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UK Can't Read Its Own ID Cards
An anonymous reader writes "Despite the introduction of ID cards last November, it has emerged that Britain has no readers that are able to read the cards' microchips, which contain the person's fingerprints and other biometric information. With cops and border guards unable to use the cards to check a person's identity, critics are calling the £4.7bn scheme 'farcical' and a 'waste of time.'"
While I won't go as far as being paranoid about "it was always the governments plan and they just want the data on everyone", it doesn't surprise me that our government isn't even capable of introducing both halves of an ID scheme at the same time.
Until they fix it they've basically just introduced an over-expensive photo ID. Well done, Labour!
It is a security measure
Stop making fun at Belgium and follow in their food steps. The readers are available and the source is open Dutch: http://eid.belgium.be/nl/Achtergrondinfo/De_eID_technisch/
Main thing is that you see there are Linux drivers for it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The cards dont exist yet and wont until 2011 or 2012.
Still, dont let truth get in the way of a good rant.
Is anyone really surprised? There are people out there who still don't believe that Dad's Army was an early example of reality TV. Government competence levels have not improved in the ensuing years.
Will you PLEASE F off with the Fing beta now?
Right now most bookmakers will give you very good odds on the current government actually being in power by the end of 2010. Since the other lot are supposedly going to get rid of the scheme, and there's been no large-scale rollout of the cards to the general population, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to buy all the readers just now. Not that 'sense' really comes into this, of course.
Britain has no readers that are able to the cards' microchip
Hey, we all know how hard it can be to a card's microchip.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Yesterday you rant about giving up too much piracy, today you rant about them not being readable? I pity those cluelessnesses' failure in appreciating the beauty of unbreakable security with Write-Only-Memory(WOM) technology from Sygnetics in 1972.
Enough about it. Get off my lawn.
Britain has no readers that are able to the cards' microchip,
No problem, can't we just take them round to the Russian embassy? I'm sure that they are quite capable of reading all our microchips.
Faaarcical! Faaarcical!
I like to ride my
Faaarcical! Faaarcical!
This must have been modded by someone with no clue of old British sitcoms. Just because you don't get the reference doesn't make it offtopic!
Will someone please fix the bad mod?
the uk has a FOIA? srsly, when did this happen?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
...as I'm pretty sure UK's so inclined criminal element has the means to read those chips.
My old'English style of Identification by using coats of arms and capes has not failed me yet!
At least my system gets you half-clothed to a standard citizen's wear.
It was about biometric databases, computer-recognizable photographs and humongous amounts of fingerprints.
the Public have been calling it much worse since it was announced. No-one really sees the need for them, nor do they really want them, but it's not something anyone in the UK really feels so strongly about that they'd actively fight against it.
If they dropped the scheme now, no-one would miss it (but i'm sure people would miss the £4bn) and alot of people would be much happier knowing that their identities aren't readily availible to be snooped on by anyone with an RFID sniffer.
It's easy, and quite tempting, to react to this news with patronizing contempt - and think, "Well, at least we're fairly safe - such a bunch of bunglers couldn't do any real harm".
Unfortunately, a look back at history reveals that appalling inefficiency and incompetence have usually gone hand-in-hand with authoritarian government. But whereas we can still laugh about it, the time may come when doing so is distinctly unwise. People made fun of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini throughout their careers, and some got away with it. Others were arrested, beaten up, imprisoned, tortured, shot, or hanged with piano wire.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
They've only just started finalising and using these cards. Why is it surprising that there are no readers around?
It's akin to saying that Blu-Ray or DVDs were a waste of time because initially there were no players for them - Hello, you need to wait for people to catch up, especially if the equipment is expensive (and although they're not consumer products, the same rules apply - places need to wait for grants or work out their budgets before buying or using said machines).
Besides, practically no-one has these cards yet - and I doubt anyone will for a while, especially since they cost cash to get (It was ~£50 last I heard)
"...critics are calling the £4.7bn scheme "farcical" and a "waste of time"."
