By Nick Heath, 15 April 2009 16:57
NEWS
The government has proposed adding chip and PIN capabilities to ID cards but questions remain over whether such a move would be beneficial - or even possible - at this late stage in the £4.7bn project.
With doubts over the practical benefits the cards will offer to the public still dogging the project, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) last week raised the possibility of adding chip and PIN functionality, with IPS chief executive James Hall saying the IPS is now in discussions with the financial services industry.
"One of the issues on the table is whether we should introduce chip and PIN technology in to the card. If we conclude that chip and PIN is a key part of making it useful there's no technical reason why we couldn't do it," Hall said in a statement.
The EMV technology standard that underpins chip and PIN transactions in UK credit and debit cards could be vital in any attempt to make chip and PIN ID cards useful.
EMV is the common technology standard used in card readers and ATMs in the UK that allows them to recognise all chip and PIN cards and be used to authenticate payments and withdrawals at shops and banks across the country. It stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, the three payment groups that originally developed the standard.
According to Colin Whittaker, head of security for UK payments association Apacs, the inclusion of EMV tech on ID cards could ultimately see the cards offer a common standard for authenticating identity remotely using the PIN number.
With chip and PIN ID cards, holders could access new government and private sector services online using the PIN to verify their identity. Business too could take advantage of such functionality: instead of phoning an IPS verification line to check staff have permission to work in the UK, companies could ask them to verify their identity using the card's PIN.
If it were possible to add chip and PIN capabilities there could be benefits for the government and taxpayer too: relying on EMV technology and cryptography could cut the cost of implementing the scheme, as the infrastructure to authenticate the cards could be modelled around the tried-and-tested chip and PIN terminals and networks, used to verify card payments across the UK every day.
"All those sorts of technological challenges are understood and a lot of the technology needed to deliver these things using EMV are almost commodity items," Whittaker said.
The inclusion of EMV is not without its downsides, however. Clive Longbottom, service director for business processes facilitation at analyst house Quocirca, questioned the desirability of chip and PIN and warned that adding EMV functionality would make ID cards less secure.
"It will be disastrous to try and add chip and PIN to ID cards as it has proven not to be secure on credit and debit cards. It is less secure than the previous signature-based system," Longbottom said.
"It just goes to demonstrate that the government has no idea of what...
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Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. karen challinor
so 49 items of personal information, your life history and your biometric data are not judged to be secure methods of verifying your identity any more, not that I believe that was ever the purpose of gathering the data
and this is mainly because no one outside government can access either the chip on the card or the central database, so these details cannot be used to verify your identity and are a completely useless invasion of privacy
so they are thinking of throwing chip & pin on there too but still want the other details as well despite the minor detail that they are useless to anyone except perhaps the government
and we are still going to have to pay for it regardless of what happens because they've carefully linked all the database requirements into the passport system under the guise of extra security
so even if the next government gets rid of the scheme UKIPS will keep the database alive and kicking so it can easily be reinstated should Labour ever win another election
I wonder how much passports are going to cost in a couple of years
2. Radical Meldrew
Oh do be serious and pay attention at the back - yes that's you lot on the benches. Wake up!
Credit cards are compromised every single day - even PIN numbers do not present much of a challenge to a determined crook. Why should ID cards be any different?
3. Roger Huffadine
Function creep
4. anonymous
A bit late in the day to be making fundamental changes now isn't it ?
Can only increase costs.
On the lighter side, as Chip and PIN is well established, little development required. Indeed the cost of the technology is so low, that the banks (yes the banks !!) just...... give the cards away, even if you lose them.
Maybe The Home Office could follow this model ?
5. Dave Brown
Oh come on everyone, give the Government their due - they are searching for a way to justify adoption of the cards - they know it is currently a non-starter (and always will be).
6. Nick Johnson
Once again a complete waste of Government money, we have these biometric id cards that are being given to new Asylum seekers, yet the Police are not be in a position to verify them until next year. So the point of rushing this through is for what reason, surely the card and reader should have been available at the same time.
So a Government 'bright spark' has thought of a new way - Chip and Pin within the ID and as someone has indicated how often are these compromised...
7. Neil Barrett
Mr Johnson - this isn't 'Government' money they're spending - it's ours...