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Biometric ID Cards Ready For Trial In UK
0ctal writes "Looks like us lucky Brits are getting ID cards no matter what... A 10,000 user trial starts next week. There's been a fair amount of debate on this recently, and it's been coming for some time, but live trials are sooner than expected. The trial is set up to evaluate three competing biometric products. Qinetiq, quoted by the story, are a government backed company set up to use MoD tech in civilian apps."
Looks like us lucky Brits are getting tin foil hats real soon now (TM)... A 10 user trial starts next week. There's been a fair amount of commentary on tin foil hats recently, and it's been coming for some time, but live trials are sooner than expected. The trial is set up to evaluate five competing brands of aluminium foil. Reynolds and Diamond, not quoted by the story, are a both leading company set up to use aluminium foil tech in civilian headgear apps."
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Here - not sure if its linked off the main article or not, but discusses a lot of the reasons why its a good and bad idea.
Glad to see that privacy concerns, and not having to prove that you are a citizen are on that list.
To be honest, i'd be for ID cards in a way - we do have a bit of a problem with illegal immigrants in this country lately, who are totally abusing the system - the current trend is buying cheap cars, and then they just drive around the city in them with no tax insurance or anything.
Having ID cards would mean these guys could be instantly checked out, as many don't speak English and the police forces don't have the resources to be able to question them in any of the many different languages they use.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
...crap out of me.
Ok, so add biometric identification to the ID we already have; passports, driving licence, etc. but why on earth are we having this centralisation? Surely everything we've learnt about security technologies says a layered approach is needed?
What happens when someone beats the system? Everyone will trust it completely because nutters like Blunkett say biometric id is unbeatable. What about the human element of the system? If someone exploits this database they can write themselves a few new lives, delete other peoples lives, etc.
It scares me. Ah well, I'll just move abroad with my girlfriend and take our 30 000 of student loan with us.
How much longer until they implant GPS devices into everybody, so that the data can be used for proving they're telling the truth about their whereabouts. (Why they couldn't work, why they couldn't have committed a crime, that they didn't stop anywhere on the way home, etc.)
Visit the site, write a letter then Fax your MP.
Qinetiq Would that be the same incompetent lot that "lost" a barge full of landmines in the English channel? Not sure I would turst them with this kind of project.
As for people being in favour of this scheme. There was a big online have your say for this last year. Several thousand people objected, they some how lost all of these negative votes and decided to count them as 1. That way they still had a majority in favour vote from the Chancellors freinds (me cynical?)
Does this mean that if a cop stops you on the street you must either be able to produce a valid ID card or take a trip to the police station so that your identity can be confirmed?
Where I live a government issue ID (or at least a valid social security number) is practically required if you wish to drive a car legally, open a bank account, get insured, get a job, benefit from the public healthcare and so on. Yet, we do not have a legal obligation to carry an ID and show it to any cop on the street. Sounds rather draconian to me.
"What has anybody to worry about having their true identity known?" he said.
Ah. Yet another version of "If you have done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear".
The owls are not what they seem
It hasn't had to pass through parliament because so far it isn't compulsory.
Furthermore, it would probably pass without too much problem because there is generally good public support.
>News of the pilot follows an opinion poll suggesting 80% of people backed a national ID card scheme.
It's true what they say, we don't live in a democracy, we live in a dictatorship where we get to choose the dictator every five years.
The EU constitution, presumably soon the Euro, identity cards... The government seems intent on its "progressive" schemes no matter what the public opposition.
#define struct union
If by "stupid" you mean deploying a system meant to be universal to a small handful of people, then you are right. Which is why trials like these are not done in that fashion. They will not pick any old 10,000 people. Typically in situations like this they would find a town with a population of around 10,000 people and give the cards to everyone. Then they could put the card readers everywhere appropriate, and nobody who lived in the town would feel left out.
