Last chance to legally oppose the NuLabour ID card scheme

It looks like the third and final vote on the national ID cards Bill in the House of Commons will be on the 18th of this month.

If you are a British citizen and you oppose the national ID card/NIR scheme then you need to write to your MP in the next few days (for convenience you can use this website) or else it will be too late to make your opinion count.

If we assume that the ID cards will be impossible to fake, (a big assumption), then we are on to how much the scheme will cost and how much fraud it could prevent. It turns out that benefit fraud by people lying about their identities (which ID cards could prevent) is only a small part of total benefit fraud. Figures for claims under false identities are estimated at £50 million (2.5%) of an (estimated) £2 billion per year in fraudulent benefit claims and the government hasn't bothered to do any research to see how much NHS "health tourism" costs, see this quote:

...Although we have received assurances from the Government that abuse of the NHS by 'health tourists' does take place, it is difficult to place much weight on these assurances since the Government was unable to supply us with any data, not even a rough estimate, of the numbers of people allegedly 'abusing' the NHS, nor of the costs that are associated with this...

A couple of Labour politicians have said that this costs the NHS £500 million per year, but they didn't have any research to back this statistic up with and they have an alterior motive to make this claim, (bringing in this ID card scheme).

The government has also cited "identity fraud" as one of its main reasons for introducing national ID cards and it states that this problem costs £1.3 billion each year. However, it seems that the proposed ID card scheme could not combat much of that because it would make no difference to “buyer not present” credit/debit card fraud, money laundering or Missing Trader Intra Community VAT fraud which are the largest components of what the government dubs "identity fraud". Card-not-present fraud, which makes up the vast majority of 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, (see page 104 of “The London School of Economics Identity Project Report” 27/06/05 – http://is.lse.ac.uk/idcard/identityreport.pdf).

So the NIR/ID card scheme is likely to cost rather more than the benefit fraud, NHS "health tourism" and identity fraud that its supposed to prevent, especially if you consider the way the cost is increasing. The government estimated in 2002 that the ID card scheme would cost somewhere around £3.1 billion. In 2004, when the Home Affairs Committee asked the Home Secretary to clarify the exact amount he refused, citing commercial secrecy. By the time the final Bill was published in November 2004 the government acknowledged that the cost of the scheme over ten years would be £5.8 billion. Industry specialists have warned that the complexity and uncertainty of the scheme’s architecture and technology could drive this cost even higher. See: http://www.computerweekly.com/Article134763.htm

Unfortunately, Government IT projects are well known for their propensity to run over budget. Its quite possible that the scheme could cost £12 billion over ten years. Also, check out this London School of Economics report which says that it could easily go 3 times over budget: http://is.lse.ac.uk/idcard/identityreport.pdf

Besides, they don't need this scheme to crack down on benefit cheats, health tourists and election fraud, there are far less expensive ways to deal with these problems, but the Home Office wants ID cards to harmonise us with other EU countries so those other methods would never do.

I would suggest that the continuing process of legislative conformism with the EU is probably the government's main reason for introducing compulsory biometric ID cards and the NIR database. The biometric data and their associated National Identity Register database will give Blair the IT infrastructure he would need to sign the UK up to Phase II of the Schengen Information System, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Information_System SIS II would contain more data categories, cf. person and object categories than the current implementation of SIS.

Below is a quote from the Home Office website on ID cards and it uses the fact that most EU member states have them and that the EU want biometric data for passports to make it seem inevitable that we must also adopt them sooner or later:

The Government's decision to proceed with the introduction of a national identity cards scheme is based in part on the fact that we will have to introduce more secure personal identifiers (biometrics) into our passports and other existing documents in line with international requirements. Right across the world there is a drive to increase document security with biometrics. If our citizens are to continue to enjoy the benefits of international travel, as increasing numbers of them are doing we cannot be left behind. It is worth remembering that 21 of the 25 EU Member States (all apart from the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Latvia) have identity cards...

Of course, the Home Office bureaucrats don't tell you that few EU countries have compulsory ID cards, or biometric ID cards, or indeed that many European countries with compulsory ID card schemes adopted them during periods of dictatorship.

The Council of the European Union has expressed a desire to standardise ID cards across Europe and have mandatory fingerprinting for all EU citizens, see: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/nov/10biometric-rush.htm The future French electronic ID card, (which is unpopular with the French people), will include two biometrics and Sweden has just started issuing biometric ID cards. In order to integrate Britain with the EU the government must bring us into line with European norms. 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 allow this barely elected government to throw one of our most fundamental common law traditions away just so that the UK can be assimilated into a future EU super-state.

