Heated debate on ID cards in the UK.
On 28 June the UK government narrowly won a vote on its identity card proposals in the House of Commons, seeing its majority halved to just 31. The previous day the UK Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, expressed strong concerns over the government's plans for a biometric national identity card and database. He particularly criticised the scheme's "disproportionate and excessive" storage of personal information and the wide range of uses that would "permit function creep into unforeseen and perhaps unacceptable areas of private life".
On 27 June the London School of Economics published "The Identity Project: an assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill and its implications". The report looks at the potential costs and benefits of the government's proposals, and finds that the scheme may be both more expensive and less effective in targetting problems such as terrorism, illegal immigration and identity fraud than the government has claimed.
The report is the outcome of a 6-month research project involving over 100 industry, government and academic experts. It has caused controversy in the UK, with Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke forced to dispute its detailed cost estimates of around 435 euro per card. Behind this headline figure the report highlights a number of other potential problems with the scheme, ranging from the untested technology involved, the compatibility of the legislation with the European Convention on Human Rights, to the risks of unauthorised access to the scheme's central database of personal information.
The UK Home Office has also finally published the results of a trial of the technology to be used with the proposed card. 10.016 volunteers took part, but even within this group of ID enthusiasts there were severe problems with the biometrics that the government claim will make a card totally secure. 10% of non-disabled participants and 39% of disabled participants were unable to have their irises stored. 4% of non-disabled participants and 9% of disabled participants could not have their irises checked against a stored record. The fingerprints of 20% of participants could not be checked. These results would be disastrous in a national scheme that included over 50 million adults.
All of these problems mean that there is likely to be extremely strong opposition when the Bill reaches the House of Lords, where the government does not have a majority. The Lords could force the government to delay the Bill for at least a year.
ID cards 'will reveal details of daily life' (28.06.2005) http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1516069,00.html
LSE report The Identity Project http://is.lse.ac.uk/idcard/identityreport.pdf
UK passport service biometrics enrolment trial (May 2005) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs4/UKPS_Biometrics_Enrolment_summary.pdf
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(Contribution by Ian Brown, board member EDRI)
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