If this is to be the case, we need to enure that the way these virtual identities are created and used is what we, as a society, really want from the future. There is one particular thing I really do want from them: anonymity. Why should the virtual identity stored on my national ID card be limited to Dave Birch? Why can't I have a couple? Why can't my card tell the pub that I'm virtually King Arthur when I'm proving that I'm over 18? It's none of their business who I really am.

It seems to me that this could be one of the most interesting features of identity computers: their ability to reveal relevant facts about a person (this person is allowed to enter this leisure centre, for example) while simultaneously keeping the person's identity private.

This is a theme and principle that has underpinned the work I've been doing for years now in the voluntary & public sector. Why *should* people be expected to give over one bit more information than is necessary for the required transaction? It's hardly as if any agency or organisation from the banks to charities (or even the church), the government to multinational corporations have proven themselves to be utterly 'squeaky clean' when it comes to abuse or misuse of personal information. Individual ignorance, accident and oversight account for some of this - but the institutionalised trading of personal data without the knowledge of the persons being referred to is not only big business, for some firms/sectors it's a business model!

Just because we have to identify certain aspects of ourselves to certain individuals or authorities at certain times, does not mean we should have to provide them with loads of linked pieces of information about ourselves. With regard to CareZone, for example, we wanted kids on the system to be able to digitally establish that they were a looked-after child, and therefore entitled to access certain services, without exposing any unnecessarily-identifying personal information. To address this I designed a system of personae (virtual identities) that performed as more than just simple avatars within the online shared space: they also provided ways in which even very young children could safely understand, manage and use appropriate digital identities.

The approach I took at the time seemed related (at least in principle) to Stefan Brands' 'Private Credentials', published by Zero Knowledge Systems in late 2000 [456 KB PDF file], but there are a number of other credential-based schemes - e.g. the electronic cash system described by Chaum (whose excellent 1992 Scientific American article on blind signatures, Achieving Electronic Privacy, I highly recommend), Fiat and Naor at Crypto '88 - that might feasibly combine PKI & digital certificates to achieve the sort of anonymity (or just simple privacy!) that Dave Birch desires.

David Blunkett is an Arse

No, really.

Thanks to Phil in Brazil* for pointing this [blog] out to me ;)

Charlie Williams' brief, but incisive dissection of Blunkett's Response to the Home Affairs Select Committee report seems particularly apt.

*I met and conversed with Phil briefly, but very enjoyably, a few years back when he was working with Runtime Collective. If you make it to his Wiki, ThoughtStorms, I strongly recommend (strong) coffee...

Good ol' Grauniad

Now here's a thing.

Last Thursday I wrote a letter to the Guardian, hoping to refute Blunkett & the Home Office's continued assertion that 80% of us support their proposals. We don't, and they know it - either that, or they're too bloody lazy or deluded to read anything but their own polls...

Anyway, it didn't get published and - to be honest - I didn't think it would. I put in too many figures and started to lose it a little at the end. If you've read much of this blog, that may not be too unfamiliar ;)

I thought it might just be worth putting the text of my letter up here, so here it is [scroll down for the happy ending]:

"Sir / Madam,

Your article on the home affairs select committee's criticism of David Blunkett's plans to introduce ID cards reveals the deep scepticism felt towards the scheme by MPs of all parties. What I find particularly disgraceful, though, is the fact that Mr Blunkett continues to assert that "over 80% in all focus group and opinion polls" support his proposals - as if this provided adequate justification for passing legislation, in any case!

He must be ignoring the recent Privacy International (YouGov) and Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust 'State of the Nation' polls that indicate levels of support as low as 61% nationally and just 56% regionally, in Scotland. Even the Detica (MORI) poll, hyped by the Home Office in May - in which the 80% figure was headlined - revealed that almost half (48%) of people would not want to pay for an ID card, and that 60% "have little or no confidence in the Government's ability to introduce ID cards without hitches".

Opposition to the proposals is deep, entrenched and growing rapidly as details of the scheme emerge. The Home Office, meanwhile, refuse to engage in proper and open debate, and roll on regardless with their increasingly unbelievable plans. If Labour truly think that ID cards have the support of the nation, they should put them in their manifesto and let the country decide before taking a step further.

And if Mr Blunkett wants to play cards, he really shouldn't let himself be caught stacking the deck.

Yours faithfully, etc."

Imagine my surprise when I was texted this morning to go buy a Guardian and, lo and behold, in the Letters section under ID cards are no panacea... it got published!

Edited to fit (thank God) and sandwiched between David Winnick MP and Dr. John Welford. I'm under no illusions - it was the NO2ID role that swung it, but gratifying nonetheless.

Hacks report the HAC Report

[Apologies to any journalists, but I couldn't resist the pun]

It's been an interesting few days, kicked off by a fine evening spent selling NO2ID T-shirts and signing up supporters at the Big Brother Awards. 'Hi' to everyone (new) I met & remembered to tell about this blog.

And then, at about 1am on the 29th, a text arrived to tell me that someone had leaked the Home Affairs Committee report on ID cards to the Guardian...

Patrick Wintour's front page article, MPs attack Blunkett ID card plan, later that morning revealed the news that:

David Blunkett's plan for compulsory identity cards [would] be condemned by MPs... as improperly costed, poorly thought out, secretive and "lacking in clarity both over the scheme's scope and practical operation".

Of course - after the report had been officially released on the 30th - their Special Report, MPs say the case is made, but call for proper scrutiny, highlighted "the secrecy surrounding the costs of the scheme - put at anywhere between £1.3bn and £3.7bn" and gave a comprehensive summary of the concerns expressed by the Committee.

