By silicon.com, 19 October 2005 16:05
It wasn't a wholly unexpected outcome but, nevertheless, the narrow victory in the House of Commons for the government's controversial ID cards bill on Tuesday represents a new low point for UK democracy and the country's IT industry.
The bill scraped through by just 25 votes, largely on the back of a three-line whip to ensure that Labour MPs toed the party line and that Blair didn't suffer an embarrassing defeat on a flagship election manifesto policy.
As more than one MP pointed out during the debate, the ID card bill would have been put out of its misery long ago if it had been a free vote among MPs. Then again the whole ID cards scheme has been an exercise in spin and how to ride roughshod over the democratic process - including curtailing the time for parliamentary debate on the bill, and stacking the standing committee tasked with examining the proposed legislation with pro-ID-card MPs.
As Conservative Party MP Edward Garnier said during the ID cards debate on Tuesday evening: "The bill amounts to little more than a denial of democracy. The House should be ashamed of it."
If cowardly behaviour from MPs more concerned about their political career than the democratic process wasn't bad enough, it has been compounded by the blind greed of the IT industry, which is complicit in this whole sorry debacle.
Technology and cost issues have been at the heart of silicon.com's ID cards campaign but the UK IT industry, almost to a man, has remained silent except to tell the government how wonderful its proposals are in anticipation of getting a slice of contracts that are going to total anywhere from £6bn to £19bn.
We applaud those who have stuck their neck out - most notably Microsoft, which this week issued the starkest warning yet, saying no systems are 100 per cent secure and that storing so much personal information in one national identity register will lead to more fraud and ID theft.
Microsoft also criticised other IT firms and organisations for failing to make public their concerns about the scheme that they are talking about in private. Indeed silicon.com can tell much the same story. One biometrics supplier emailed us to say what a dog's dinner he thought the whole thing was - and then asked us not to name him as his company is involved in the project and hopes to bid for some of the ID cards work once it is passed into law.
Our only criticism would be that Microsoft left it too late in the day for these revelations to have any significant impact on the ID cards vote.
The government and bodies such as Intellect may have spent the last few years working to improve the procurement and delivery of public sector IT projects but their blind support for this white elephant threatens to undo all that good work and set the reputation of the IT industry back decades.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Chris Tormey
Tony Blair's time in office will go down in History as the greatest time of stupid thinking and ill-advised opportunism.
The I.D. card bill joins the ludicrous Wind Turbine scam, the illegal war in IRAQ and many other ideas that other parties threw out years ago.
The sooner we remove this man the better!!!!
2. Nick Clark
I just wish the Government would explain clearly and in terms everyone can understand the aims of this bill and how the introduction of ID cards will achieve those aims.
It seems that the aims are shifting all the time and the justification amounts to "it's in the manifesto". How the aims will be achieved by ID cards seems to be "because it will".
Where's the debate?
3. Julian Bennett
My experience of the Oxford No2Id group is that many of the members are IT professionals. If more joined No2Id that would add weight and perhaps they could get their employers to issue press releases.
4. John Starbuck
I's like to know what plans are in place for dealing with multiple addresses which are entirely legitimate. The standard way of proving one's identity at present is the gas or electricity bill. people who have more than one address (MPs, for instance, or second home owners)) need ID for each address to deal with utilities, local council, doctor's surgery, credit companies etc.
Function creep will inevitably require us to use the ID card to prove ID but if checking ID means confirming all the salient details against databases, they will have to be designed to either overlook such matters (compromising security) or to have multiple address fields (increasing costs).
Has no-one yet sat down to work through these implications?
5. Karen Challinor
Mr Clark - I have been asking the debate question for over a year
Mr Starbuck - there are no plans, there has been no debate to thrash out these details, there are still mp's in the house of commons who have not yet read the bill
6. Ruth
Thanks to Julian Bennett for mentioning the No2ID group - somehow I'd missed hearing about them - since reading this article & Julian's comments I have signed up as a refusenik & donated to the group and am now about to spread the news among my colleagues.
7. Richard Barrington
Not Quite True!
1) Microsoft can sit this one out and criticise from the benches cause they don't have any technology that could scale to this level or be secure enough to work.
2) The technology isn't the issue, the politics and standards are.
3) Sun has questioned the Home Office plans in public and criticised the lack of direct consultation with the vendors: all of whom are keeping their IP close until the procurement starts to play out.
4)Sun has some 750 million Javacards out there. It works. At scale. at a fraction of the cost and complexity being suggested for the UK scheme.