By Steve Ranger, 20 December 2006 15:05
NEWS
The government's ID card plan rethink is a step towards common sense - but the controversial plan still risks failure, according to academics.
The London School of Economics (LSE) Identity Project has been a leading critic of the ID card project but the team said it welcomes the shift in the government's position.
Dr Edgar A Whitley, the LSE team's research co-ordinator, said the new action plan represents a "total rethink" of the original plans that were proposed by the Home Office.
He said the LSE team had criticised those original plans as too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lacking in public trust.
"Despite their earlier hostility, the government now clearly agrees with us and the LSE team welcomes the marked shift in the government's position that this Action Plan indicates," he said in a statement.
The government has trimmed back its plans, ditching a single mega-database to hold all ID-card information, and shelving the use of iris-scanning biometrics.
Simon Davies, a visiting fellow of the Information Systems group at LSE, said that while the new scheme distributes information around a number of existing databases, what is not clear is whether these existing databases will have the necessary security to ensure that this personal data cannot be compromised.
"While the government has done the right thing by acknowledging the vast flaws in its original proposals, it now faces an almost impossible challenge to build trust. The scheme has become poisoned inside and outside Whitehall," he said in a statement.
Comments
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1. Roger Huffadine
This is the beginning of the rot - as anyone who has tried to integrate 3 separate databases will know - the opportunities for errors is now at least 8 times more than in a single database. I have always maintained that the original plan could not work because of the possibilities of "false positives" where a search produces too many matches - or where the criteria are set too strictly, no matches. The government now needs to talk to some TRULY independent consultants -who will tell them that if they go ahead with this scheme it will collapse in a huge money wasting debacle.
2. anonymous
The government fails to see that without end-user support, i.e. UK citizens, the scheme is going to fail.
Fingerprinting will be abandoned next as people are not going to take kindly to being summoned by the authorities to attend an appointment in order to have their fingerprints taken.
That this scheme was proposed in the first place is foolish and to be passed onto the statute books beggars belief.
What does this government take us for?
3. Duane Phillips
So how many hospital beds, how many school books, how much extra could we plow into pensions by not even starting down this road of ID cards. How much time and money has this government wasted on this crackpot scheme?
This again was typical of this government refusing to listen to the voice of the people. We didn't want the war in Iraq and we don't want ID cards. What we want is a green and pleasant land and a government that cares for and listens to it's people.
4. Steve
Now that the plan is to use existing databases and to drop the iris-scanning and other 'sophisticated' technologies, can we expect the budget estimates to be reduced?
5. Karen Challinor
I hereby withdraw my previous comment, the database has not gone it has been split over several existing systems instead
http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/downloads/Strategic_Action_Plan.pdf is the governments official action plan for the scheme and makes interesting reading
for example I am a "customer" .. excuse me ? if anything I am an "employer" as the politicians are supposed to be working for the people and not the other way around
also although the iris recognition biometric has been dropped "We also work closely with the Iris Recognition Immigration System (IRIS) initiative, which since early 2006 has been offering a quick way for registered travellers to clear immigration at some UK airports." - so it will probably be reinstated eventually
this scheme is still just as dangerous to the individual as it ever was
6. anonymous
This new strategy is more dengerous to individual privacy and identity than its predecessor.
It will be far harder to secure several databases, all of which are used for other purposes.
Use of existing data and non-biometric enrolment of UK citizens will dilute the benefits of the of the scheme.
Ironically, non-UK citizens will have a more reliable identity than UK citizens.
The strategy also talks of "sharing identity data" - but with no mention of individual consent, the purpose(s) for which it may be used, or who may access it.
7. Radical Meldrew
How long before sensitive ID database information is for up sale? The DVLA have already shown us how easily its done!