Today's Leader, Big brother database reports "the ever vigilant information commissioner Richard Thomas gave the most apposite warning about the government's draft identification cards bill yesterday. Forget the cards and concentrate on the national database that lies behind them and the people who will have access to it."

Indeed!

Meanwhile back to Thursday, and an honourable mention for NO2ID on The Register's write-up of the Big Brother Awards 2004 - uncannily timed to coincide with the launch of online sales of our campaign T-shirt on Cash'n'Carrion ;)

You can now read the HAC report itself here, or download the BBC's (advance) copy.

Mark Simpkins at consultationprocess has MoveableTyped the Summary, with the Report itself in the pipeline. Blogalicious!

David Blunkett's response is one of the most nauseating pieces of turd polishing I've ever had the misfortune to read. It reveals the next bunch of partial truths and outright lies that he's hoping to foist on the nation, and clearly identifies what he thinks people's concerns are or will be. No sign of any real evidence to back up his condescending reassurances and outrageous assertions, of course!

David Davies, the Shadow Home Secretary, is reported by 4NI as saying, "There are a whole series of problems, loopholes and weaknesses and the committee is absolutely right to highlight them. And this proposal may well lead to a very large database containing all the data about all citizens in one place, and that has serious civil liberties considerations too."

But while the the Tories have described the government's approach as "incoherent" and weak on detail, they have yet to come out as firmly against them. Hardly surprising given the fact that Michael Howard himself tried to introduce ID cards in the mid 90s, when he was Home Secretary - only giving up when he found them impossible to justify.

More from 4NI:

The Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary, Mark Oaten, said that the David Blunkett's proposals were a "mish-mash of ideas" created to placate the Cabinet.

“Mr Blunkett has failed to demonstrate to the Committee, the public, and to many of his Cabinet colleagues that his plans would prevent terrorism or cut crime," he said.

Maybe because the Guardian got the jump on them, the other broadsheets didn't make such a massive noise about the report - but still covered it:

David Barrett of The Independent noted Blunkett's refusal to publish details of the financing of the scheme in, Public facing 'clear risks' from ID cards scheme.

And John Steele in the Telegraph wrote, MPs scathing over plans for national ID cards.

The tabloids barely batted an eyelid, but some of them did at least write something:

The Mirror's, ID CARD PLAN IS 'FLAWED', called the scheme "poorly thought out and over-secretive", but unfortunately propagated John Denham's assertions that "ID cards would help in the war against terror, fight crime and and reduce illegal immigration." The latter being so patently untrue as to call into question whether either Denham or the Mirror journo need their heads examined (probably both)!

The Daily Record meanwhile managed just three sentences.

The local papers, or at least the Evening Times with MPs claim cost of identity card plan could soar and icNetwork's MPs criticise ID cards plan chipped in before being used to wrap some.

The technology press (especially online) have been pretty good at covering the many and varied flaws of the scheme and the thinking behind it, and this proved no exception:

ZDNet UK's MPs slam UK ID card proposal quotes several industry experts who question the government's "lack of technical assessment", doubt the validity of the card if identity verification is a "subsidiary issue", and the director of security strategy at Computer Associates wonders "exactly why a scheme is necessary at all".

Lucy Sheriff in El Reg seems pretty resigned to the fact that the government thinks ID cards: a bad idea, but we'll do it anyway. I'm sure a certain Mr. Lettice will have more to say on the matter when he returns...

Silicon.com labels ID cards "an expensive and dangerous folly".

And PublicTechnology.net's, ID Cards: MP committee backs them but criticises implementation & laws, is a pretty straightforward summary of the report that draws attention to current 'joined-up government' thinking: "MPs believe that there should not be a central database holding all individual information, but the identity card should enable access to all Government databases."

[Though strictly speaking it's not about the HAC report, Sarah Arnott in Computing asks some of The questions we want answered in the Data Debate. Watch this space!]

And the HAC report even got some coverage abroad, in Europe, New Zealand (via Reuters) and Bahrain! I couldn't find the Reuters feed, but Bloomberg's was pretty good.

Of course, the Beeb chipped in on the 29th with a piece about the "lack of openness" and use of the scheme as "a cover" to introduce a national fingerprinting system within five years. Well, doh! Their more in-depth coverage on the 30th,
ID card plans 'badly thought out', was much better - and not just because it quoted our (NO2ID's) very own Owen Blacker :)

A final couple from the political & legal angle:

ePolitix', Committee seeks clarity on ID cards, steers clear of being controversial but picks up on the main concerns. However, they report Blunkett as saying:

"ID cards will bring enormous benefits to us as individuals and as a society," he said.

"The government is acting now to prepare the UK for 21st Century challenges such as crime, security, the speed and nature of communication and international travel, and the number of sophisticated and complex transactions that we as individuals need to do effectively and securely."

Utter bullshit.

If he were genuinely interested in the latter, they'd have been incorporating Digital Certificates, not biometrics, into the smartcards. I am reminded of the question someone once told me to ask myself every time a politician opens his (or her) mouth: "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?".

Meanwhile, the good folk from Masons go into some detail in an out-law.com article that concludes with a pretty extensive list of the Information Commissioner's "major concerns".

We'll see what effect this all has when the dust has settled a bit - but, given this government's track record on listening to the British public, I don't expect that much will change. Maybe a name, maybe the price. They think it's all about managing public perception, but the fact is they could even drop the cards and I would still fight this outrageous piece of legislation tooth and nail.

Repeat after me: it's not (just) the cards, it's the database...

Fer cryin' out loud!