It wouldn't be a proper test of the cards if they didn't actually scan them once in a while. And they can't put the scanners all over the country for a limited test; so they can't distribute the test cards truly randomly, where any person in the country is likely to get one. So they will probably pick one 10,000 person town. Or, better yet, three 3,333 people towns; one for each company.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
80% in favour clicky which to me is rather worrying. Interestingly these are being phased in by the Government due to concerns about terrorism, whereas the typically xenophobic British public is far more interested in them as a method for keeping immigration "under control". These are supposedely going to be compulsory by 2010 and the Government wishes to change the law so that carrying falsified papers leads to a HEFTY (10 year IIRC) maximum sentence. Blunkett scares the crap out of me, every week there is a new story about how he wishes to erode our civil liberties. I don't wear my tin-foil hat that often, but I have always said that as soon as ID cards become cumpulsory, I would take my citizenship, and my skills elsewhere.
Are there similar pushes for this in the USA? - who lets face it (along with Spain) were on the sharp end of the current terrorist activity.. not the UK..
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
A fair amount of debate yes: and all of it indicates a) it will be very expensive and b) we don't want it.
But Herr Blair and his propaganda minister Josef Blunkett (aka the blind facist) have decided that that is what we must have, and have it we will.
I think we Brits are getting to the point where we're as desperate to get rid of our right wing Prime Minister as you are to get rid of your right wing President.
The ironic thing is that Blair is the leader of the Labour party: which was historically established to protect the rights of the working class (ie Socialist, left wing). Blair however seems to see his mission to kiss the arse of Corporate Britain and fuck the workers because if they disagree they're probably don't understand what he's saying.
The scarey thing is a comment by Roy Hattersley (a leading old-school labour politician) that Tony Blair has a second rate mind: ie he's as thick as pig-shit. yet another thing he has in common with Bush it seems.
Both Bush and Blair strike me as shining examples of why Universal Suffrage doesn't work. Personally I think you should have to pass an exam before you can vote. Only simple stuff like: "Who are the leaders of the 3 main parties?", "Who is the Constituional head of state?". Let's face it, if you can't answer questions like that a) you're not well enough informed to vote and b) you don't fucking deserve to be able to vote.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
One of these days, a non-biometric card will be introduced, and it will be cool and retro, and therefore newsworthy.
Is there? Personal anecdote aside, I honestly don't know anyone who likes the idea at all.
Apart from anything else, the rationale behind the scheme just doesn't make any sense. According to Blunkett, it will help "combat terrorism". I want to know how it will do this exactly.
An often ignored factoid in the this debate is that Spain has compulsory ID scheme and it's just endured a major terrorist atrocity. I honestly can't see how ID cards help anybody but the Government and the health of its coffers.
Many people in the UK feel like this.
Frustration at the autocratic actions of the government is widespread. The lack of an effective opposition makes it even more frustrating.
(Sorry, I know it's lame to follow up my own post)
Shrykk.
"Are you realistically worried that our (free world) goverments are gonna show their true face and prune out all those with less than blue eyes? "
9
Aschroft recently sought information on doctors who perform abortions using his new found anti-terrorist powers.
He also sought information on Anti-war protesters again using his new terrorist powers.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=1790
Thats just two incidents we know about because they were leaked. Now (under Patriot 2) its a crime to leak what he's using his terrorist subpoenas for.
A republican senator is equating voting for Kerry with being anti-American.
The problem as ever is not: "If you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear." but rather "if your government never does anything wrong you have nothing to fear".
I won't be happy until we've all lost our humanity and we're eating Soylent Green.
This is another article on the BBC that discusses the last time Britain had a national ID card scheme, back during World War II. According to the article, it was not concerns about security shortcomings or civil liberties that ended the ID cards so much as that "the system was expensive and difficult to administer, and offered few benefits."
>ID Plans: 2008: 80% of economically active population will carry some form of biometric identity document. Estimated cost of 3.1bn pounds.