Its possible that the assignment of a NIRN to everyone in the UK could actually facilitate fraud, here is a quote from that LSE report on this subject:

...In the US, the Social Security Number has become an identity hub and a central reference point to index and link identity.267 Obtaining a person’s SSN provides a single interface with that person’s dealings with a vast number of private and public bodies. There have been countless cases of identity thefts that were enabled by first obtaining the SSN. It is arguable that the existence and ease of obtaining the SSN and its importance across private and public databases is the reason why the level of identity theft in the US is extremely high. This situation applies equally in Australia where the introduction of an extensive Tax File Number has also increased the incidence of identity theft beyond the levels experienced in the UK.268...

..."Studying the way that individuals disclose sensitive information would be far more valuable in preventing identity fraud than the evolution of technologically advanced but ultimately fallible measures to prevent the misuse of personal information after it has been obtained. We don't think identity cards will solve the problem of identity theft, and they have the potential to increase fraudulent behaviour.

"The plan is to use documents such as birth certificates and driving licences for authentication, but these are easy to obtain in someone else's name."...

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. But the provisions of the UK ID Cards Bill allow 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.

Its 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 NIRN, 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.

A civil servant working for the DVLA who gave animal rights activists the addresses of drivers visiting a guinea pig farm was jailed for five months yesterday...

He handed over at least 13 addresses of people, some of whom were simply friends of John and Chris Hall, the owners of Darley Oaks Farm, near Lichfield, Staffs, where thousands of guinea pigs are bred for experiments.

Nick Sanders, who works at the farm but is not involved in the breeding, condemned the sentence as too lenient.

"He should have got five years," he said. "Two cars of mine have been badly damaged and my home has been attacked many times."...

Just think how much trouble corrupt officials with access to the identity check audit trail section of the future National Identity Register database (for the proposed ID card system) could cause for law-abiding people that some lunatic activists or criminals are after.

The government has indicated to the Police that they will give them access to the entire population's fingerprints so that they can compare them to fingerprints taken from unsolved crimes. Also check out:

...NCIS is the custodian on behalf of the law enforcement agencies of the national collection of intelligence on serious and organised criminals. We will meet the challenge of technical and procedural barriers to the flows of intelligence. In particular we will seek solutions for technical incompatibility between IT systems and will work to overcome real and perceived legal obstacles to the exchange of data. We will vigorously promote common standards and be rigorous in maintaining data quality...

That may sound reasonable to some people, but when you consider that many innocent people have been sent to prison entirely on the basis of dodgy fingerprint evidence, then it gets a bit worrying. The fingerprint data will also be handed over to Europol, the NSA and assorted foreign governments and the data could be incorrectly matched to prints from crime scenes etc, with the result that innocent British citizens end up in prison. See:

The government wants everyone to believe that its biometric ID cards, which will be backed up by the NIR database, can't be faked. However, it will still be possible to produce fake ID cards which pass cursory examinations by the Police or more sophisticated ones which also hold appropriate data on the card's chip, but which don't have a corresponding entry on the NIR database. The government believes that it can eventually get around these problems by using mobile biometric readers linked to the NIR database to directly check people against the NIR. But someone could bribe an official to make a bogus NIR entry for their fake ID card and then that person's ID card couldn't be faulted. (In fact, they wouldn't even need a fake ID card, just the bogus NIR entry, because it will not be a legal requirement for people to carry their ID cards in public places).

The mobile biometric readers have yet to be fully developed and even when they are its very doubtful that every pair of Police officers on the beat will have one, so identifying people the Police stop will still take some time. Given that most Police stops of suspected criminals are usually of people who have been arrested and fingerprinted in the past, or who have criminal records, then the existing criminal fingerprint database can be used to identify most of those who try to conceal their identities. According to the Policemen I have heard from, the Police rarely have problems identifying people they arrest.

Because of the expense of supplying enough mobile biometric readers to the Police (something the Government has underestimated), the inaccuracy of biometric identifiers and the government's terrible record on running reliable IT systems: I suspect that if this scheme is adopted then the government will eventually have to make the carrying of ID cards in public places compulsory and enforce that requirement using criminal law. If that happens it will cause a lot of tension between the law-abiding citizenry and the Police. As I'm sure you know, that is why the last ID card scheme was scrapped in 1952.

