ID cards are dead

If you wondered what the loud screeching of brakes was in Whitehall this week it was the sound of the government attempting to halt the ID cards juggernaut and execute an almighty handbrake u-turn as the wheels started to come off and it threatened to career wildly out of control.

Of course the government is bravely attempting to position this revised timetable for the controversial £5.6bn (that's the government's own cost estimate) national ID card project as anything but a retreat or u-turn - but make no mistake, this is the beginning of the end for this dog's dinner of a scheme. Politically, ID cards are dead.

silicon.com's A to Z of Biometrics

Click on the links below to find out everything you'll need to know about biometric security.

A is for Accuracy
B is for Behavioural biometric
C is for Cash machine
D is for Database
E is for Ear
F is for Facial recognition
G is for Gummi bears
H is for Hand geometry
I is for Iris
J is for Juan Vucetich
K is for Keystroke dynamics
L is for Liveness testing
M is for Mobile phones
N is for Network security
O is for Oxford
P is for Palm
Q is for Queues
R is for Registration
S is for Signature verification
T is for Twins
U is for Universality
V is for Voice verification
W is for Walk
X is for X-ray
Y is for Young
Z is for Zurich Airport

The mass population won't now be required to register their biometrics on the national identity register when renewing or applying for a new passport until 2012 now (the original timetable was to do this by 2010).

But the big shift in the government's plans is the subtle sidelining of the physical biometric ID card itself. Although passport applicants will have to give up their biometric scans for the national register they won't be required to pay £30 (again that's the government's estimate - critics put the cost much higher) for an ID card to go with their £70 biometric passport. That will be voluntary.

Instead they can opt to just use their existing forms of ID - passport and driving licence.

In an astonishing and brazen display of flawed Whitehall logic the government claims this will actually help speed up the rollout of ID cards in the UK.

At £30 a pop? Unlikely. Especially when a government commissioned report into the whole "identity assurance" issue, led by former HBoS banking chief James Crosby, was published this week saying ID cards will only be accepted by the public if they are free.

The other part of the grand master plan is to start 'em young - that is to make ID cards available to students and young people from next year. Again they will be voluntary - though it's hard to see how paying £30 for a card that offers very little benefit will appeal to today's debt-ridden and cash-strapped students over the traditional fare of beer and skinny jeans.

The tactic there will be to try and force adoption by making various student and youth-related public services and benefits dependant on having an ID card.

But no, ID cards are not dead, maintains the government - and even better, the revised timetable will slash £1bn off the cost of the scheme. Bravo!

The genius in that plan is to make the private sector pay for the biometric enrolment centres where people will have to queue up to have their fingerprints and irises scanned for the national identity register. The flaw in that, of course, is that if the government can't make the figures stack up then why on earth would the private sector want to foot the bill?

One of the proposed uses - and revenue streams - from ID cards is that employers can use them to vet staff and new recruits. But employers will be forced to stump up for the physical hardware and associated IT costs of installing equipment to do the biometric checks, as well as a fee for each check.

I can see the conversation when the folks from the Identity and Passport Service go into businesses to try and sell that idea being a very short one indeed.

So essentially the 'new' ID card scheme will consist of ID cards for foreign nationals and people working in high security risk areas or occupations - airport workers being the first to be targeted. That's a massive scaling down of the original ID card ambitions and one that is very likely to face further scaling back in the future.

The new plan also puts back a vote on making ID cards compulsory until at least 2015 - that's potentially two general elections away. Gordon Brown has distanced himself from all of this, and for good reason - he doesn't want to be lumbered with this costly and unpopular white elephant when he goes to the electorate.

It is worth pointing out that while the physical ID card may be all but dead, the national identity register - a biometric database of the nation - is still all systems go, and this is something critics claim is potentially more sinister from a privacy and civil liberties perspective, especially in light of the government's recent lax approach to securing personal data.

But make no mistake, this is the beginning of the end for the crackpot ID card scheme.