Administering a system where over 50,000,000 people each have to hold an identification card to carry on their daily business is going to have many direct and indirect costs and benefits. The people of the nation, and the government meant to represent those people, should think long and hard about those costs and benefits before implementing the system.
oh yes, we all know nothing can go wrong and no democratic government ever fell, being replaced with people like hitler... oh wait
Maybe you're not old enough to remember what happened in Germany in the early 1940's, but this was the common consensus of just about everyone at the time. People seriously thought, "This kind of thing would never happen here, our government would never show their true face and prune out all those with [insert difference here]". Similarly, today Americans believe that "our government would never imprison people based on their race, because we live in a free land, and our goverment would not get so currupt." They probably don't remember the internment camps after Pearl Harbor, and most of us are unaware that our current administration is planning more such camps right now: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
Such an ID system allows Big Brother easier access to these taxpaying, legal, citizens whenever public fear is hightened.
I for one welcome our New Labour overlords...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
The problem is this. First we have the cards issued, and everything is nice and fluffy. No you don't have to carry it with you etc. etc.
How long before it's compulsory to carry the card?
How long before everyone's DNA is required and index linked to the card ID?
How long before it's illegal to not carry the card at all times?
Who can demand to see it? ("Papers please.") and when can it be asked for? ("Why are you out at this time of night? Papers please.")
How long before they are index linked to the IMEI of your mobile phone and periodic logs of your location taken and an easy to access system provided to civil servants?
How long before banks are required to log all your financial transactions provided in an easy to access system provided to civil servants?
How long before all your telephone, SMS, email and web access logs are indexed to your card and provided in an easy to access system to civil servants? (Note to Americans - all of the above is already logged by law under the RIPA Act and the government will be making available to bodies such as the Food Standards Agency and the local council).
How long before someone starts a side development to chip children (to protect them from all those pesky paedophiles) and integrate this with location technology to allow parents to see where they are at any time?
How long before it becomes law to have children chipped at birth? (don't forget the paedophiles!)
How long before it's illegal to remove the chips?
How long before someone gets the "bright idea" that they can be used instead of those pesky ID cards?
How long before we are treated like nothing more than cattle?
Either read Orwell's novel 1984 or bone up on database admin - both should leave you feeling concerned.
So, you don't mind the government installing cameras in your bedrooms and bathrooms then? Because, after all you've got nothing to hide.
I thought that during Blunketts public consultation most of the people who responded were against the idea.
I too don't see how on earth this is going to help with anything, the various methods of ID people have at the moment; birth certificates, passports, driving licences seem perfectly adequate to me. If they are worried about the security of these methods then they should spend the money on sorting out the existing systems.
Whatever ID card they do come up with won't be 100% unforgeable but as soon as someone does assume your identity with an ID card it will be a nightmare for you to prove it wasn't really you doing all those bad things.
In the end this is a fairly huge IT project and the British Government hasn't yet ever managed to run one of those successfully. This is going to be a massive waste of money and in the end, being as it is apparently not compulsory anyway, no one will bother anyway.
MacDonalds use Colchester in exactly this fashion (to test new products) because if you average out every town in the UK you get Colchester. Having lived there this doesn't surprise me.
...is that they don't solve the problems they claim to solve.
Their only real use is to track ordinary, average people.
So demand laws that will draw a clear line at what is acceptable. Don't just bitch at everything that you percieve to be bad, ask for what you want.
lol - you really don't understand UK law. We don't have a constitution you see - basically what happens is this:
Someone does something the Government doesn't like, or finds a loophole in a law.
The Governement changes the law to make it illegal.
People don't want ID cards - the Government is citing some bullshit survey that allegedly happened and that 80% of people said they would be happy to carry cards. - Bollocks. Last year after the Government mentioend it found 1000 people wanted cards, the stand.org.uk website generated 5000 registrations from people opposed to the scheme. The Government discounted their votes as they were from the Internet (however you can bet your life had they been pro-card they would have been counted).
It's all bullshit and facade. There is no democracy here.
What has shocked me about the ID card scheme isn't that new labour have introduced it - they seem hell bent on removing as many civil rights as possible - but the unquestioning way in which so much of the public has accepted it.
When the subject comes up and I express my feelings against it, the two responses I always seem to get are "Well, why not have it?" and "I've got nothing to hide".
Firstly, the question isn't "why not", it's "why". It will cost a fortune, make a whole new layer of beaurocracy, upset a lot of people etc etc and no one has yet given a good example of what we really gain, so, why bother?