Isn't it more like a "waste of money" ?
critics are calling the £4.7bn scheme "farcical" and a "waste of time".
Like so many other UK schemes.
Personally, I never trusted my government with such data after so many incidents of loss that had nothing to do with the system (which may in itself be perfectly secure) - so maybe it's a good thing after all.
I live only for the present moment, there is no other moment.
Don't fall for it.. they want you to think they can't read the cards so you wont be so worried about getting one.
After all they only need to call this guy for a quick solution. ;)
um .. so what else is new? its been 7 years since egypt introduced bar codes on the national id card. do you think ANY government agency have barcodes readers?
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
I'm sorry, this is abuse. You want "Yes, Minister". Down the corridor, third on the left.
Stupid git.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
write once, read never
...and cowing the populace into accepting such a relationship with the State as being normal. First, get the soft targets: the foreigners. Then start slicing away at the rest of us, one soft target at a time.
Our rulers - by which I of course mean the half dozen media moguls that control the teeming masses - will be the last to have to submit to carrying and showing Ze Papers. Up until then, they'll be running this as a "Ho ho, how British!" mirth piece, rather than leading the revolution.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
with all the smoke and mirrors and lies on this, if this was in the USA, I would have said that it had been a neo-con operation.
Her Royal Highness? Did Her Majesty abdicate?
No this is the department of silly cards... you're looking for the department of silly walks... four doors down and on the right. Now shove off you ya git!
Then the poor sucker who has one has to buy another passport/card for another 75 GBP.
at £4.7bn that scheme is more than 'farcical' and a 'waste of time.' its also a huge waste of monetary resources!
On the other hand, there isn't much point having the readers unless there's a reason to suspect the bearer's identity. As the scheme is voluntary, those with suspect identities won't be the first in the queue for the cards. As law-enforcement will only interested in those without cards, then there's not much point buying in them buying readers. That doesn't, on the other hand, invalidate the cards, which do still serve a purpose.
At present, the standard identification document is the gas bill which, naturally, discriminates against tenants, people without a gas supply and people who have pre-pay meters (usually the poor). The cards therefore improve the ability of poor people to pay for the privilege of 'interacting with government', and thus improve both 'social mobility' and 'engagement'. In addition, a card with a picture on it has to be arguably more reliable than a piece of paper that can be borrowed out of a dustbin by anyone with a mind to.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They have included a chip for future use and it hasn't been implemented yet, how is this a big deal?
I don't have the exact answer to what is putting us in these Orwellian times, but against all that we tough, it's not human wisdom that is keeping us out of them, but human stupidity!
I'm sure someone found a way to read them and the data will be uploaded to the net soon like a lot of government data.
I was born in this country, I've lived here a long time, but I didn't spot that at all. On the one hand, I'm pleased that, as a small-r republican, I've demonstrated my lack of interest in the Winzas. On the other, perhaps I might not be as good at identifying fake coins and banknotes as I should be.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The thing that worries me is that the downturn means that people now working at Google, Microsoft etc. will be released into the community and will then get Government jobs. One thing worse than pervasive Govt paranoia and spying is efficient pervasive government paranoia and spying.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
May I congratulate the nameless civil servant who threw this spanner into the wrench. I'd like to hope that this particular "error" can be attributed to competence, rather than oversight.
on the "Work" section. Making it easy to catch the criminals.
When they are all arrested, no more crime!
Ok, so either the brits are really dumb, as they didnt forsee this happening, the budget cuts to all police hqs means they can't afford one of these new machines, or it was the most brilliant scam, tally up all the loses over a period, tack it to a scapegoat of a project that you know will fail. ...voila, hands washed clean of any mess....7 billion huh....that's a pretty good cover up!
The media moguls are no more our rulers today than when Hearst more or less invented the modern concept of the media serving the government (but it has been always thus, back to the criers of Rome, wtfever they were actually called, and presumably then some) but they may be said to be in some measure of control.
