By Dan Ilett, 14 February 2006 17:00
NEWS
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said the UK will use biometrics on a national scale for cross-border control, for anti-terrorist measures and to combat identity theft.
Brown, who has in the past been silent over such issues, said supermarkets and banks will use biometrics in the future and the government would follow them.
He said: "Today Californian supermarket shoppers are paying with a finger-scan at the checkout and Japanese cash machines are asking for a finger-scan rather than a PIN. The reason is simple: they are more secure against fraud and theft.
"And with passports now requiring biometrics, a necessity people understand, 80 per cent of the adult population will have to register their biometrics to ensure our borders are secure and so they can travel freely across the world."
But as part of his speech at the Royal United Services Institute yesterday, Brown cited inaccurate Home Office figures of £1.7bn as the cost of identity theft to the UK.
He also used Bill Gates' prediction that by 2010 people will use biometrics to access computer services "through a fingerprint touch of a screen anywhere in the world", to build credibility into his speech.
Brown said: "Already one million people have bought and use an IBM laptop which uses fingerprint recognition to control access. And for the future, manufacturers are looking at the same fingerprint recognition technology to make mobile phones and MP3 players worthless if stolen."
Brown said 40 other countries plan to introduce biometric passports by the end of the year. "So the question is not whether we have a national identity register - we have had so for years - but whether we are prepared to consider the most up to date and the most secure means to protect our identity from being stolen."
Brown added that the information commissioner could play a large part in controlling any cases of data abuse.
He said: "An independent commissioner should have oversight of the database and how it is used - testing it against data protection laws, ensuring individuals will have the right to see the information held on them.
"Private companies will not be able to see the national database, nor will government departments in their routine business."
Comments
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1. Richard Davies
Chip & Pin Smart Cards are also being used for logging onto PC's. I think this is more secure than biometrics because theives cannot gain access by simply cutting off your finger which they could do to get around biometric finger print scanners. At least with Chip & Pin they have to discover your PIN which is not necessarily retreived as easily as a fingerprint as hopefully you store this only in your mind!
2. Charles Wood
I think Mr Brown should put HIS money where his mouth is. If the Government were forced to be financially responsible for their actions these cards would go away tommorrow. As it is, like current passport arrangements, the public are forced to pay a private enforcement body who have slowly introduced extortion as a stanadard trading method (like instisting my children have seperate, expensive passports for gods sake!!).
While it has a benefit, no matter how small for them, and they do not have to be responsible for the consequences, this sort of nonsense will continue.
Imagine loosing your PIN number now. Then think about the consequences when you are Black, and trying to get on a plane in Hamburg and your biometrics have gone wrong, or their machine won't read them. It would be a nightmare of the worst order.
I say Black deliberatly, whenever I travel to Germany with a black friend, they are always stopped and harried.
3. Karen Challinor
"...Private companies will not be able to see the national database..."
Oh dear, thats the main reason for business to support the bill gone then, shame it's too late to stop the bill being passed isn't it, I wonder what other little surprises are coming now that compulsory registration for passport renewals has been approved
Especially as compulsory registration for passport renewal makes any further debate on eventual compulsion for everyone completely redundant
4. James Gunn
Someone said there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. I'd like to add a fourth category - Government statistics. Although governemnts have always played fast and loose with statistics, this lot have raised it to an art form.
Secondly, if ID theft costs £1.7bn pa (although the bansk say 37m is nearer the true figure), then why spend between 6 and 30bn on ID cards ? How will this actually help ?
5. Charles Smith
Yet another misconceived IT project, based on imaginary foundation of need and with little concept of the real cost or benefits.
In 3 years time a Government Minister will stand up and say "We must learn from the mistakes on this project and I am announcing a review..." Meanwhile those responsible will look forward to large inflation proof pensions.
As a sidebar the UK Public will have suffered further invasion of privacy.
6. anonymous
What utter rot from the Chancellor. Fingerprint scans aren't secure - if you think twice about letting your Chip card out of your sight ask how many bar staff have access to your fingerprints. First point - so IBM use it on a laptop. Anyone here thinking laptop security is an issue costing us £1.7bn? It's irrelevant, it may as well be used on dvd players. Second point - the tech only lasts as long as fraudsters don't try and hack it. Any fraudsters even TRYING to outwit finger prints yet? There's no commercial value in it at the moment. When they do we'll be in serious trouble. Third point - who'll be in charge of the data? The Govt? Great, their payscale should only attract REALLY reliable, honest workers >:o/