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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39338394,00.htm

ID scheme treads the high street for fingerprints
Home Office faces security criticism

By Tom Espiner

Published: Thursday 06 November 2008

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will invite high-street businesses today to tender to be biometrics enrolment centres for the National Identity Scheme, which the government will use to issue ID cards.

The Home Office wants to use the tender process to gauge whether businesses such as post offices and banks would be interested in participating in taking fingerprints from people for the scheme, silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK understands. It also hopes to formulate a document, called the Frontline Services Prospectus, outlining how biometric enrolment would be carried out by businesses.

ZDNet UK also understands that the Post Office has not been approached directly by the Home Office to submit a tender.

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Anti-ID cards campaigner Phil Booth told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that the government was trying to sell high-street firms an idea that would not work. "The Home Office is selling businesses a pig in a poke," Booth said. "What company would want to invest millions in a service that will be scrapped at the first opportunity?"

Booth added that the Home Office proposal "absolutely undermines security".

"If they're taking fingerprints on the high street, they simply cannot guarantee locking prints to details," he said. "The only way they could have done that is in an interrogation centre, with some official scrutinising documentation, then walking you over to the scanner to take your prints."

Booth suggested that a high-street-based system would be open to fraud and systems error, and could lead to chaos.

The Home Office declined to comment on the scheme.