The Times reported yesterday that All children [are] to go on [a] 'big brother' computer. One aspect of the Children's Bill that, e.g. Spy Blog has been tracking with increasing alarm since at least March of this year, cf. Big Nanny database?

It's nothing less than the National Identity Register by the back door - creating dossiers on each and every child in the UK and, by association, their parents and/or guardians! The worrying thing is how little publicity this all-pervasive scheme with huge long-term effects is getting, especially given its pertinence to one of the most obvious gaps in the proposed ID cards / NIR scheme.

Add into the mix The Office for National Statistics' Citizen Information Project which proclaims it is "not about creating a comprehensive, centrally stored database on citizens", despite the fact that they are quite up front in saying:

"The unique reference number is primarily needed for the efficient running of the register. However, it could have a wider use, for example as a 'personal public services number' used across different public services. The design of the population register could facilitate the matching of records held in different databases."

They go on to say that, of course, this would *only* be possible if legislation is passed to permit such matching - but who the hell do these people think they are kidding? The government show every sign of passing several pieces of legislation of this type, doing their best to hide the construction of their 'database state' by burying the necessary clauses in superficially unrelated Draft Bills and initiatives.

Either they are thinking in a 'joined up' way, and this is clear evidence of their surveillance agenda, or the left hand really doesn't know what the right hand is doing - in which case they should really look at why they are attempting to build (at least) three costly centralised databases of unprecedented size and fill them with our personal data, when they haven't even been able to manage any of the existing identity databases to their own satisfaction!

Pizza surveillance

I'd browsed past this ACLU Pizza animation a couple of times before I actually took the time to watch it all the way through. Well worth a couple of minutes of your time...

Submission to the Home Office

What follows is the full text of my e-mail submission to the Home Office consultation on ID cards. The deadline is today so, if you haven't done so already, please do send something (even if it's just a simple 'I am against the proposed scheme and legislation' type mail) to identitycards@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk, making sure the words 'consultation response' appear in the Subject line.

UPDATE: if you want to gather some inspiration from others' thoughts and comments then visit Spy Blog's excellent annotated blog of the Draft Bill or Mark Simpkins' equally excellent blog of the entire consultation document. And if you have a little more time, I heartily recommend you download and read Stand.org.uk's submission [219KB MS Word document].

Here goes nothing:

"Sir/Madam,

I am writing in response to the Home Office's document 'Legislation on Identity Cards: a consultation', published on 26th April 2004, which includes the draft clauses of an Identity Cards Bill.

For the purposes of registering responses as being for or against the proposed legislation and scheme, I am AGAINST - for the reasons I outline below.

I hope that, this time, the Home Office will recognise and publically acknowledge ALL individual electronically-submitted responses, something it failed to do in the previous consultation. For your information, I have designed a large-scale smartcard-based system for children, which was subsequently part-funded by DH, DfES & the Treasury and currently operates across a number of UK Local Authorities.

My first objection is that the name of the Draft Bill itself is disingenuous - as evidenced by the number of clauses and references to the National Identity Register within it. By 'headlining' ID cards, and not the NIR that underlies the whole scheme, the Home Office and Home Secretary avoid publicising the very thing that I have personally found most people object to. I have had numerous conversations in past months with members of the public, friends, acquaintances and professionals and the vast majority of them (even those who are initially in favour of ID cards) express doubts or change their opinion when made aware of the large database of personal information, including their fingerprints and iris scan, that will be required to operate the proposed scheme.

My second objection is to the government's continued misleading assertions about public support for ID cards and, e.g. misuse of the term 'voluntary' with regard to the scheme. It is highly unlikely that 80% of the population will apply voluntarily for an ID card - the 'trigger level' proposed for making them compulsory - as even the Detica/MORI poll to which the Home Office so frequently refers revealed that 48% of the population do not want to pay for an ID card, even if they think it might be a good idea!

Linking the scheme to passport and driving license renewals and applications - as would seem to be the government's intention - will mean that entry onto the NIR would be INvoluntary, unless citizens can choose to have their driving license or passport WITHOUT getting an NIR entry or ID card. There does not appear to be any provision for this at present (in fact it seems that this option is specifically being avoided) but, were there to be such provision, entry onto the NIR should at the very least require informed consent - i.e. be on a strictly 'opt in' not an 'opt out' basis.

Des Browne has stated within the last week that ID cards will become compulsory in 2008, and the Home Office seems determined to follow a schedule that even major suppliers think is unrealistic - while ignoring the fact that public support for ID cards is not as high and unwavering as the government would have us believe.

A recent ICM poll (commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust for their annual 'State of the Nation' report) shows that some 24% of people across the UK oppose biometric ID cards, with only 71% agreeing that they would be a good idea - and support in Scotland seems to have fallen as low as 56%. An earlier YouGov survey put support across the UK as low as 61%! This significant fall-off may explain why, despite the 80% level of support still quoted by the Home Office, it appears that MORI are having difficulties in recruiting sufficient volunteers for the current UKPS biometric enrollment trials. These sorts of difficulties are only going to get worse as the scheme proceeds and public awareness of its impact and implications increases.

Most worrying are the Prime Minister's and others' continued assertions that there are no longer any "significant civil liberties objections" when, in point of fact, there are. Simply ignoring those who express them and, e.g. refusing to attend public meetings (such as 'Mistaken Identity' at the LSE in May) that might prove difficult to convince or win over, DOES NOT mean that people are willing to forgo their existing rights and freedoms, or those of their fellow - or future - citizens. If the Home Office wish to continue asserting this, they should list precisely which civil liberties objections they have addressed and 'overcome'.