Once the proposed ID card scheme passes its "voluntary phase", which will hardly be voluntary, (as passports and other designated documents will be withheld from those who refuse to register on the National Identity Register database), then it will move into its compulsory phase. At that point these are the proposed fines which the government will use against people who fail to cooperate fully with the ID card system:

- refusal to submit your biometric details (fingerprints, iris scans, 3D facial scan), or turn up for your allocated interview - £2,500 (on each occasion).

- failure to keep your details up to date (including your current address) - £1,000.

(Also damaging your ID card will be a criminal offence, although you may not even be aware that it is damaged).

Almost a million taxpayer records were accidently deleted from Inland Revenue computer systems between 1997 and 2000 due to a software problem which went unnoticed for several years.

The Department took three years to discover that software used to cleanse its database of old cases was also wiping live ones from its system.

This resulted in some 364,000 people who cannot be identified being owed £82m, while another 22,000 did not pay tax due of around £6m.

The Revenue admitted the problem last year but the full scale of the error has now only just emerged, following a report from the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee on 8 September.

A routine housekeeping procedure on the PAYE database, which had been in place for at least 10 years, failed to distinguish between old and live cases, says the report...

Anyone want to trust an IT company like that with putting together the most ambitious British government IT project in history where errors will severly impact the lives of innocent people?

...If you've recently updated your licence to a photo card, registered a change of address or added a category then check your licence carefully. Many readers have already contacted us to say they've had their bike licences erased, the only option the DVLA has given them is to retake their practical and theory tests!...

...Dave Bell from Kent passed his bike test in 1970. He's also qualified as an HGV driver. But when he updated from a paper license to a photocard, the card came back with a photo of somebody else, his bike license was erased, and a new coach driving category had been added. He sent the DVLA all the evidence he could to prove he had a bike licence but this wasn't enough. The DVLA sent back a letter telling him to renew his category H - for driving tanks!

Shah Mushod works as a bus driver. He was also qualified to drive motorbikes, cars, lorries, coaches and fire engines. But his new photo ID card came back from the DVLA with only a motorbike entitlement. He wasn't able to work, or even take the kids to school, and ended up spending around £2,000 retaking all his driving tests.

When you send in your old licence it's destroyed by the DVLA after three months. So if your records have been entered into their database incorrectly, you could be in trouble. According to official reports, a third of the DVLA's records may be wrong...

This story demonstrates that government agencies do put incorrect data into important databasesand it shows the sort of attitude the ID agency will adopt if there are any errors in the 51 fields' worth of data for everyone in the UK which are to be entered into the proposed National Identity Register.

They will deny that they are capable of error. Your life will be severly disrupted, and you will have no recourse in the law. Notice how the DVLA has no procedure in place to alter your licence should they make a mistake - this is because they believe themselvs to be infallible, just as the NIR agency will believe itself to be. The ID cards bill currently before Parliament makes it clear that it will be your responsibility, not the government's, to make sure that your NIR entry is correct.

By the way, the Office of National Statistics has recently decided to move the lists of births, marriages and deaths to India for digitisation, see: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5221985-111266,00.html. That will move the database outside UK legal jurisdiction. Although, such data is already in the public domain, there must be increased vulnerability to the creation of false entries and modification of existing entries, all base records on which the proposed National Identity Scheme will need to be built. It also begs the question of whether or not the UK government would allow the NIR to be built abroad by subcontracting companies, with consequent security concerns.

Government sub-contractors have actually failed to successfully implement almost every large state IT system ever undertaken within budget or deadline, resulting in a loss to the public of more than a billion pounds between 1997 and 2000, see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,517008,00.html. David Blunkett actually told Parliament: “I agree that it is important to recognise the past failures of Government technology systems”.

An audit of the Police National Computer in 2002 found that 65% of its records contained errors, and in 1999, 214 cases involving abuse by staff of the benefits agency were investigated. The failures of the passport agency database led to more than 500,000 people waiting for passports in early summer 1999, while the DVLA has admitted selling information about vehicle licence owners to private companies.