Secondly, *everyone* has something to hide. Everyone. It may not be something criminal, it may not be something wrong, it may even be something you have no logical reason you want to keep to yourself, but you still have a whole raft of things you don't want the policeman who has just randomly stopped you to know.
I could (and previously have) go on and on, but I'll spare the gentle reader and leave it at that. If you are a halfway intelligent person who bothers to think for yourself you'll be able to come up with a dozen more reasons against introducing ID cards in no time. You don't need me (or anyone else) to tell you what to think.
Volunteers, as in people who think the ID cards are an OK thing in the first place? Who will more likely than not give positive feedback?
Neil Fisher, from QinetiQ - one of the companies developing the new technology, said the public would want to be able to prove their identity to show they were not a risk.
A risk of/for what?
> The plans are designed to tackle identity fraud, which costs Britain an estimated 1.3bn each year.
> The government has said it sees ID cards as a weapon against terrorism.
I keep seeing statements like these over and over again but I have yet to hear an adequate argument as to how it works as a weapon against terrorism, identity theft, etc.
He said the biometric system proposed would end multiple identities and give a boost to the fight against terrorism and organised crime.
I hope I'm not the only one who sees how naive this statement is...
And lastly, considering these cards will be obligatory but not free of charge, I see them as nothing more than a money making mechanism for the government than anything else.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with biometric data, but it has something to do with conducting survey after survey and playing around with statistics until you get what you want. This includes surveys showing 80% of the UK population in favor of national identity cards containing biometric data.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Go ask the Spanish government about the 800,000 illegal immigrants from Morocco living in Spain *without* national ID cards. ID cards are compulsory in Spain.
They *also* don't make a blind bit of difference against terrorist organisations, as Spain also found out to their cost.
It's pure myth that ID cards are effective tools against illegal immigration and terrorism.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
You may remember Qinetiq from a couple of years ago. They won a government contract to place some Census data online so that it could be accessed by people researching family trees.
The web site opened, crashed and remained unavailable for about a year.
Does anyone think that a company that can't build a simple web site can provide a working id cards system? I certainly don't.
If you've got nothing to hide, then why worry about it, and if you've got something to hide, then it's something you're just gonna have to deal with.
Who says I've got nothing to hide, and who says it's the police I wish to hide from. I could be a battered wife who wants to adopt a new identity, or I could be a witness to a crime that criminals wish to intimidate. Organised criminals are going to love these things because it will make tracking their victims so much easier. I bet loan sharks will now remove them from people, as collateral. Stand back and watch identity theft soar.
They're called driving licences. I already get asked to show my ID quite often: When going to certain pubs/nightclubs, when buying a mobile phone, verifying my identity when the signature has faded on my debit card, and probably a lot more that I can't remember. I don't see how having an Identity Card with just that purpose could hurt things.
As for why ID cards and not the current system of one of several forms of ID (for things like buying a mobile phone they require two forms of ID from a very short list - an my provisional driving license wasn't on them), it would give a form of identification that everyone would accept. Sure, they could be faked. But so could _every_ _other_ form of identification currently in use.
So I ask the question, why not?
Most responses seem to be along the lines of 'we don't know what they could do with the data', or that the police could stop you and demand ID. The police could stop you now if they suspected you, and ask for some form of ID, and if they thought you were a known criminal and couldn't prove otherwise, you would still be taken to the station for questioning.
All the worry about privacy concerns seems to be way too overexagerated. It's just a card that says who you are, not something that broadcasts to the world that you slept with your mates girlfriend last night, or whatever it is you don't want everyone to know.
How the hell do you think the NAZIs identified the Jews?
Or the Hutu identified the Tutsi. Just 10 years ago FFS!