As I understand it, the government has failed to explain how ID cards and the NIR will avoid or prevent the following:

1) Exclusion - ID cards will disadvantage the most marginal and powerless people in society, creating a form of 'statelessness'. This would especially be of concern regarding the homeless, the aged and infirm and the mentally ill or incompetent.

2) Discrimination - ID cards will be used as a tool for racial prejudice. Recently published police statistics show a disproportionate growth in the number of Asian people stopped on the street since 9/11, and this dynamic would only be reinforced if ID cards were to become compulsory.

3) Loss of Privacy - ID cards will facilitation more collection and processing of data, and will destroy personal privacy. The definitions of 'consent' in the Draft Bill are too loose to prevent the routine sharing of information between agencies that I am not happy have good reason to share my data, and data in the NIR would in any case be too vulnerable to abuse by staff in any number of agencies - let alone the secondary information that may be available from an 'audit trail' of my identity transactions.

4) Loss of Sovereignty - ID cards (and other identity initiatives) are being forced on the UK by overseas authorities, specifically the US and EU. We have a proud history of world leadership and independence and yet this government seems willing to surrender some of its citizens' basic rights and liberties on the say-so of foreign powers.

5) Internal Passport / End to Presumption of Innocence - the ID card will inevitably become an indispensable document, to be demanded indiscriminately by anyone holding any position of authority. I don't need to carry my passport to walk down the street at present, why should I need to in future? I am innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around!

6) Lifechanging Inconvenience - the loss, failure or theft of an ID card that is demanded for so many important functions of life would effectively suspend the rights and normal functioning of the individual. Government IT systems are notoriously prone to error and instability, but if it is my very identity that is in question then I cannot afford any downtime or system failures. Ever.

7) Future 'Big Brother' - while this government, I am sure, genuinely believes that it would never abuse an ID card / NIR system it cannot guarantee that such a system would or could never be put to unintended hostile uses by a future administration. Though extreme, comparisons to Article 48 of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's extermination of the Jews are pertinent and throw into sharp contrast the current government's (over)reaction to 'Islamic' terrorism. The 'war on terror' is NOT World War II, and there is no immediate and overwhelming moral or practical justification for ID cards - if there were, the government would (and should) have brought them in immediately.

Due to the fact that I am not a lawyer or legislator I do not propose to offer a clause by clause response to the Draft Bill, but offer my remaining objections which fall into the following categories:

1) Feature creep & abuse of personal data - since the earliest mention of 'entitlement cards' to the current 'ID cards' scheme, the Home Office have inconsistently given a number of reasons as to why we should have them. I address these individually below, but wish to make the point that if you cannot even give a clear definition of what ID cards and the NIR are for at the outset it is unlikely that you will be able to correctly specify the system (especially its 'business rules') and highly likely that any system that is built will be prone to feature creep.

The scheme has variously been sold on its 'convenience' and 'cost-saving' properties. Both of these imply broad usage of its data records across government and the public sector, which would means the cards / NIR being hooked into numerous systems - each of which would offer another route of attack or compromise. It appears that feature creep is, far from being avoided, actually being designed into the system.

While strict security measures and sanctions against misuse may be applied, the reality is that centralising such a large amount of data and introducing complex links with a variety of services that employ a large number of people will almost inevitably lead to abuse - not only by those administering the system, but by anyone with access to it.

In combination with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the NIR will also open up new possibilities for widespread surveillance, profiling and other invasions of privacy - albeit by a limited number of people. The technological pursuit of efficient delivery of services should not be used to undermine the quite necessary and proper safeguards afforded by our currently decentralised systems. Mere efficiency should be balanced against potential abuses of private information, the erosion of personal privacy and other risks to society.

2) 'Infallibility' & biometrics - the Home Secretary would have us believe that biometrics will make for infallible identification, and that ID cards themselves will be unforgeable. This is dangerous nonsense and if anyone at, or appointed by, the Home Office genuinely believes it then they should be dismissed immediately - because they are obviously incapable of commissioning, let alone designing or implementing, a secure system! If the government is serious about, e.g. reducing identity fraud than it needs to be a lot more accurate in ALL of its public statements on identification technologies!

Some of the more well-informed and technologically-savvy individuals in the country, as well as a number of internationally-renowned independent experts, have serious misgivings about the maturity and practicality of biometric systems. Of course representatives of those companies that stand to make a profit from a biometric-based scheme will be telling government that everything can be worked out. I only hope that the Home Office will pay close attention to the dismal performance of the technologies, e.g. in its current (UKPS) trials and realise how badly they are being deceived by the suppliers. That is, of course, assuming that they are not already deluding themselves...

N.B. this is an area in which I have specifically relevant expertise. Whilst the kids I was working with [see para 3 above] at first sight thought that fingerprint technologies were 'cool', they soon became adamantly opposed to them (or any biometric) when they realised that their fingerprint data would be stored permanently on a database somewhere. The same is likely to be true for many members of the general public, who associate fingerprinting with criminality.

3) Supposed benefits - a number of 'reasons' have been given for the introduction of ID cards and the NIR, but little or no evidence has been provided to support or justify these. In fact, when challenged, the Home Secretary has been forced to modify or correct his statements (including those made in Parliament) regarding the use and effectiveness of ID cards.

So many reasons have been given that ID cards have begun to look like this government's answer to a whole range of problems to which there seem to be no easy answers. Being seen to be doing something may be politically expedient, but will not solve:

a) Terrorism - fighting terrorism requires sound intelligence and competent policing and, even if the NIR is to be used for wholesale surveillance and profiling and indiscriminate data-sharing across international borders, ID cards themselves (as the Home Secretary himself admits!) do not offer a solution.

