Blair defends identity card plan

ID cards are needed to stop the soaring costs of identity theft, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said as proposals for a national scheme were reintroduced.

The Conservatives have now decided they will join the Lib Dems and some Labour in opposing the measure.

Critics claim Mr Blair is highlighting ID theft as his other reasons for the cards have not won support. The cost of the scheme has risen since November.

The Home Office will not put a figure on the cost of setting up the cards system, saying it is commercially sensitive.

But the scheme will cost an estimated £584m to run every year - a cost of £93 per card, compared with an estimated cost of £85 per card in November.

Ministers stress they have not yet decided what fees people would have to pay for the cards.

Discounts would be available to some card holders but Home Office Minister Tony McNulty refused to speculate whether other people would have to pay more than £93.

He said the latest cost estimate was more "robust" than the figure given last November.

And he argued that 70% of the cost would be spent on new biometric passports whether or not ID cards were introduced.

The latest Identity Cards Bill was published on Wednesday but it contains only "minor amendments" to the plans which were dropped when the election was called.

Changes include giving more responsibilities to the watchdog charged with overseeing the scheme and new checks on which government agencies can access ID card information.

Mr McNulty said: "A secure compulsory national identity cards scheme will help tackle illegal immigration, organised crime, ID fraud, terrorism and will benefit all UK citizens."

It said most people enrolled successfully on all the different types of biometric scheme.

But iris scan technology was less successful with black people and people aged over 59, said the report.

Mr McNulty denied the scheme was discriminatory and stressed the trials were not designed to test the technology.

"Those who know far more than I suggest that the technology is moving in the right direction," he said.

The Conservatives and Lib Dems predict they could defeat the plans in Parliament.

The Tories initially voted for the ID card legislation in the last Parliament but abstained in the key Commons vote.

They will now vote against the scheme, saying it has not passed their five tests.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "The truth is the government has not taken our concerns seriously and as a result we have to oppose it."

Mr Davis said the scheme was very expensive and ineffective, using "completely unproved" technology.

The Lib Dems say they are opposed to the plans in principle and spokesman Mark Oaten seized on the latest cost figures.

"We have always argued this is a project that is going to run out of control financially," he said.

Labour backbencher Neil Gerrard said opinion polls suggested public support for ID cards would change once people knew the costs and if the scheme became compulsory.

Shami Chakrabarti, from civil rights group Liberty, urged MPs to reject what she said was a "rehashed bill that is more about political machismo than rational policy".

The fact that the British government's earlier pro-ID card arguments based upon the prevention of terrorism, illegal immigration and black market labour scams, can be seen by any moderately well-informed person to be nonsense, means that Blair is now trying to cash in on the worry among the public that has been heightened by Capital One's TV and press advertising campaign featuring Alistair McGowan posing as an identity thief and living the high life at his victim's expense.

The Home Secretary has stated that identity fraud now costs the UK more than £1.3 billion every year. However, this estimate has been called into question. A 2004 conference organised by the Law Society heard that the figure was derived from a "best guess". When the data is more closely analysed, it dissolves. Credit card fraud is frequently confused with identity theft, and estimates of the two activities often intersect.

Note the following quote:

'A Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) survey commissioned by Intervoice reveals that public attraction for ID Cards as a means to counter identity theft has sunk to 57 per cent, assuming for a minute that oft-quoted Home Office figures of 80 per cent present an even remotely accurate point from which to sink.

Intervoice's George Platt said:

"Even if the Government can deliver a majority for its national ID card, the impact on telephone and online identity theft will be minor. That's minor in the sense of non-existent".

Card-not-present fraud, which makes up the vast majority of fraud and theft coming under the "identity fraud" banner occurs because there is no card, card holder or identity document to check. Similarly card cloning, the most quickly rising form of fraud, would be entirely unaffected.

A card that grants so many privileges as the UK ID card would offer would be the brightest beacon for hackers, forgers and criminals across the world, pouring the vast resources of organised crime into the process of beating the system.

This is a system that receives criticism from GCHQ - even government spooks regard biometrics as untested, unproven and insecure. Smart card trials in Cornwall collapsed this month from scanner problems, and with only 50,000 people, rather than 60 million. Everyone will recall similar infrastructure meltdowns - Child Support Agency, Swanwick Air Traffic Control, Passport Agency, Criminal Records Bureau, Nafis the Police fingerprint database.... the list goes on. And on.' Article

At first sight it appears logical to argue that a national identity system will help combat identity theft. There is, however, a substantial body of evidence to show that the establishment of a centralised identity hub, (with a unique identification serial number for each citizen), can increase the incidence of identity theft. The clearest example of this problem exists in the USA, where the Social Security Number has become an identity hub and a central reference point to index and link identity. Obtaining a person’s SSN provides a single interface with that individual's dealings with a vast number of private and public bodies. Hence the level of identity theft in the USA is high compared to other countries. In order to counteract this problem with the proposed UK ID card system it would be necessary for banks, shops etc to have fingerprint or retinal scanners and access to the National Identity Register to ensure that the person with the card is on the register as the person the card represents, but the government has no plans to do this and anyway it would be extremely expensive.

The British government is just using ID fraud to scare people into supporting ID cards. Pressure to conform with the EU is the real reason why the UK government is introducing compulsory biometric ID cards. All those claims about preventing terrorism, illegal immigration and illegal immigrant labour scams were BS. In particular, compulsory National Identity Cards with biometric data and their associated National Identity Register database would make it possible for Blair to sign the UK up to Phase II of the Schengen Information System.

The Council of the European Union wishes to standardise ID cards across Europe and have mandatory fingerprinting for all EU citizens. The future French electronic ID card will include two biometrics and Sweden has just started issuing biometric ID cards. In order to make Britain part of the European super-state the Europhilic Labour government must bring us into line with European requirements. However, unlike most European countries, Britain has a proud record of respecting a law-abiding individual's liberty, (at least until recently). We should not throw our liberty away just to be assimilated into a future European super-state.

Correct. Even using biometrics there can be fraud.

The British government's planned ID card system includes an "all your eggs in one basket" equivalent of the US Social Security Number, it will be the 'National Identity Register Number'. This serial number will be necessary because biometrics are useless for online and over the phone interactions with government services or private sector ones.

Of course, for a reliable security system you should never mix high security authentication protocols with low or zero security ones, as the high security ones will inevitably get compromised that way.

The provisions of the original UK ID Cards Bill allowed for potentially high security strong authentication using multiple biometric identifers, however, it also includes a single National Identity Register Number and the possibility of hand written signatures and phone banking style 'what's your mother's maiden name?' type challenge response questions, which drags the security of the whole system down to its weakest link. The alleged "technical amendments" in the new Bill are promised by the Home Office in a couple of weeks, but given the way they screwed up the previous full Bill I doubt that common sense will prevail.

It is likely that millions of people will never be able to do secure online biometric checks against the central database, simply because of the huge cost implications - none of which have been spelled out in detail - due to the government's deliberately vague cost estimates. The temptation, for those other than properly equipped Police officers checking the ID card, will be to just do a simple visual check of the card and if necessary take a note of the NIR number, which brings us no further forward than all the current ID documents, and makes it just as vulnerable to document forgers - billions of pounds wasted for no extra benefit.

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