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
If you think this is Funny, then you should read Fun with Fingerprint Readers from May 2002 issue of Crypto-Gram Newsletter by Bruce Schneier:
Interesting, isn't it? See also: T. Matsumoto, H. Matsumoto, K. Yamada, S. Hoshino, "Impact of Artificial Gummy Fingers on Fingerprint Systems," Proceedings of SPIE Vol. #4
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The government launched a consultation exercise in autumn 2002, originally planned to end in December 2002. Sometime in November, Beverly Hughes, the then Immigration Minister, stated in Parliament that they had received about 2000 responses, overwhelmingly in favour of a card.
Stand.org.uk issued a wakeup call. They basically said "If you have an opinion on this, please tell the government." They put up a form with a free text area which would forward the response to the correct Home Office email address. It wasn't a 'click here to register a no vote' form, just a way for people to communicate their views to the Home Office.
The consultation was extended to February 2003 (can't remember why), and closed on the 28th of that month. On 28th April, Beverly Hughes stated in a parliamentary answer that the government had received about 2000 responses with a majority of 2:1 in favour. Stand had counted over 5000 responses (note they did not know what proportion were in favour as they weren't tabulating answers, but they did know that over 5000 messages had passed through their form).
I wrote to my MP to ask where the discrepancy came from, and to seek assurance that my vote had been counted. The Home Office response was that Stand had in effect coordinated 5000 no votes, and they would be counted as one vote coming from one organisation. That is untrue. I have no affiliation with stand other than sharing a concern about my rights, and since stand isn't a membership organisation the same is true of all the other respondees. Funnily enough, they also reassured me thay my particular opinion had been counted. So much for consistency.
There has been little public debate on ID cards. The draft bill was announced (leaked?) on a Friday . This is being steamrollered through, regardless of what the population think.
(It's far too nice to stay in this afternoon. I'll check back later for any response. Ithought you might be trolling as AC, that's why I wanted you to log in).
Cheers.
...will they do. the next step in this obvious progression is forced implantation of ID chips along the design of digital angel, or maybe with even more advanced "features" that you won't really like. I've read what they are working on, and it isn't hard to imagine what the controllers really want, is it? So what then? Just take it? This isn't a joke anymore or any sort of gee whizz might be coming in the real far away future, this could be here any day if they feel like implementing it by law, the tech is here already.
How do you say NO forcefully enough if it's illegal and you have a population that is effectively disarmed completely and has a police and military force that will follow any orders given to them without question? Sometimes the law is just so blatantly wrong that you have no recourse.
I mean, just about anyone can smell this coming next, in GB, in Canada, in the US, eventually everywhere by governments. Governments may be slow, but they eventually get around to using every sort of advanced technology for the "command and control" aspects of society. Well, just run a very conservative extrapolation here, you can see what's coming next.
As an immigrant living in the UK, I don't mind that these cards are being discussed and introduced.
But what I do mind is how certain people's arguments for the introduction of the ID cards are just seething with xenophobia and racism. And before you start to scream about how these are just labels used by anal-PC types, I ask you this:
'Do you really think that immigrants enjoy living in the parallel society within your own country ?'
'Do you honestly think that they choose to be marginalised from the mainstream society or do you think your attitudes towards them have forced them to such a life ? '
You want them to accept your values and way of life ? Show them how, don't just scoff at them expecting them to _obey_.
I recently wrote about this in a similar thread involving faked I.D.
Looking at this measure which, in the Pilot program, is voluntary but if successful is expected to become compulsory around 2014, I can see how the potential for abuse that scares advocates of civil liberties.
The problem with biometric data in an Identity card is not that the system becomes suddenly perfect and invulnerable: it doesn't. The problem is one that I think it helps for to be an American for you to understand and hate: our constitution works with the assumption that some conflicts are inevitable: people will make mistakes, or have such bad fortune that will make them so desperate that they commit crimes. Our founding fathers recognized human nature and accounted for it in the legal system and they built acknowledgement of this into our constitution with the fifth amendment as the perfect example.
The fifth amendment to the American Constitution precludes an accused person of being forced to act as a witness against himself. This is a voluntary limiting of the government's power in the interest of society; it is an act of self-restraint in recognition of the tension between two values: government power over the individual versus the efficient administration of criminal justice.
In a perfect world, perfect I.D. cards with biometric features handed out by a government of saints who could be guaranteed in some way to never, ever misuse the power that the cards would give them would be wonderful things.