The suicide bombers who carried out the 9/11 atrocities all had perfectly valid identification papers or compelling forgeries. Spanish ID cards did nothing to prevent or deter the train bombings in Madrid. In fact, of the 25 countries worst affected by terrorism since 1986, 80% have national identity cards - one third of which incorporate biometrics. Detailed research by, e.g. Privacy International, was unable to uncover a single instance where the presence of an ID card system was seen as a significant deterrent to terrorist activity.

b) Illegal immigration & working - as people will still be able to enter the country on a 3 month tourist visa, and what is proposed is a scheme for UK residents, there is no way in which ID cards can tackle immigration issues 'at source'. There are in any case already systems in place to deal with illegal immigration and black market illegal labour, but the authorities have shown themselves incapable of administering them.

Employers of illegal immigrants are often fully aware that they are breaking the law - but they don't ask to see National Insurance cards at present, and they won't check people's ID cards in future. ID cards will mean even more red tape and expense for legitimate businesses, but will be completely ignored by those who are already willing to act outside the law.

c) Health Tourism and other benefit fraud - there are already a range of systems in place (NHS numbers, National Insurance cards, etc.) that attempt to combat fraud and ensure people only get the services that they are entitled to. Some of these systems may require reform or improvement, but that is no reason to spend billions on a national ID card scheme.

The vast majority of benefit fraud comes about through understatement of income, circumstances and/or capital, none of which have anything to do with identity. In fact, when Michael Howard suggested the introduction of an ID card scheme in 1995, the DSS argued against it precisely because it would not have a noticeable effect on benefit fraud in the UK. More recently in 2003, Richard Kitchen of DWP stated that only 15% of the roughly £2 billion lost annually to fraud includes an initial motive to defraud - and of this, only a small amount involves deception of identity.

There could conceivably be serious and potentially life-threatening administrative problems for those who lose their ID card or have it stolen. And, e.g. the BMA doesn't want our already overstretched GPs and NHS doctors to have to become 'unofficial immigration inspectors', or to be put in a position where they must decide who receives care and who doesn't.

d) Identity theft - the government has singularly failed to maintain the integrity of any large-scale (identity) database, cf. National Insurance numbers, Driving Licenses and Passports. The creation of a new identity document will provide a high value target for fraudsters and history shows that the higher the potential gains from forgeries, the more resources that potential fraudsters will invest in circumventing the security provided by a system.

Far from reducing identity theft, ID cards are therefore more likely to encourage it! The more information and services that the Home Office tie into the NIR and ID cards, the more attractive they become as a target.

A more appropriate approach to tackling this issue would be a campaign of public education and better tracking of known stolen documents and cases of identity fraud. Tightening controls on the banks and credit reference agencies would also be more likely to have a positive effect than the creation of yet another card for citizens to carry.

4) Cost and value for money - the Home Office has failed to publish even a rough outline of the workings by which it arrived at a figure of £3.1 billion for the cost of the scheme. These costs have already doubled from the last time a figure was quoted, and others have come up with plausible calculations that show the figure to be closer to £6 billion - and which also note significant additional costs to business and public sector agencies when they are required to use ID cards to verify people's 'entitlement' to services.

Government IT projects are notorious for both time and budget overruns, and according to the Detica/MORI survey around 60% of people don't trust them to implement a scheme properly in any case! Looking at the government's track record, and that of the suppliers that they appoint, it isn't hard to see why...

As a citizen, I stand to gain very little in return for my £35-70 ID card not to mention the £60-120 per person that seems likely to come from my taxes. What I will get is a lot of inconvenience when my family and I have to attend a registration centre to 'prove our existence', nagging doubts once my and my loved ones' biometrics and other details are on a system that I know cannot be perfect, and a lifetime in a society based increasingly on fear and mistrust.

Not a price that I and many others will be willing to pay for a bunch of spurious 'benefits'.

***

In summary then, I don't believe the government is engaging in proper and open debate on an issue that is fundamental to its citizens' rights and freedoms; I have no confidence that it - or any future government - will be able to implement a system that is not open to widespread abuse and (for some individuals) critical failure; I am certain that any system which the government tries to build will cost a great deal more than is currently being forecast, and that the money used would be much better spent tackling the stated problems in other ways.

The Home Office's 'softly, softly' approach to bringing ID cards into force and the National Identity Register 'by the back door' speaks volumes as to their true intentions - and to the perfectly accurate assessment that if they attempted to bring them in all at once, they would face massive resistance from a public that at present remains largely ignorant of the full implications of the scheme.

Hoping that someone does at least read down this far and that, despite my firm opposition to the scheme, my comments will be taken seriously.

Yours faithfully,

Phil Booth"

IMIS tells it like it is

Computer Weekly reports the Institute for the Management of Information Systems' response to the Home Office ID cards consultation in an article entitled, Biometric ID cards do little to cut fraud.

As one of, if not the leading international professional association devoted to the management of information systems within the business environment (representing 14,000 IT professionals) you've got to hope that Blunkett, Browne, Harrison, et al. will listen to IMIS.

They certainly don't want to listen to members of the public!

More T-shirts and *declaring an interest*

Just spent most of today picking up & delivering the new batch of NO2ID campaign T-shirts [order 'em here for now, online fulfillment imminent!] around London, one of a number of things I'm now doing as NO2ID's recently-appointed finance and fundraising team leader.

We're very busy organising and making people aware of the growing opposition to biometric ID cards and the National Identity Register, so apologies if I don't post stuff here quite as regularly as I have been doing.

If you want to find out more about the NO2ID campaign, click on either of the T-shirts above.

