C writes

In principle, it looks very useful for preparing rebuttal and counter-rebuttal briefing…Although a good discipline for getting the logic straight, only natural logicians grasp this style of exposition in such a concentrated form. So in practice it augments but doesn’t dispense with the need for debates.

However I can’t find a way to edit – maybe one has to register with the site?

Indeed, C; either that or just post up your comments here and we’ll sort them out – W

P writes to say

I think that this is a dead end debate…

We may well hear more from P on why he thinks this is so.

On first reflection, some points to add might be:

First out – this whole debate ought to be about the ID System, not the ID Cards. To the extent it is merely about the ID Cards I agree with P above that it’s a bit of a dead end.

Qu: can we treat it as about the ID System, or is that confusing? Did Paul J deliberately make this just about the cards?

Re: “Modify the plans”: scrap the card and just do a database (which is what they seem to be heading towards, not that I’m advocating it)

Scrap the procurement and just do what they’re trying to do within the existing passport contract (which, it seems to me, wd meet our Euro-obligations)

Issue cards with fewer details on them (ie more privacy-friendly, like Caspar’s Anonymity Card) and scrap the database (which strikes me as less harmful, but perhaps pointless for what the control phreaks want to achieve)

I’m persuaded by Ross Anderson’s argument that the term “identity fraud” is misleading and wrong. If money is stolen from my bank account by an impersonator the bank is liable – it fell for it. For some reason the government is supporting (in a woolly way and on dubious evidence) the banks’ wishful thinking that in some way it is “my identity” that has been stolen, and not the bank’s money. So the objection is: identity theft is a woolly and often misleading term, bank and government systems are insecure, so impersonation is easier than it should be. Fraud based on impersonation is a crime. And if experian or some other credit nitwits say I’m a bad credit risk because of some impersonation then that’s a libel. But it’s not possible to “steal” someone’s identity. The thief does not “own” the identity. The individual still has their identity (albeit with an annoying impersonator causing them difficulties, and banks, credit ref agencies and public services being unhelpful and unsympathetic about it).

This applies very much to the £1.7bn figure which I have never en properly justified, and which contains I believe in includes the entire amount of what should simply be called credit card fraud,

For the case against I’d start up:

It’s going to be a very expensive waste of money
It will be intrusive
…and socially divisive
It’s already politically divisive, but that’s fine – we’ve got good mechanisms to cope with that.
It places a huge amount of knowledge/power in the hands of people who have not earned our trust (indeed we have many reasons to be wary of trusting them, ranging from incompetence to occasional malevolence towards some people)
It has all the characteristics of a classic government IT project mega-failure: grandiose centralised idea never tested out or designed “from the outside” at point of use, not incremental, not designed for/with users, overambitious technology, no clear aim, no clear benefits for those on whose co-oprtation it depends, no viable business case.
There is no evidence of user-oriented research into what people actually need in terms of more convenient, reliable and trustworthy ID management and how they need it delivered.
It completely misses the point about how we identity ourselves online for public and private services, which is where all the growth and all the cost savings are to be had.
It’s a massive distraction from sorting out important things like e-crime and border control.
The idea that using biometrics somehow “seals and delivers” gold standard security is flawed
– because of the limitations of biometrics and
– because of the seriousness of the consequences if our biometrics are compromised
People can get passports if they want, and there is no reason whatsoever why they have to be a expensive as the Home Office makes them (is it really true that IPS marks them up 2000%? Can anyone confirm?) There is no clear business case, and the business demand (as opposed to user/customer demand) has not been clearly researched and quantified (ie the “how much will banks pay to avoid KYC obligations” etc). To the best of my knowledge these are the lines on which Crosby was thinking, but I don’t believe the work was ever done, and his even thinking along these dangerous lines is probably what lead to the non-appearance of his review which was due Easter 07 (at this rate the v early Easter 08 will happen before the Crosby “Easter 07” launch).
There is only a demand for this device if government creates the demand, and to do that it will make life more expensive, inconvenient and annoying for the 80% of the population who are generally law-abiding taxpayers.

G. writes to say

I’ve just had a look at the debate and I think it’s a very interesting approach to analysing the flow of an argument keeping track of the points made…my initial reactions are:

– the debate doesn’t reflect the “transformational government” argument about ID management being a cornerstone of more efficient public service delivery. Whether or not you credit government’s intentions here, I do agree with Varney that better ID mgt is core.

– I’d go further and say that the efficiency/productivity gains in government that ID Mgt can promote will actually become critical to the legitimacy of big government programmes

– people will expect efficiency in the way their tax money is spent and will be impatient with obstacles being put in the way of efficiency through a desire to preserve “ID ignorance” –
which I’d regard as an obsession of the paranoid folk who think that government will always be oppressive…my basic view of our polity is that government is here to facilitate not oppress

– we still seem to be “stuck on a small island” with remarkably little understanding of successful national ID schemes in other countries
(Belgium, Hong Kong, Estonia amongst others)

– I didn’t see anything about the ICAO obligations for a biometric passport by the way

– the section on biometrics is not well informed it seems to me and is stuck in “yah-boo” claims about infallibility. Everyone recognises that different biometrics have different performances and a sensible debate needs to go into more detail about the way in which the techniques have improved over the past 5 years

– overall, I think that the material could be helpfully split into two broad categories : the technical and the poitical/ philosophical/ constitutional. The latter is the place to debate
the presuppositions that people have about the role of the state in 21st Century and I suspect you’ll never get the two sides to share views here. The former could perhaps be fruitfully pursued with a basis of fact in such
areas as biometrics, security of IT systems, trade offs between efficiency gains made in the long term and short term costs. There’s also scope for
some visionary stuff in the latter…

He also recommends “The origins of wealth” by Beinhocker

in which he advances the concept of “social technology” and this is exactly what I think the ID card scheme can be.