By Nick Heath, 7 April 2009 17:22
NEWS
The UK will have no way of reading the data stored on ID cards until next year - more than a year after the first cards were issued.
Readers capable of scanning the cards' chips will not be in place until they are introduced at UK border entry points next year, Bill Crothers, CIO and executive director commercial for the Identity and Passport Service, told silicon.com yesterday.
In February silicon.com revealed that no police stations, border entry points or job centres have readers for the cards' biometric chips - in spite of 22,500 cards having been issued to foreign nationals since November last year.
The ID cards' chips carry biographical data, as well as facial and fingerprint scans, of the cardholder. While the cardholder's details and photo are printed on the face of the card, their 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, by running a fresh set of prints against existing identity databases.
Crothers said it will be up to other public and private bodies to decide when enough cards had been issued to make it worth investing in the ID card readers - adding card numbers will remain relatively low until they are made available to the UK public from 2011/12.
"The 'when' is a chicken and egg situation," he said.
"What makes the readers worth having is when there's a high volume of ID cards issued, then it is worth commercial organisations or other organisations putting readers in place.
"We are in discussions with DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] about remote authentication for processing unemployment benefits and the like.
"But we wouldn't buy [readers] for them - the DWP would figure out the benefit and if it was worth it."
A spokesman for the UK Border Agency denied it was behind schedule to meet its target of issuing about 50,000 cards to foreign nationals by the end of April, saying that it has already taken fingerprint and facial scans for 42,000 foreign nationals.
UK nationals will be able to get the cards from this autumn, when cards will be issued to airport workers in Manchester and London City airports and be made available to thousands of people living in pilot cities across the UK.
Comments
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1. karen challinor
"But we wouldn't buy [readers] for them - the DWP would figure out the benefit and if it was worth it."
so you pay your £30 for the introductory offer, until the price goes up to some as yet to be determined level after the offer expires, part with your biometric details, your life history and agree to keep the state informed of any changes to these details on pain of large fines
and you receive a piece of plastic with a chip in it containing all this information
which no one can currently read so they are useless to everyone at the moment
and unless there is a significant voluntary take up of the card no one will invest in the readers so they will remain useless to everyone
and unless there is a significant voluntary take up of the card then the government can't make them compulsory citing significant take up as an excuse, so no one will buy the readers, so they will remain useless to everyone
have I missed something ?
2. GALLEYSLAVE
What! when are these people going to see that we don't want them
WASTE OF MY MONEY
3. Roy Corneloues
I'm sure counterfitters already have readers... Maybe they should bid for the contract...
4. anonymous
You just couldn't make this up !!
5. Guy Herbert (General Secretary, NO2ID)
What you've missed:
This is evidence that HMG *does not care* about cards or readers. What's wanted is the *power* of a national database, and the obligations it will create for the citizen to report on himself at every opportunity.
"Voluntary" was always misleading, because of the clever device of designated documents. Want a passport form 2011? Then it is not you'll be refused, but you won't be deemed to have applied if you don't also complete the procedures to join the National Identity Register. If to get benefits, you also need to be on or join the Register, then it is entirely irrelevant that the DWP can't verify the card when you get it. The prime administrative function of the card is simply to confirm your unique number, which a clerk can do by looking at the card issue number on its face.
6. Ask Jacky
By 2011 this snooping Labour government will be a thing of the past & both other main parties have already promised to get rid of id cards & the database.
7. karen challinor
"Ask Jacky" - the other parties may have promised to get rid of the cards and the database but they are going to have a difficult job of doing so
the government have tied the database to passports with an immense gordian knot of bureaucracy
so the cards may go but UKIPS will keep the database alive until labour win another election
then we'll have this nightmare of a scheme steamrollered through parliament again and this time it will be done, dusted and rolled out compulsorily before we know it's happening as they've got the experience of the current fiasco to draw on