The media outlets are instructed as to what they may or may not air, and I am not talking about the thin veneer of respectability constructed through mock moral outrage and the efforts of the FCC.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And all you people were worried about big brother.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Why would the government have readers for the cards? They're a huge waste of money unless you actually had a use for them. Why is it that people presume that the British government wanted people to have the cards. The British government's support and legal system was necessary to assure that everyone got a card, sure, but now that everyone's got a card, extragovernmental agencies can leverage them -- which was the original point of the exercise, was it not? No point in making the taxpayer pay for a reader you can't use and the government has little use for. You can buy your own reader (and a Pringles can)...
1) Spend 4.5 billion pounds ...hmm what happend to 3?
2) Design pimp id cards
3)
4) Read pimp id cards on
Present ID cards in the US, drivers license, are easily linked to a lot of your personal info - including Social, address, name, picture, drivers/criminal record, and more.
The problem - each state has it's own ID, and worse, each state has MULTIPLE types. Bad enough there are 50 different state IDs (also one for DC, and one for Puerto Rico) but when they each have multiples (older IDs, IDs for under 21, IDs for under 18). It gets silly.
One ID...Each state can maintain it's own rules about drivers age, but lets have one UNIFORM looking ID and spend a lot of money making it rediculously hard to clone.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
In the US, Burger King owns all the intellectual property regarding horse meat in all its flame broiled goodness!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
database, n.: a system in which one can enter thousands and thousands of records, after which it will tell that the search criteria you planned to use cannot be used at all.
Ya'll nerds postin' in a troll thread.
Have you come here for an argument?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It was about biometric databases, computer-recognizable photographs and humongous amounts of fingerprints.
Sounds like a used iPhone.
Consider yourself spoken to.
When I was in college in the late 80s (yeah, I know), they had introduced the student ID card with a bar code and a magnetic strip on the back. However, they had no equipment to read either one, and the back of your card needed to display a 'valid student' sticker anyway - right over both the bar code and the strip. Four years later, still no readers, and an entrenchment of various stickers from other school functions (meal pass, library, transportation) made the back of the card useless anyway. I never did find out how that ended.
I would have expected this level of incompetence from the USA.
I've always said that if the USA turns into a police state, I'll leave the country. The question then is HOW I'd leave, if it became a closed country like North Korea.
Simple. Considering that the TSA still lets bombs through airport security checkpoints, I'm pretty damn confident that I'd be able to "sneak" into Canada.
Is anything UK does these days not 'farcial'?
"Only in Britain"
It's not exactly the same. I'm more talking about the chip they put on your debt and credit cards that was supposed to eventually replace the stripe but so far even places that have a scanner for it, there doesn't seem to be any way to use it. If you stick it in, nothing happens. I've never seen one work anywhere. Useless.
"Oh, dear ever-handsome elf-gods, are we actually stupid enough to have voted on nothing at all?"
It's nice for the paranoiacs among us to be reassured (if they needed it) that the "Government is not perfect. The project execution critical path appears to have come unstuck. But you don't need a machine reader to read on ID card, your eyes will do it. Assuming the ID card is of any use it surely is perfectly usable wherever it applies. Just a loss of efficiency when passing through airports or whatever
I must laugh at the prevalent assumption that the UK ID Card scheme was established to actually do something useful.
Right at proposal stage the thing was taken to pieces by the London School of Economics, yet the whole party on the taxpayer's money went ahead unchanged. And herein lies the truth IMHO: it has handed a few people an awful lot of money, something that appears to be somewhat symptomatic of IT projects under the current government.
Not that their National Audit Office would trouble itself with REALLY investigating: their audits exist of sending some fresh-out-of-school consultants to talk to people whose job depends on keeping their mouth shut. It's the equivalent of sending a kid with a calculator to sign off Enron's accounts. It's not that the NAO would really bite anyone anyway - check out who runs it, and check their track record.
PS: you can't lock them up. Prisons are full..