By Andy McCue, 9 June 2005 14:30
NEWS silicon.com readers are overwhelmingly backing our ID Cards on Trial campaign to challenge the government on the cost, shifting scope and unproven technology proposed for the UK's national ID card scheme.
The campaign already has the backing of cross-party politicians, academics and IT industry technical experts, and tomorrow morning on the site we'll be giving you more details on how you can take an active role in the campaign to put pressure on the government.
Now many silicon.com readers have come out in strong support of our campaign this week, also questioning the proposals currently put forward by the Home Office.
Ian Savell, a UK consultant, said: "The key issue here is scope creep. The gradual shift clearly indicates a solution looking for a problem. Problem is it isn't even a known solution. It is a huge waste of our money."
Karen Challinor, a company director, added: "How about having a single credible reason to justify the introduction of the ID card and its associated database. Apparently we didn't get frightened enough at the idea of countering terrorism, so now we are supposed to be scared about ID theft."
One of silicon.com's questions to the Home Office is a request to detail exactly how a biometric ID card will make any significant dent in the problem of ID theft and Charles Barrand, a reader from West Sussex, agreed. "In my experience, most identity theft occurs in situations where no ID card is ever likely to be involved. How will such a card prevent phishing or rummaging for sensitive information through household trash?" he asked.
silicon.com has also been appalled at the willingness of some IT companies to jump on the ID card bandwagon simply in the hope of getting a lucrative slice of a pie that could be worth anywhere between £5.8bn and £18bn depending on whose estimates you believe. This concern struck a chord with many of our readers who work in the IT industry.
A managing director from Cranfield said: "The searching questions put forward by silicon.com are the very same questions that should have been put forward by others in the IT sector. But then the potential pot of gold or at least a slice of it would look pretty darn good on the old bank balance."
Most readers also supported our call for the government to clarify the costing and justification for the ID card scheme and, where necessary, open it up to independent audit and review.
Nigel Perry, a tech developer from Bristol, said: "No matter by what route they choose to recover the cost of this folly that cost must ultimately be borne by the British public. The government must not be allowed to conceal the true cost. We must insist upon an independent audit of the estimates."
Comments
There are 16 comments. Join the discussion
1. Ben
So which IT companies are jumping on the band wagon with unproven technologies?
I think silicon should name those companies, their technologies and let silicon readers scrutinise their claims ... and give the company a thumb up if their technology work or give the company and technology a thumb down if it cannot secure IDs.
2. anonymous
Absolutely agree with Ben,
If they think their solution is any good, let's see it.
3. anonymous
Surely some costs of introducing ID cards can be reduced. Why is there a need to have the cards linked to other government databases? Australia found that iris scanning damages the eye, we should exclude iris scanning as an option. There are other questions. Will UK citizens be protected by the dataprotection act? Iceland sold it's genetic database for it's citizens to the drug companies. Can the govenment ensure that it can control the issuing of fake ID's because they can't control issuing of fake UK passports and driving licenses. Some of which are issued from within their own departments.
4. Duane S Phillips
I think the whole id card scheme is folly. If a man can invent the technology to make it work you can be guarenteed that another man can make the technology to break it. There will be some hacker somewhere rubbing his hands together.
ID cards will be the only required form of ID and will be completely trusted. If they are not completely trusted then what will be the point.
5. Paul
So the government thinks we need a form of ID that proves who we are...what are passports then ? Surely if they are good enough for other countries they should be good enough for our own.
Ok so there are fake passports out there, why not spend (some) of the money making them more secure
6. misceng
A cure which is worse than the disease describes the proposals for ID cards. What is the cost of ID theft, false use of the health service and other things this ID card is supposed to prevent? What precentage of these evils will be stopped? Apart from my belief that false ID cards will make ID theft easier, I am sure the cost of ID cards will greatly exceed the costs it might save so why not try something which might work or bear the lesser cost?
7. anonymous
I'd love an ID card! one that would replace my driving license, passport, gun license, debit card, and a few other things as well.....but of course the unemployment that would result amongst the beaucrats would far outweigh the benefits...and of course wot a pain if I lost it!
I mean, anybody could pretend to be me...much better we take 300 quid off you for a pointless exercise in controlling "benefit fraud"
and "terrorism".
8. Nigel Holder
If you look at the big government I.T. projects that have failed (or are "challenged") you find that the degree of failure is proportional to that percentage of agents (where an agent is someone who interacts with the system; I.T. staff, front & back office staff and members of the public) who have any interest in non-compliance with the system's sules. In simple terms it is possible to get an Air Traffic Control system to work with a very high rates of accuracy (very few people want it to fail) whereas it will always be impossible to get a child support system to work properly (where approaching fifty percent of the system agents would wish to subvert it).