If you wish to join our supporters' mailing list (low traffic, but you get to hear about events and register your opposition) then click here to send an e-mail request or visit http://www.no2id.com/mailman/listinfo/no2id-supporters

If you actually feel motivated to do something (write letters, hold meetings, hand out leaflets, etc.) then click here to send an e-mail request or visit http://www.no2id.com/mailman/listinfo/no2id-activists to subscribe to the 'activists' list. Not as scary as it sounds... honest :)

Blog the Bill, mail the H.O.

A belated reference to Mark Simpkins' excellent consultationprocess blog, which has taken the Home Office's consultation document [553 KB PDF file] on the proposed ID Card (and National Identity Register) legislation and MoveableTyped it.

Being able to comment on, link directly to paragraphs and use trackback introduces a whole new dimension to the document - and begs the question why the Government, if it is so interested in 'consultation' and enamoured of e-Everything, has not adopted this approach. It certainly can't be the cost, if a private individual (with some help from a few friends) has been able to do it!

The deadline for responses is 20th July, so check it out online then send your feedback and comments to identitycards@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk, including the words ‘consultation response’ in the subject title. Or write to:

Robin Woodland
Legislation Consultation, Identity Cards Programme
Home Office
3rd Floor, Allington Towers
19 Allington Street
London SW1E 5EB

All about Janet (all about YOU!)

The Guardian published this cool but disturbing little Flash gizmo a while back, that reveals which agencies hold what information on you - and who they share it with.

Clicking around reveals a few mildly interesting factoids: the Child Support Agency, for example, links to exactly as many other agencies (in the private, as well as the public sector) as the Police National computer - and both are linked to far more than the Passport office.

And who owns the most comprehensive name and address database in Europe?

Television Licensing Tracking! And they're not even public sector...

M$ 'Get the Facts'... ri-i-i-ight

John Lettice in El Reg's, MS, open source, The Facts and the fit-ups, describes (or more accurately, rips apart) one of Microsoft's recent series of UK seminars intended "to help customers better understand the debate surrounding Microsoft and Open Source software".

The spirit of "openness and honesty" (not) demonstrated by Microsoft seems vaguely reminiscent of... current Home Office behaviour. Simplistic arguments, 'evidence' skewed in your own favour and spin up the wazoo!

Microsoft's re-telling of the Newham incident shows a degree of selectivity with the truth that must have even Blunkett reeling in admiration. Buy your way into a contract and then say that you 'won' it on the long term value (TCO) of your product? Pull the other one...

El Reg were able to infiltrate various people into the event(s), so they can at least report on precisely who said what. A boon completely denied to us, the citizens of the UK, despite Home Office protestations that they are 'engaging' with the public in an open consultation process - while, behind closed doors, the industry briefings carry on regardless.

Knowing me, knowing you

Steven Mathieson's article in the Guardian, Knowing me, knowing you, is another of his well-informed pieces on government IT policy. He quotes David Cameron (Conservative MP) who refers to the Govenment's "excuse culture": they've got a whole bunch of problems - such as illegal immigration, serious crime, terrorism - but no real answers, so they offer a National Identity Register-backed ID card scheme as a "cure-all".

When a 'new' controversy arrives in the media (e.g. the Bichard report, regarding the intelligence failures that contributed to the Soham murders) you can bet your bottom dollar that the Home Secretary or Home Office will try to 'work in' a role for ID cards or the NIR - leading to massive 'feature creep' before the things are even implemented, and even more worrying erosions of personal privacy and the presumption of innocence. For example, it is now proposed that allegations be attached to people's records (i.e. stuff that may not even have taken place, let alone been committed by the individual) and that ID cards should in some way be linked to the Criminal Records Bureau.

Are we all, therefore, to be tarred with the same brush as the paedophiles and serious criminals? And do you *really* think that little plastic cards are going to prove a serious impediment to these people?

One of the more worrying aspects of all this is the sheer number of current and upcoming public (and private) sector initiatives designed to track us and our behaviour. Thanks to Steven for the following list:

Citizen Information Project: National Statistics plans a population register of everyone in the UK, providing one place to update details and improving government statistics.

National Identity Register: to be built from scratch for the ID card scheme. To include every UK adult, subject to parliamentary vote, it will include reference numbers for databases such as national insurance and NHS numbers, and biometric measurements.

NHS Care Records Service: the national project has started building a patient database to contain summary medical records for all in England.

Coordinated Online Register of Electors: plans are to merge or link the electoral rolls managed by all UK local authorities.

Local databases of all children in England are being trialled.

The Department for Transport will produce a feasibility study on installing tracking devices in all vehicles this summer, allowing road pricing.

Private sector databases include credit reference agencies, loyalty cards and bank databases of card data.

If they are so interested in knowing me and knowing you, why is it they are not so keen on us knowing what they are doing... and why?!

Hmmm - who are these guys?

ID Data seem to think they are in with a chance of getting the contract for Blunkett's ID cards:

ID Data has made its first move to be seriously considered as a supplier of choice for the UK's National ID Card.

At Intellect's high profile conference* attended by leading Home Office personnel and industry leaders, ID Data presented a challenging solution to the Government's needs for a mass issue of ID cards.

Peter Cox, CEO of ID Data plc, presented the Company's views on how they could assist the Government's plans to implement ID Cards within the UK.

*That'll be the closed industry event that the Home Office attended, the Monday after the Thursday on which they decided not to attend or be represented at the public LSE meeting on ID cards...