Secure I.D. cards could do wonderful things in the right hands and in the right circumstances, they might make fraud and identity theft harder while helping in legal defenses by providing authenticated proof that x was in y location at z time.
The real world provides the possibility for things that tends to make American civil libertarians sweat. In the real world in which we live today, technology works to enhance the government's weight in any prosecution while simultaneously opening the door to people you've never met and who haven't asked your permission knowing things about you and potentially using that information.
The ubiquitous cellular phone is already commonly known to provide information on its owner's approximate wearabouts in realtime. Add to this a secure and sure I.D. that, in ten year's time, you will be required to carry (with a penalty of ten years in prison for carrying a fake I.D.) and you have a situation which comes closer to one of the things that the founding fathers would have seen the soul of and hated: instead of being forced to speak against yourself in court (making the job of the prosecutor, the representative of the state, easy) you will be indicted by the government's access to technology that you either want to carry, or are that the law requires you to.
As a last thought, consider just how wise the founding fathers were: in a speculative historical scenario, the best case for forgery-resistant national I.D.s with associated databases is not to be found in England, but in the United States in the September 11th attack.
Plugging in the numbers, you're left with a very important question: would preventing the deaths of three thousand people have been worth what the I.D.s and their potential for abuse would mean to the other three-hundred million.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
here's something interesting I read not too long ago:
Are fingerprints really infallible, unique ID?
How unique are your fingerprints? It's general held (and as er, The Register confidently stated just yesterday) that your fingerprints being found at the scene of the crime tied you up with it pretty conclusively, but a report published earlier this year by New Scientist claims that there is little scientific basis for the infallibility of fingerprints, and that the only research indicating that there is, is fatally flawed.
This could have major implications for the criminal justice system, and could undermine the basic premise of planned ID sytems in the UK, US and Europe. The report notes that the only known study, commissioned b y the US Department of Justice and only made public in summary form, was challenged in December. The study involved matching up 50,000 fingerprint images, and concluded from this that the probability of a false match was effectively zero. However, says New Scientist, "Although this produced an impressive-sounding 2.5 billion comparisons, critics point out that it is hardly surprising that a specific image should turn out to be more like itself than 49,999 other images."
The study wasn't designed to test matches between two or more different prints from the same finger, and it was even discovered that it originally included three instances of fingerprints being listed as similar but different, when they were actually different prints from the same finger. One pair was even found to be as dissimilar as prints from different people. And the sample size is seen by many critics as being too small to be seen as valid.
Despite the apparently shaky foundations of the little 'proof' that exists, there seems to be no government enthusiasm for further research. The DoJ has refused to sanction further research, and a Department of Defense and National Institute of Justice programme fell apart last year after arguments over dissemination and review of the material.
New Scientist points out that fingerprint evidence still has a value, but that it's such a long-standing technique that it has never been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny. This could well be its undoing, as ID systems' need to match up prints from millions of people takes fingerprinting into entirely uncharted territory. It would surely be just a little bit embarrassing if a few years down the line governments' deployment of fingerprints in the war on terror resulted in the near overthrow of the criminal justice system, wouldn't it?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I hope I'm wrong, but a 10,000 user trial doesn't actually sound that impressive
It isn't
Just don't preach to the converted and get down to www.faxyourmp.com instead.
Tell our MP's both the civil libities AND technical reasons why this is bad. Most MP's havent a clue about electronic security. Tell them why biometrics are not the solution, why its a bad idea to have all your eggs (data) in one basket (or card), why this wont prevent "terrorists and pediatricians"(!) and why this is just a BAD idea.
Dont sit on your arse. Get faxing!
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
I could be mistaken, but acording to Fridays Today programme, this was a Mori telephone poll.
Perhaps Mori would have seen a different result if, every time someone told them to fuck off and slammed the phone down, they treated as an 'I value my privacy' responce.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
If I (as a Britain) am going to be identified by my iris and fingerprints, what do I need a card for?
I already tend to carry my eyes and fingers with me at all times.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a