By Nick Heath, 4 February 2009 15:43
NEWS
The first UK ID cards have already been issued - but no UK police officers or border guards have any way of reading the data stored on them.
Currently no police stations, border entry points or job centres have readers for the card's biometric chip, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) revealed in response to an FoI (Freedom of Information) request by silicon.com about the £4.7bn identity cards scheme.
The news comes in spite of the first ID cards being issued to foreign nationals in November last year, with the IPS expecting to issue 50,000 ID cards by April this year.
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The cards themselves carry biographical data, as well as facial and fingerprint scans. While some details about the holder as well as their photo is printed on the face of the card, the cardholder's fingerprints can only be accessed by reading the chip.
With no readers in place, police and immigration officers are currently still relying on traditional methods of checking ID cardholders' identity, running a fresh set of prints against existing identity databases.
Identity minister Meg Hillier told silicon.com last week that the chip is a "vital part" of the ID card scheme because the "fingerprint coded into the chip links you to the card".
The broken nature of that link has already prompted criticism by the government's political rivals. Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "Once again ministers have shown that the ID card project is absolutely farcical. What is the point of spending billions of pounds on cards that can't be read in the UK?"
Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton told silicon.com: "If this capability is not there then the biometrics are, in short, a waste of time.
"I would have thought that the government would have tried to get the readers rolled out as soon as possible as it is only when you get serious deployments that you start to learn what can go wrong."
No firm timetable has been given for the rollout of chip readers. According to Hillier, it will be...
Comments
There are 22 comments. Join the discussion
1. drew stephenson
is anyone surprised by this? anyone at all? Is it possible for the general populace to force a vote of no-confidence in the government?
2. Karen Challinor
so cards have been issued but there is no infrastructure to allow their use
so no database holding a secure copy of your ID
no means of verifying the data on the card is correct
no means of accessing the data on the card
no means of telling if the card is a forgery
no means of telling if the card actually belongs to the holder other than a signature and photo
gosh I feel more secure already and it only cost around 5bn for this particular white elephant to be given life
I wonder if the 5bn could have been used to ease the recession in some way ?, no ignore me it is vital that the country have the level of security afforded by a thoroughly soaked paper bag
I must rush out and hand over my 30 immediately as the weather forecast is for a cold snap and I may need to remove some ice from a windscreen somewhere
terrorists and criminals must be trembling in their boots, no thats just me because the terrorist and criminals are p*ssing themselves laughing
my apologies for the vulgar language
3. Martin
Of course placing a "burden" on the population at large is fine. Placing a "burden" on the people who are supposed to be ready to use this stuff is completely wrong!
The government is so messed up they shouldn't be trusted with organising a game of rounders, let alone a country.
4. anonymous
so the cost of the readers is not factored in as part of the overall project costs !!??
So how much is this really going to cost the few of us tax payers left in the country?
5. ed blundell
If you want a motion of no confidence ask you MP find your local mp, come on UK lets get rid of this useless govt!!
6. GALLEYSLAVE
The phrase, 'P*ss up in a brewery' comes to mind.
And I make no excuses for the language.
7. Andrew Meredith CEng CITP
You know, I'd love to be able to say that this is unbelievable. Sadly, because I actually did, I have to say that this was entirely and completely predictable.
8. Roger Huffadine
Awesome - I'm really impressed that anyone could get away with such TOTAL incompetence.
9. Karen Challinor
I've just spotted the sentence split over two pages at the bottom of the article
was I alone in thinking that the 5Bn claimed cost for the scheme plus 30 per person for a card (until 2011 then they go up) was ALL of it ?
now we find that the police will have to buy their own scanners if any of them want to read these cards!
will they have to pay for a secure connection to the NIR ? assuming anyone ever bothers to create it
apparently customs officers are getting scanners included in the 5Bn but no one else is
so where the hell is OUR 5Bn going if it isn't being spent on the infrastructure and the database ?
basically the government have taken 5Bn out of the treasury and produced a card that costs 30 to anyone who has to have one and produced precisely nothing to show for it
oh and they've flushed any civil rights you may think you had down the toilet in the process
no wonder the UK economy is suffering the worst in this recession Mr Brown keeps trying to tell us is a global phenomenon
I think we need an independent audit of government accounting procedures
10. Karen Challinor
..and if you do want a motion of no confidence in the government don't bother asking your MP if they happen to be in the Labour party as you won't get anywhere
11. Jonathan Baker
So everybody commeting would do much better jobs eh? Spending billions during a recession to build the infrastructure to read cards help by < 0.1% of the population. Surely it should wait until the economic cost of crime justifies the expense of rolling out the system.
Besides, lets get real, the reasl problem with this system is that no ID card will ever prove who you are, just who you said you were when you got one.
12. anonymous
Well I never did. Suprise !!Suprise" This was hughlighted as a potential problem in my submission to the Government ID Card Select Committee at the time. In addition, a "Portable Card Reader" was demonstrated to senior technical personnel of the HO-PPO-DVLC, obvioudsly, all to no avail.
I do not believe the cost of this element has ever been included in their budget. At this time, surely the best thing they can do is "scrap it".
13. Chris Goodman
It is obvious that the standard of senior staffing competency is far below that needed and one can only presume the rot goes all the way down.
If it would not be allowed in the private sector then it is not acceptable in the public sector.
And having sacked that lot then the Home Secretary should retire to the back benches pending her departure from the Commons at the next election.
14. Ian Savell
Many years ago I served on an industry advisory committee on ID cards. This was one of the issues that suggested the idea might be impracticable. There were others, chiefly the difficulty of securely enrolling 60M people. The LSE study predicted very high overall costs partly because the gov't figures omitted this element. This is political ideology not practical security.
15. anonymous
If there are no card readers in the UK, where are they?.... France? The USA perhaps? I worry. As for a vote of no-confidence, hmmm... in a committee you need a 2/3rds majority to sign a petition. That's a lot of the public you'd need in that case, but it could be done.
16. anonymous
Just another non productive waste of money. Nearly all government funded projects in the UK in the last ten years bring no productive or wealth creating benefit to the economy as a whole:-
Can anyone give an example of a government project which actually generates wealth for the UK economy?
And then there is the masive bailouts for the banks and taxpayer funded bonuses... oh boy....
Is it any wonder Sterling is plummeting?
17. anonymous
This is a joke right ? I don't known whether to hang my head in shame at my country, or laugh myself to death at the obviously predictable outcome!
18. anonymous
"The manufacturers of the machines have also got to decide whether it is worth their while to produce them," she said.
Does this mean that if the reader manufacturers decide that it is not worth their while to produce them, there will be no readers to read these cards?
So we have spent - it is our tax money - 5 billion (plus 30 per card) for a card that does nothing more than a passport, except perhaps be able to scrape ice off the windscreen!
I really hate to sound like Victor Meldrew - I DON'T BELIEVE IT!
19. GALLEYSLAVE
I suppose that these readers if and when they ever appear won't carry a made in UK label.
20. anonymous
Hang on a bit here, what comes first? Roll out of relatively inexpensive mass market card, or rollout of expensive card reading infrastructure. Doh...! I think I see the shape of bets being hedged here.
21. anonymous
With regards to the vote of no confidence, I wonder if we could create a petition on the No10 website? Might be worth a try:-)
22. Drew Stephenson
Without meaning to denigrate your suggestion AnonymousofHampshire, but can anybody actually cite an instance of one of these petitions actually having an impact of government policy?
I ask in a spirit of genuine curiosity.