I think Atos Origin might have a few things to say about this! After all, it must have cost them quite a pretty penny to take over Schlumberger Sema earlier this year (who themselves had been lobbying hard for the introduction of biometric ID cards, and had by that point been chosen by the Home Office to run the UKPS biometric enrollment trial) and they'll be looking for a return on their investment.

The pity is that this is one of those situations where you want neither David or Goliath to win. It would be a tragedy of the highest order for us to lose our right to privacy, the presumption of innocence and the ability to assert our own identities in the mere pursuit of shareholder value.

The Home Affairs Committee on ID cards sits again

An updated list (in reverse order) of the uncorrected transcripts of oral evidence, i.e. neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The most recent two hearings also have links to their Parliament Live webcasts, but these are only stored for 14 days from their original transmission so catch 'em while they're there:

15th June 2004 - Chris Pounder (Editor, 'Data Protection and Privacy Practice') and Claire McNab (Vice-President, Press for Change), Dr Vivienne Nathanson (Director of Professional Activities, British Medical Association), Dr John Chisholm CBE (Chairman, General Practitioners Committee, BMA) and Trevor Phillips OBE (Chair, Commission for Racial Equality).

4th May 2004 - David Blunkett (Home Secretary), Desmond Browne (Minister of State for Citizenship and Immigration), Katherine Courtney (Director, Identity Cards Programme) and Stephen Harrison (Head, Identity Card Policy Unit, Home Office).

27th April 2004 - Len Cook (Registrar General for England and Wales) and Denis Roberts (Director for Registration Services, General Register Office) then Charles Clarke (Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills), John Hutton (Minister of State for Health) and Chris Pond (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions).

20th April 2004 - John Harrison (Edentity), Andy Jebson (Cubic Transportation Systems), Richard Haddock (LaserCard Systems Corporation) and Neil Fisher (QinetiQ).

24th February 2004 - Nick Kalisperas (Senior Programme Manager, ID Card Working Group, Intellect), Geoff Llewellyn (Member, ID Card Working Group, Intellect), Ross Anderson (Foundation for Information Policy Research) and Martyn Thomas (UK Computing Research Committee).

10th February 2004 - Martin Hall (Director-General, Finance and Leasing Association), Gerald Vernon-Jackson (Local Government Association) and Jan Berry (Chairman, Police Federation).

3rd February 2004 - Shami Chakrabarti (Director, Liberty), Simon Davies (Director, Privacy International) and Vicky Chapman (Head of Law Reform, the Law Society) then Richard Thomas (Information Commissioner) and Jonathan Bamford (Assistant Information Commissioner, Identity Cards).

11th December 2003 - Nicola Roche (Director, Identity Card Policy Unit), Katherine Courtney (Director, Identity Cards Programme), Stephen Harrison (Head, Identity Card Policy Unit, Home Office).

Give him a sign, Lord

Left click on the pic to check out the No2ID campaign site,
right click to "Save Image..." and pass it on.

1... 2... 3... testing

Duncan's story on out-law.com today, entitled 'A close encounter with biometrics' offers a glimpse of what biometric enrollment - for Passports, Drivers' Licenses and ID cards, to name but three - may involve for us all.

Potentially incorrect readings, an inability to verify or match records due to simple communications failures and technicians who would rather trust a machine than think for themselves - even to assist a willing volunteer!

It is hard to see how this trial (already delayed and shortened because of previous supplier errors) is going to 'prove' anything other than the fact that biometrics are highly inconvenient and time-consuming and that the capture and reading technologies are not even close to reliable enough to ensure the levels of 'infallibility' touted by Mr. Blunkett and his ID card department.

If you see any future Home Office Press Release hailing the 'oustanding success' of the UKPS trial, you'll know for sure that these people simply don't care about us citizens, or even the validity of the citizen-held 'identity tokens' (e.g. biometric passports, ID cards) which they intend to issue and charge us for - it's the database that they want.

(im)Pure and simple.

And if this hypothetical Press Release were to mention 'valuable lessons learned'? How about the fact that, despite the much-touted "80%" public support for ID cards the trial was unable to muster even 7,000 volunteers: the Home Office should learn to ignore polls from companies that have a vested interest in the outcome. [MORI ran both the Detica-commissioned poll and the recruitment process for the UKPS trial]

The only lesson to be learned here, by any truly open-minded individual, is that even state-of-the-art biometric technologies are not up to the job of mass identification. With the 7+% enrollment failure rate currently being experienced on some types of biometric, over 4 million of us would be left without identities through machine error alone. And almost 1 in 10 'verifications' would fail in the real world, with all the attendant consequences...

N.B. those incredibly high 'positive & negative match' figures that you may hear bandied about relate only to what goes on in the database - which should bloody well work 100% of the time, seeing as *all* they are doing is matching sets of bits! They have nothing to do with whether the bits that are being checked (against) are actually yours, or are in the right place under the right name, or are even currently available. And no matter how much the technology improves, this will always remain the case.

Get real - ID cards (the way the Home Office wants to do 'em) just won't work.

Satire in good form(s)

Check out the UK Department of Social Scrutiny's National ID Application Form.
I particularly liked,

Do you have a partner?

YES: Please send us some of their skin
NO: Please tell us about your pathological
inability to trust others on a seperate sheet

Parts 2, 3 and 4 also available:

About your ethical standpoint.

Your biometric data.

About your Majesty, Ma'am - for the Royal family!

Thanks to Adam for the pointer ;)

3 more eyecatchin' designs...

Guess who's joined the No2ID campaign?
Artwork available on request, as before - you'll need to provide a photo though...

UK Info Watchdog - bark or bite?