On the DVLA vehicle licensing database 22% of records contain spelling mistakes in name and address details or had out of date postcodes and 2.5% of records contain errors at data capture. See: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/geraint.bevan/foi/dvla.html The 6 month "Project Laser" Automatic Number Plate Recognition trials conducted by half a dozen Police Forces, a year or so ago, found the following:

•Laser 1 identified a number of weaknesses in national databases, principally with regard to the vehicle licensing. A number of initiatives were put in place but quality remains an issue

•there are a number of concurrent pressures to improve the quality of national and local intelligence, but much more remains to be done

•PNC and local databases were found to be around 80% accurate compared to around 40% for DVLA

Of course, the DVLA database is nothing like as complicated as the proposed NIR database will be and incorrect data on its database, unlike on the NIR, couldn't stop you from obtaining NHS treatment, casting your vote, getting your state pension, opening a bank account, buying an expensive appliance, etc. So much for the: "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument.

Dutch police have fined 50,000 people for breaking a new law making possession of identity papers compulsory "at all times"...

The prime minister, Jan Pieter Balkenende, said earlier this year that he was "determined to crack down hard on suspected terrorists"...

But the new cards and the alacrity with which the police have enforced the new law have unnerved many Dutch residents...

Many countries, like Israel, don't even require you to keep your current address up to date and very few countries use biometrics. The NIR will be unique around the world as an identity register due to its complexity and invasive nature.

Most western countries that have ID cards do not have a central shared register, due to privacy protection and ease of corruption concerns and in some European countries (including Germany) such registers are specifically banned. The proposed UK ID card/NIR database scheme is closest to those of some Middle Eastern countries (dictatorships) and of China, although the latter has largely given up on biometrics now (because they aren't reliable enough).

For the small minority of British people who don't have a passport or a driving license then the CitizenCard is a useful alternative to the proposed national ID card. This is a truly voluntary scheme which is accredited by the Home Office. Applying for one is like obtaining a passport, (you have to get a referee who is a member of a respected profession - MP, doctor etc, to vouch for your identity and age). Here's some more info from their FAQ:

A. Many retailers, airlines (domestic flights) and other organisations recognise CitizenCard as valid photo-ID or proof-of-age. As a scheme audited by the Trading Standards Institute CitizenCard was the first scheme to carry PASS (Proof of Age Standards Scheme) accreditation, supported by the Home Office.

A. Online CitizenCard applications cost £9 in the UK (£5 for under-18s), €15 in the rest of the EC and US$15 in the rest of the world. The urgent application surcharge is £15 (UK) and €15/US$15 (rest of world). If your card is lost or stolen a replacement card will cost £10 or €15 or US$15. The same costs apply if you post us the form downloadable from this site instead of applying online.

Of course, disreputable pubs and off-licenses often don't ask suspected underage drinkers for any ID. The CitizenCard scheme has started a campaign to force businesses who are selling alcohol and tobacco etc, to only serve young adults who have ID or a proof of age card:

CitizenCard's No ID No Sale campaign is about raising awareness of the minimum legal age for buying age-restricted products: 16 for tobacco and lottery tickets, 18 for alcohol, solvents and fireworks. It's also about helping retailers refuse underage sales by showing them how to work out someone's age, spotting fake ID and helping them to record attempted purchases.

No ID No Sale will create a culture of expectation at the point-of-sale, that proof of age should either be offered or produced on demand and that this should be the norm. ITV1's Emmerdale shopkeeper Viv Hope, played by actress Deena Payne, launched the campaign on 23rd January 2004.

An ID card does not tell you its holder’s intentions, it can only confirm their identity or their alias, so people without criminal/terrorist records who are plotting terrorist attacks can't be singled out with them. Hazel Blears said false identities are used in a third of terrorist cases and claimed ID cards would aid the battle against terrorism, but she did not acknowledge that UK ID cards would not make any difference because the majority of those false identities are established with foreign issued passports and ID cards.

Al Qaeda used British citizens, (who would have been issued with the proposed ID cards), to perpetrate the terrorist attacks against London. They had the common sense to use "clean skins" (people who didn’t already have terrorist records) and thus would have been unlikely to arouse suspicion if their ID cards were checked (assuming that the scheme had been in place), so ID cards would not have helped. Terrorists would also find it easy to come to Britain posing as tourists, (possibly using foreign passports under aliases), because most tourists from outside the EU come in on short-term visas which do not require them to submit to serious background checks. (Tourists from other EU countries don't even need visas).

There is a fall back position in case not enough 'Proper Labour' MPs stand up and be counted.