9. John Airey
I agree with Paul. For me, my passport is sufficient ID wherever I go.
Rather than invest in an overcomplicated system, all that the government need to do is introduce biometric passports (as they are being required to do). In theory it would be possible to merge other forms of government allocated ID to the passport system (eg NHS, NI, Driving License) but I doubt any government would dare to.
10. Richard Sarson
Remember that 70% of silicon.com readers were pro-ID cards, when you last asked our opinion last year.
In the EU 21 out of 25 countries (over 400 million people) have used ID cards since the beginning of time, and many countries have, or are upgrading, to e-ID, with biometrics. Are they all stupid, or what?
I keep on reading letters in the Press from UK expats who find their ID cards useful for navigating through local bureaucracies. Conversely foreigners taking up residence in the UK must find our Catch 22 system a nightmare, having to produce a recent gas-bill or whatever to prove their address, when they have not yet consumed any gas.
The UK has no experience of ID or e-ID, and only about 5 years of Smart Cards. We ought to admit that we know precious little. Let's hear from people who have a lifetime's experience of ID cards, and about 20 years of national public sector Smart-Card rolls out. And from companies, with funny foreign names who have done these roll-outs for nearly a quarter of a century. Their opinion really would be worth while.
Neither the Government, MPs, the national press or silicon.com have bothered to ask the experts and end-users across the channel. It is about time they did.
11. John Airey
To answer Richard Sarson, it isn't the actual principle of having ID that we are objecting to.
What we are objecting to is a system that is going to be hugely expensive (around £300 per year) that gives us, the taxpayer, no visible benefits.
You will find that other countries (such as France) tie the ID cards to the passport system, such that you can travel on your ID card.
As I've said before, make the passport system the best biometric ID there is and bring other systems onto it over time (if governments dare to). We do not need nor want a whole new system with a backend database that will costs billions to maintain.
12. Richard Sarson
Nice to find John Airey, who is interested in dialogue. A rare spirit. Yes, France wants to use e-ID cards as passports. So do the rest of the Schengen countries. Belgum and Italy want to use them for electronic signatures. (Belgium even wheeled out Bill Gates to support this application.) Most countries want to use them for secure access to e-government services. Austria wants to link medical insurance to them. And so it goes on, things that are useful for the citizen.
13. Mike Mitchell
Richard Sarson is being disingenous with his implication that other countries' ID card systems are the same as what the UK Government is proposing for Britons. They are not. The UK proposals envisage a card with far more intrusive information about us than other ID card systems. Moreover, some other countries, Germany, for example, have a written constitution to clearly define the boundaries between state and individual. We in Britain do not.
But I don't agree with John Airey either. It IS the actual principle, John! Apart from the enormous cost, the utter chaos it will cause, the societal divisions that will ensue as ethnic minorities are targeted disproportionately, I do have very strong resistance to government diktat that says I must, as a free citizen, be numbered and categorised by the state simply for being born. As Matthew Parris so passionately declared on Radio 4 recently: "I can find no rational arguments against identity cards and I come down to this - I hate it, I hate it, I absolutely hate the idea of having to carry around myself with myself something that identified me on demand to a policeman or to anybody else, it just grates with me, it just goes completely against the grain. To me it's somehow antipathetical almost to being an Englishman, I just can't stand the idea of ID cards."
And later: "But I don't see why to walk out in the street and to stand in the sunshine and to breathe in my own country I should present anybody with any kind of identification."
That for me sums up the entire case against ID cards. It is a scheme for emergency use only. This is why I am fundamentally, viscerally opposed to ID cards.
14. Richard Sarson
Ben from Sweden asks rightly "So which IT companies are jumping on the band wagon with unproven technologies?" Good question. I read in the Times (30 May) that BT, Sun, Accenture, EDS, Siemens and Fujitsu are talking to the Government at the offices of Intellect.
That means the usual suspects, famous for UK public-sector cock-ups down the years. What experience do they have for massive national e-ID rollouts? Siemens, OK; but the others? About zilch.
What about inviting HP, who have already got Poland and Slovakia under their belt and are prime contractor for Italy? Or Steria (French), master-minding Belgium? Or Giesecke & Devrient (German), providing ID cards and services for Serbia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Macao and Egypt, health cards for Austria, Saxony, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, and driving licences for Sweden and Kosovo? Or Gemplus (French) for e-ID in Oman? To name but a few...
My advice to the UK Government: call in the professionals, not the amateurs.
15. Yan Swiderski
Silicon.com readers should visit http://www.no2id.net to join the anti-ID campaign.
16. Brian Drury
If you want to do something about ID Cards, why not visit www.no2id.com ?
This site has lots of detailed information on ID Cards and will assist you to effectively protest against them.