UK Gov't To Require ID Cards For Some Foreign Residents

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 25, 2008 @09:02PM from the show-me-a-card-with-your-picture-on-it dept.

craigavonite, writing "It's looking like the UK is in for biometric ID cards within the next few years, despite widespread protest from groups such as 'NO2ID,'" excerpts from an article at the BBC describing a UK identify card to be issued starting later this year: "The biometric card will be issued from November, initially to non-EU students and marriage visa holders. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the cards would allow people to 'easily and securely prove their identity.' Critics say the roll-out to some immigrants is a 'softening up' exercise for the introduction of identity cards for everyone."

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Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo by mcwidget · 2008-09-25 21:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?
From what I've seen with biometrics previously, I doubt that your fingerprint would be stored in any sort of image-like or exportable form. Normally, a hash is taken based on your fingerprint (think GPG singing) and that hash is stored. It's a one way calculation, you can't then turn that hash back into a fingerprint but you can verifiy another fingerprint to the hash.