U-Turn On UK ID Cards

An anonymous reader writes "The UK appears to be watering down its national ID card system, with the revelation by the government that it will now only check the cards against a central biometric database in a minority of cases. Critics are saying it not only renders the whole scheme pointless, but will pose a security risk by making it far easier to use copied or cloned cards. 'But an Identity and Passport Service spokesman denied the system would be vulnerable to fraud: 'The majority of instances where people use their identity cards will be day-to-day situations where the cards offer a convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol,' he said.'"

Comments

What a waste

[tripdizzle]

Ha, it said this system cost 150 million pounds to the gov't, and now their purpose is for a

convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol

Re:What a waste

[ShieldW0lf]

No, the purpose is selective enforcement.

Re:What a waste

[TubeSteak]

I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

Without transparency or oversight, who the public really doesn't know what their government plans to do with those ID cards.

Re:What a waste

[Nursie]

it's budgeted to cost around 5-7 billion, with the LSE and others saying that's grossly underestimated.

Gordo could fund his proposed tax cuts if he scrapped some of the his horrendous police-statist measures. But no, he'll get us ever more into debt whilst scrambling for some way to boost his political reputation.

C*nt.

Re:What a waste

[mdwh2]

Indeed - and it's worth noting that passports were far cheaper before the Government started upping the price in order to combine the passport with the national ID card scheme.

So all these people whining they support ID cards because they want a convenient means of ID - they could have just got a passport, which would've been cheaper, and less hassle (no having to be fingerprinted, and pay for the privilege, for example). But if they want to be stupid and support a worse system, that's up to them; the most annoying thing is that they use this argument to support a compulsory ID card scheme, and thus their idiocy forces this unnecessary system onto the rest of us too, who already have perfectly good ID.

Re:What a waste

[gsslay]

Just how many reasons for this card have we gone through now? I've lost count.

It was to win the war against terrorism. No, wait, it was to prevent illegal immigrants flooding the country. Errrm, noo, it'll stop Social Security spongers. Your key to a seamlessly integrated health care system? No? A fun techno gadget that everyone will want? Oh, come on, still not going for it?! Ok, how about a way for 18 year olds to buy alcohol?

I mean, how clear an indication do we need that this is a project that's not so much gone of the rails, but never had rails in the first place and never knew where the hell it was supposed to be going and what it was supposed to do once it got there? Either those driving it forward are fumbling cluelessly in the dark towards the inevitable large pay-off bonuses, or someone somewhere, has a very definite plan for this ridiculous waste of money that they really don't want to tell us about.

Re:What a waste

[RegularFry]

Yes. The correct response to this is "if the law is never going to be used like that, and we agree that it would be wrong to do so, why is the law not framed to make it illegal?"

Re:What a waste

[AntiDragon]

More than this.
It's hard not to be a cynic when you live in a country that pulls this off so many times. What we have here is a not a U-turn but a well-used method of having your cake and eating it.

• 1. Propose outlandishly extreme system, preferrably with nice fat government contracts for companies you/your spouse holds shares in.
• 2. Stand firm while public outcry commences.
• 3. Replace outlandishly extreme system with watered down system that still costs far too much money and still does what you actually wanted.
• 4. Pretend to look sheepish as the public thinks they've won and stops fighting.

Don't take this as the truth but unfortunately I'm beyond the point of accepting "incompetence" instead of "malice" when it comes to my (ha, "my"...) government.

Re:What a waste

[jez9999]

'course, it's more common now for the government to say that the law would only be used to its extreme 'in extreme circumstances', which makes it OK.

The logical conclusion of this argument is that any law covering government or police should be abolished, and only in extreme circumstances will they act in an illiberal manner.

Re:What a waste

[jandersen]

Ha, it said this system cost 150 million pounds to the gov't, and now their purpose is for a convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol

I think everybody knows that the purpose of this scheme is simply to create a central database of all citizens and where they live, which they don't have now. This will not only help in fighting benefit fraud, but also make it almost impossible to hide from creditors. The question of "national security" doesn't enter into it at all, at least not until they want to sell it to the public; which is why that explanation has always sounded hollow.

Are copied cards really that much of a concern?

[viking099]

Personally I'd be more worried about some junior level government worker losing my data along with that of everyone else in the country when he goes digging through his pocket for enough change to buy lunch at the pub down the street.

Obvious tactics

[Anonymous Coward]

They feel the resistance so now they roll the IDs out as an inferior version of the original proposal. As soon as they push them through, they will turn around and make them mandatory in every possible situation, blaming it on worsening terror and crime situation.

As a Brit...

[lobiusmoop]

I'm jealous of you folks in the US, at least you've got a new government in 2 months time. We're stuck with the same leadership over here for likely another 18 months or so. Given the current recession and the billions plowed into bailing out the UK banking system, I'm pissed off that such big budget projects such as this - with dubious benefits - are still on the agenda.

Don't worry guys!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Our Spiffy, Shiny, Radically New(tm) system that is horribly vulnerable to fraud isn't vulnerable to fraud because we will only be using it to do what the old and busted system was perfectly capable of doing! (Is there some aspect of this that isn't completely insane that I've missed out on?)

Re:Minority

[tripdizzle]

"check the cards against a central biometric database in a minority of cases."

More like "check the cards against a central biometric database if your a minority"

But, I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards'"

[Fweeky]

But I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards'":

The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said: "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long."

Someone should tell Jacqui that the people who stand to make lots of money from producing ID cards for the government wanting it to be done sooner don't count as a representative sample of the British public.

Different, minimal cards for different purposes?

[Fastolfe]

It seems to me that much of the problems with any form of national ID card could be mitigated if you had different cards for different purposes. If I need to be able to assert that I'm old enough to buy something, all I need is a difficult-to-forge card that asserts that fact, and ties that fact to me (with my photograph perhaps). Such a card has no need for my name, my address, or any other facts about my identity. If you wanted to get fancy, you could digitize all of this information and have nothing appearing on the card at all.

Similarly, a license to drive should be based on my ability to drive. My identity doesn't matter, at least beyond what's needed to prove that I'm the rightful holder of the license. I might need to present some identification to the government when I obtain the license, but that doesn't need to remain with it. So you could have a separate card (or set of digital credentials) for that.

It's the concentration of all of this into one card that makes that one card so valuable to thieves and a police state. But for most of the uses of the various identity/license/payment/shopper cards, they need to know very little about me. Usually just an account number of some kind, a way to ensure authenticity (digital signature, watermark) and a way for people I present the card to to verify that I'm the rightful holder, if that even matters (like a photograph, or a hash of any kind of biometric data). Why must everything be tied to a government identity?

Re:But, I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards

[Skuldo]

Reprehensible woman. Put her in the stocks.

Not a U-Turn, just boil frog more carefully now...

[MindKata]

"No, the purpose is selective enforcement"

...and selective enforcement, is a slower way to boil a frog. The point being, once they have a basic system implimented in law, they can then introduce new technology, controls and additional laws over time. So at first, introduce selective enforcement, then over time, widen the scope to much greater levels of enforcement. This way, they slip the full idea past opponents as opponents, *at this time* only have to agree on small parts of the overall idea. The control freaks who want this system, are starting to tread more carefully, now they are getting more (unwanted) attention on their plans. They still intend to have the full system, but they are now bring it in bit by bit. Don't want to heat the water too fast, or the frog will jump out the water.

But its wrong for the opponents of this system to say this is a U-Turn. "U-Turn" is political talk for implying a back down. This isn't a back down, the control freaks still want this system, no matter how many times they are told it will not work.