British National ID Card scheme crippled without card readers

Davey Winder
Sunday, 08 February 2009 15:02

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The whole National ID Card scheme in the UK has been surrounded by controversy since the get go. Now, as the Government announces the roll out schedule, it admits it is missing one vital component.

The UK Government has a proven track record of being really crap when it comes to protecting citizen data. Even Prime Minister Gordon Brown has admitted that data security is a myth.

Now it would seem that the same remark could be applied to the card readers which form such an obviously pivotal role in the whole National ID Card scheme: at least they have mythical status at the moment.

For while the Identity and Passport Service has announced total spending of some UKP £4.7 billion on the biometric ID Card system, it would not appear to have given much thought to budgeting for card readers.

There is now a published schedule for rolling out ID Cards, the first 50,000 have already started being issued to foreign nationals. These are to be followed by airport workers later in the year and eventually everyone during 2011 and into 2012.

There is not, however, any schedule for rolling out the card readers that can actually get the biometric data such as fingerprint scans off the card in order to actually verify the identity of the person holding it.

Apparently there are no card readers in any police station, at any border entry point or anywhere else that the you might imagine an ID Card would need to be scanned.

At the moment then, in order to check identity the police have to scan a new set of fingerprints and check them against the national police fingerprint database.

So what does Identity Minister Meg Hillier have to say about all this? Frankly, you will find her comments hard to swallow. All will be revealed on page 2.

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