By Gemma Simpson, 1 October 2007 16:46
NEWS
Plans for a new service using the government's controversial ID cards scheme to speed up criminal records checks have met with approval from volunteers involved in a trial of the tech.
The volunteers piloted two potential online services developed by the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) and the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) which could be used to authenticate the identities and information of job applicants.
silicon.com's A to Z of ID Cards
Click on the links below to find out everything you ever needed to know about the government's ID card plans...
A is for Act
B is for Biometrics
C is for Compulsory
D is for Data privacy worries
E is for EDS
F is for Forgery
G is for Government IT
H is for Home Office
I is for Identity and Passport Service
J is for Jury
K is for Hong Kong
L is for London School of Economics
M is for Money
N is for National Identity Register
O is for Other cards
P is for Passports
Q is for Quarter
R is for Refuseniks
S is for Self-destruct
T is for Terrorist
U is for Utility bill
V is for Verification
W is for When
X is for Xenophobia
Y is for Young people
Z is for London Zoo
At the trials all volunteers went through a simulated experience of applying for a position requiring a CRB check. The participants met a prospective employer, filled out the CRB disclosure application form and had their identity authenticated by a counter-signatory. Their criminal record information was then disclosed to the company requesting it.
Each volunteer completed two legs in the trial - one using a passport and one using an ID card.
The passport-based system would use an applicant's UK passport with information from the IPS to make sure the data provided is correct - with this system likely to come into effect before the second system. The second online service would use ID cards issued to UK citizens and foreign nationals residing in the UK for more than three months with information from the IPS to check application data. This system could be introduced in the longer term.
Nearly all (96 per cent) of the 160 volunteers said the passport-related service is an improvement on the current arrangement and 71 per cent rated it as a "great improvement".
Nearly nine out of 10 volunteers said the ID card-linked service is even more robust than the passport-linked process.
But Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the No2ID anti-ID card campaign, criticised the trial because he said it tested the customer experience of the CRB check in isolation, while "glossing over the inconvenience and intrusiveness of the ID system as a whole".
Booth told silicon.com: "IPS is trying to sell a so-called benefit without any reference to actual cost or reality."
Comments
There are 10 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
So I give up any pretence of having a private life to ease the recruitment of security personnel and school caretakers ?
this benefits me how ?
2. Guy
"Nearly nine out of 10 volunteers said the ID card-linked service is even more robust than the passport-linked process."
And what makes them qualified to judge? They are self-selected enthusiasts, who are likely to have their lives in Home-Office-approved order to begin with.
The "study" doesn't even show anything about real customer experience, never mind the utility of the system.
Until a large proportion of the population is on the ID database AND criminal records are uniformly tagged with ID references, then the system can't even theoretically reduce the total delay and error on real populations. To begin with, you would expect, the delays and errors will multiply. How long would coordination and accumulation of all those records take to squeeze the errors out by logging the population? (Assuming all the newly-tagged records are correct? And it would not be timeless to deal with conflicts.) Decades?
3. Jon Catt
I find people like Phil Booth annoying.
IMHO the point is that we will be better equipped to enforce the rules of law that we have already agreed to uphold.
They seem more worried about their so-called "human-rights" being protected, than they are about being physically protected. It's possible to live in a "police-state", without it being a highly visible and in-your-face system.
You want it running in the background, like Anti-virus software, not slowing you down, and ensuring you can live and work safely.
Jon.
4. Chris Goodman
And who paid the cost of the IPS in this (out of mandate) survey? I certainly hope it was not charged to passport applicants!!!
5. Roger Huffadine
0.00027% sample - not only a waste of my taxes but a totally meaningless trial - restricted to CRB checks which are so simple they defy reason.
160 volunteers - since when has an 'impartial' field trial consisted of volunteers and when does a sample of 160 people justify any claim for a system designed for 60,000,000 pepole?
6. anonymous
But to complete the statistical picture we need to know what the volunteer's position was with regard to ID cards was in the first place.
It is all very well carrying out the trials if you have pro-ID card volunteers, as they are all likely to be positive about the whole trial, similarly if you use anti-ID card volunteers.
As we saw with yesterday's announcments on phone records, this government wants to track and record every aspect of our lives, and hand it out to almost anyone who asks, all in the name of anti-terrorism and anti-crime.
7. John Dady
Get over it folks, ID cards are coming. Of course the more fuss that's made by the anti lobby the more the scheme will be diluted by the mamby-pamby authorities and we will end up with a watered down system that has maxmum intrusion and minimal benefit. Why don't we just lie back and think of England instead?
8. Adrian Tawse
If ID cards are to be justified on the grounds that they are useful to the citizen in order to identify him/her self then why are they to be made compulsory? What is wrong with a card that is just a short form passport? Why the massive ID database? None of tese costs or levels of intrusion have been justified.
9. Radical Meldrew
Criminal checks based on the ID card system? Preposterous nonsense! I am worried that some clueless clerk could 'finger' me as a suspect by retrieving incorrect information punched into the database by an equally ignorant clerk many years ago. You cannot say that this will not occur - look at the horror stories relating to utility companys billing systems - innocent people are victimised because of inaccuracies in their databases. I for one would not support this scheme in any shape or form
10. anonymous
I have a real problem with the attitude of people like John Dady. His ex-occupation, a civil servant, puts him as much in a self selecting minority as the volunteers for this meaningless trial.
Of course an ex-civil servant is more likely believe that government intrusion and control of the populace is a "good thing".
What is truly stunning is that such people imagine government will (a) never make a mistake and (b) ALWAYS be benign and so never take controlling measures against those who have the gall to legitimately disagree - once the means of easy monitoring and control are in government's hands.
I would far rather live with the (Really rather small) risk of various unpleasant events than with the risk of a future government exercising unwarranted monitoring and control of the entire populace. Even if the two types of events represent equal risk, I would still opt for facing the former one.