The Home Affairs Select Committee on Identity Cards was hearing evidence again this afternoon - the second time around for witnesses previously called on 3rd February, i.e. JUSTICE & The Law Society, Liberty & Privacy International and Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, and his Assistant, Jonathan Bamford. All being well, the uncorrected transcript will be made available within a couple of days as before.

Meanwhile, however, BBC NEWS reports the Watchdog's 'alarm' over ID cards:

Richard Thomas said he had initially greeted the plans with "healthy scepticism" but the details had changed his view to "increasing alarm".

He described the proposed scheme as "unprecedented" in international terms, and "was worried the British plans were more comprehensive and ambitious than any other scheme in the world." Predictably, Blunkett's spokespeople accused Thomas of "grandstanding" - but it is encouraging to hear some sense being spoken (and reported) about the Home Office proposals.

Mr Thomas told the MPs: "This is beginning to represent a really significant sea change in the relationship between state and every individual in this country."

It was now clear the scheme was not just about identity cards but about a national identity register, he said.

"It is not just about citizens having a piece of plastic to identify themselves. It's about the amount, the nature of the information held about every citizen and how that's going to be used in a wide range of activities."

Of course, the Home Office insist they are going to press ahead - quoting their "much wider responsibility to balance civil liberties* with ensuring our security against terrorism, immigration fraud and organised crime."

But hang on - I thought that Blunkett had already acknowledged that ID cards can't prevent terrorism [TheyWorkForYou.com really works!] or illegal immigration & working? And is he now trying to substitute 'organised crime' for 'identity fraud' - given the obvious flakiness of the Home Office's quoted estimates?

"In 2002 the Cabinet Office produced an interesting document following from a study entitled 'Identity Fraud: A Study'. Roger Smith, JUSTICE, argues that this report is much more thoughtful and sceptical in relation to identity cards. It asserts that £1.3 billion is lost due to identity fraud. However, when you analyse the data closely, it dissolves. Customs is worth £250 million loss on the basis of total MTIC fraud between £1.7million - £2.6 billion with a midpoint of £2.15 billion, we can assume that identity fraud is 10% of this figure." - from The Law Society meeting on 22/3/04, 'Identity Cards: Benefit Or Burden?'

*I thought there weren't supposed to be any "civil liberties objection[s] to [ID cards] in the vast majority of quarters" - according to the Prime Minister anyway?

And if this wasn't enough bad news for the beleaguered scheme, in their recent representation to HASC the British Computer Society - as reported by Computer Weekly - warns of their concerns about national ID cards:

"The risk of failure is significantly increased because there does not seem to be any firm and fixed statement of what the system is meant to achieve, what success or failure criteria are imposed and what scope limitations have been imposed."

i.e. if the Government can't properly (or even consistently!) state the aims, intentions and limits of their ID card & NIR system, how the hell do they propose to deliver it? BCS also raise a number of practical flaws - e.g. gathering biometrics from the disabled, dangers of data inaccuracy - and logical vulnerabilities of the scheme, e.g. registering people's identities at 16, rather than at birth.

It certainly begins to look like some of these objections might have teeth!

UPDATED 11/6/04: You can watch a recorded webcast of this Tuesday's Home Affairs Committee meeting on Parliament Live. N.B. previous sessions are also archived.

Not so voluntary after all!

There are a couple of 'classic' quotes in today's Scotsman's article, Identity crisis as ID trial gets brush off:

Professor Alan Marshall, a specialist in human rights based at the University of Strathclyde, claimed the pilot scheme was intended to "soften up" the public to the concept of ID cards.

He said: "What this shows, is there is no overwhelming public appetite for, or recognition of, ID cards as being high on the list of tools to beat terrorism."

"Rather than having a debate on ID cards the government have decided on having a voluntary scheme."

"It would have been helpful for them to have people who supported the scheme being involved in it."

This, on the discovery that less than half the number of people expected and/or required have signed up for the trial - even after all its recent publicity! Patrick Harvie seems to sum things up well:

Green MSP Patrick Harvie, who picketed Home Office minister Des Browne when he arrived in Glasgow to launch the trial, said: "The pilot scheme was set up to learn lessons about how the cards system will run, and they should clearly learn a lesson from the fact that nobody wants it."

"If there are less than 7,000 in the country who want this enough to spare half an hour of their time to find out about it, then how many people can be in favour of it?"

How many indeed?

Even if the general attitude remains 'If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear' the Home Office is going to have an increasingly difficult time equating this with active support for ID cards. Face it folks, no-one really wants to pay for the things - and few who look into it believe that they'll actually do what the Gov't says they will.

Putting 2 and 2 together

John Leyden's report Accenture wins $10bn Homeland Security gig ends with some interesting facts that may well start to hit home later this year:

Since January, visitors to the US from many countries have been fingerprinted or photographed. Under the US Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, countries whose citizens enjoy visa-free travel to the United States must issue passports with biometric identifiers no later than 26 October 2004.

Hmm - might this explain the Home Office's sudden hurry to get biometrics 'working' on UK passports?

Its bad enough that the European Union Commission have (ignoring the votes of the European Parliament!) signed an agreement with the US about the transfer of airline Passenger Name Record data - see Spy Blog and The Practical Nomad for detailed commentary and analysis - but for the US to foist biometrics on us all (even us supposed allies!) as a consequence / requirement of its own shaky 'Homeland Security' agenda?

Seems like the global bully-boy is revealing its own deep-seated insecurities, making threats (we'll fingerprint your citizens) and demands (spend billions on biometric technology - which US firms can supply, of course!) of those it knows will fall into line - with little to no chance of getting the *really* bad boys to comply...

UPDATED 10/6/04: Oops! It looks like an important Congressional committee has voted