This is one of the only situations I would agree with the Lib Dems, but here it is: the Lib Dems have said they are going to oppose the ID cards bill in the House of Lords (even though it was in the Labour party manifesto). I hope the Tory peers have the courage to also vote against the bill, and that should be enough, along with Crossbenchers, to kill the bill for at least a year. Defeating the bill in the House of Lords would probably finish it off forever, as it would give Labour an excuse to bury the issue with only short-term damage.

I would prefer it was defeated in the Commons of course, because that would weaken Blair quite a lot.

Defeating the bill in the House of Lords would probably finish it off forever, as it would give Labour an excuse to bury the issue with only short-term damage.

I hope you are right, but its possible that Blair could use the Parliament Act next year to force the Bill through the House of Lords. Note this quote:

Prime Minister Tony Blair today refused to rule out using the Parliament Act to force through the Government's controversial plans for ID cards.

The admission came during Prime Minister's question time in response to a question from Charles Kennedy.

The Liberal Democrat leader asked Mr Blair whether he would invoke the Parliament Act, last used to force through the Hunting Bill, if the House of Lords rejected the Government's ID cards legislation.

"Lets wait and see," Mr Blair replied, adding that ID cards were a manifesto commitment and "we are the democratically elected government"... From this article

I would not bet against Blair using the Parliament Act even though it is only meant to be invoked as a last ditch measure for issues of consitutional importance. The Parliament Act had only been invoked by governments on about three occasions in the past 100 years before Blair became PM. However, Blair has recently used it for the Hunting Bill and now he is threatening to use it again.

More criticism of the ID cards Bill:

The case against ID cards

Specific analysis of the ID cards/NIR Bill

Information Commissioner's warning

Also note this article:

Fake gaijin [foreign resident] cards that are sophisticated enough to fool police are already on the market, just four months after the real certificates of alien registration were redesigned to outfox forgers, the Justice Ministry announced...

...It took three months for the genuine [security] seals to be produced; the forgeries, just four months. A Justice Ministry official could not conceal his surprise, saying, "We thought forgeries would appear at some stage, but not this quickly."

"The forgeries ended up being produced in about the same time frame as the genuine cards," the ministry official added... From this article

Organised crime syndicates are bound to produce forgeries of the UK ID card because the government plans for it to eventually be used to access many state services.

By the way, its very cynical of Blair to use the fact that the ID card scheme was promised in the Labour party election manifesto as a reason to brush aside all opposition to it, because that document was 102 pages long and contained dozens of policies, many of which they won't enact. Labour has failed to pass plenty of other policies, like electoral reform, that had been promised in previous election manifestos. Also no Labour MP that I have heard speak on this subject has said that any potential Labour voter they spoke to while they were canvassing for support before the election had expressed a desire to have national ID cards introduced.

Finally, when Blair says: "we are the democratically elected government", he fails to point out that in England more people voted for the Conservative party than voted for Labour and they only won because our skewed constituency boundaries gave him a majority among English MPs. In fact, across the whole UK, Labour was "democratically elected" on just 21.6% of the eligible vote! Hardly a ringing endorsement of their policies, or a mandate for major constitutional change.

At last Parliament has officially published the date of the 3rd Reading and vote on the national ID cards Bill, it is going to be on Tuesday the 18th.

Quote:

Tuesday 18 October

...The House will sit at 2.30pm

Oral Questions – Scotland; Constitutional Affairs; Leader of the House and House of Commons Commission

Ten Minute Rule Bill – Age of Sale of Tobacco – Jeff Ennis

Legislation – Identity Cards Bill – Remaining Stages

Adjournment – Ministry of Defence procurement – Mr Lindsay Hoyle

From: http://www.parliament.uk/what_s_on/hoc_forthcomingbusiness.cfm

I was relying on the fact that the Home Office Minister in charge of the policy, Andy Burnham, had unofficially suggested that it was likely to be on either the 17th or the 18th of October to an activist in a private conversation at the Labour party conference last month. Obviously, that was not a concrete date as he is not in control of Commons business, but since the agenda for the period upto and including the 17th was published last week then the 18th was the earliest possible date on which it could occur.

It might make sense if it were to be your passport as well like in other European countries but it is inclusive of the wrong things ie. healthcare.

And the fact they want us to pay for it, they really do not understand their electorate. If they used tax money to fund it all then no one would bat an eyelid but if they ask us to go directly into our pocket then people will get pissed off.

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