Features

ID card system "a sham" - privacy group

The watchdog group Privacy International today released information relating to the government's proposed ID card. The statement establishes that the scheme, as outlined by the Home Secretary, will be "mathematically and technologically" impossible to achieve, that it is unnecessary and that the related security threats have been vastly understated.

The government proposes a central index of biometric identifiers (eye or finger) to ensure that no two people in the UK are operating under the same identities, and nobody is able to operate under multiple identities.

This proposal is mathematically and technologically impossible. A report issued by the US General Accounting Office in November 2002 reported that the largest iris scanning system currently in use has only 30,000 records. The GAO warned that it was "unknown" how a system with many millions of records would perform.

A report from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology issued last year said that, so far, not enough records yet existed for it to work out if the iris was a good enough guarantor of identity. Fingerprinting is less reliable than iris scanning.

For David Blunkett's proposal to work in the majority of scans, a biometric would have to be accurate to a margin of 0.000002 per cent - well over a million times greater accuracy than is currently commercially available.

Nationwide has already ditched its iris scanning project, describing it as a failure

In his introduction speech, Mr Blunkett said: "An ID card is not a luxury or a whim - it is a necessity."

An ID card is not a necessity. Only Malaysia and Singapore have introduced the sort of ID card outlined by Mr Blunkett. Even China earlier this year withdrew the fingerprint requirement for its ID card. All other countries have much more simple systems in place.

No common law country has an ID card - all have rejected them. An interim report by the Canadian Parliament's Citizenship & Immigration Committee concludes that such a scheme is unworkable and unnecessary.

Mr Blunkett said: "Only basic information will be held on the ID card database - such as your name, address, birthday and sex. It will not have details of religion, political beliefs, marital status or your health records."

The ID card database is only one component of the ID card proposal. The ID card will be a "system of systems" linking dozens - perhaps hundreds - of databases containing sensitive information. This system in future years will give government an opportunity to comprehensively dip into citizen's bank accounts to recover money from any agency.

Mr Blunkett says arrangements have been made with other EU countries to establish recognition of their identity cards.

The Home Secretary is saying that the UK will rely on the security and authenticity of ID systems in Italy or Greece, where a "non-biometric" ID is issued for life at age 14. This makes a mockery of any claim that the UK proposal will be accurate and secure.