johng Blog

The government are trying to push ID cards through the commons again but they still don’t seem to realise we don’t want them for a number of important reasons.

Firstly the cost is astronomical and it could increase to £19 billion according to the LSE, looks like we will wind up with another over priced system, something that the NHS can tell us all about.

Will it prevent terrorism? What terrorism? I am sure the police, intelligence services and the army are doing their best to insure this country does not come under attack from extremists but the simple fact is that the threat to this country has been exaggerated to a ridiculous and unrealistic level. The terrorists are not a well oiled machine with an international network that the Bush and Blair administrations would have us believe. So the impact of any such scheme would be minimal, if at all, on the small threat we face.

Immigration is the other justification but this is completely the wrong approach. Biometrics are already being taken on entry into the country and that seems to be doing its job very well. No ID card and you get deported? I some how doubt that.

Which brings me to the flawed biometrics part of the scheme. It looks like it will be finger, 2D face and iris so that’s one good, two bad. It’s widely known iris can be beaten with clever contact lenses. 2D face is pretty lackluster from what I have seen and for a supposedly foreword looking system they really need to be scanning 3D face maps from day one to guarantee a good level of accuracy.

Of course let’s not forget about the civil liberties issues involved. There will be a central database of biometrics data for everybody in the country, something that is only currently done with criminals and immigrants. I don’t even want to think what would happen if your finger prints were found at the scene of a crime you didn’t commit and they ran a search against the ID card database. This could have the effect of devaluing the biometric data currently held on criminals, a very bad thing indeed.

The card is pretty useless in day to day exchanges apart from a proof of identity so it will be good for people without driving licenses (all three of you). If they phased in biometrics onto passports that would be a cheaper and more effective way of accomplishing some of their goals but right now that seems like it’s falling on deaf ears. They want to be seen to be doing something about terrorism and immigration and this is a very public way of doing it. It is just a shame that it will have no affect on either of those issues in the long run.