Identity Scheme: have they got their fingers burnt?

Yesterday’s Observer suggested that the future of the UK’s identity card scheme had been thrown into further confusion, asserting that the Home Office is looking to scrap one of its key components - a national register of fingerprints.

Successive Home Office ministers have said fingerprinting will be a vital weapon in combating identity fraud and terrorism. But a confidential document produced by the Home Office Identity and Passport Service which has been obtained by The Observer states: ‘We should test for each group we enrol whether the cost of fingerprints is justified by the use to which they will be put.’

The Register helpfully unpacks things further.

From David Blunkett onwards Home Office ministers have presented biometrics as the system’s USP, the one single factor that makes it entirely certain (in their view) that you are who you say you are. And, they have claimed, the ability to check those biometrics against a central register would give us the ‘gold standard’ of identity. But if you don’t necessarily collect everybody’s fingerprints, then you don’t have a complete national biometric register.

What would this mean?

Certainly, quite a few of the claimed ‘benefits’ of the ID scheme go out of the window. The police cannot trawl the register in order to match crime scene fingerprints, nor can they use their mobile fingerprint readers to identify you or to prove that you are who you say you are (unless perhaps you are a foreign national, still due to get ID cards this year). They won’t be checking your fingerprints in real-time against the central register when you access services or pass through a national border.

If the ambitions have become more modest, I wonder whether there’s a need to re-visit whatever (ahem) Gateway process / business case was used to sign off the need for the mega NIS procurement? Perhaps, after all, government could achieve its aims in a more measured, cheaper and less big-bang kind of way? It’s hard not to look at the scheme now and see something that is much closer to an updated version of the passport, rather than a gold-plated, world-leading biometric identity scheme necessitating a risky IT procurement and a price tag of several billion taxpayer pounds.

Published by Ruth Kennedy on 28/01/08 at 8:37pm

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Meanwhile the IPS denies all this, says Kablenet

The Identity and Passport Service has denied that fingerprints could be dropped from the National Identity Register

It has dismissed a report in The Observer, based on a leaked document, that claimed plans to asess the costs for different groups of people point to the plan for a fingerprint register being dropped.

“It’s a nonsense to suggest we are going to drop fingerprints,” an IPS spokesperson told GC News. “International travel documents have fingerprints and we are going to move in that direction. It’s very obviously the direction for travel documents around the world.”

He said the IPS would not comment on the contents of the leaked document, but that the IPS was still committed to using fingprints as part of the National Identity Scheme.

“By linking fingerprints to a secure database with strict rules outlining its use, the National Identity Scheme will allow individuals, business, and the state to prove identity more securely, conveniently and efficiently while protecting personal information from abuse,” he said.

“This builds on what we are doing anyway putting finger prints in passports and immigration documents in line with international moves to strengthen document security. The ID card will need to meet international standards for travel documents as it will act as a passport for travel within the EU.”

The spokesperson said more detailed plans would be announced when discussions internally and with suppliers are complete.

He also described as “entirely wrong” reports of plans to prevent young people who do not have an identity card from obtaining a student loan in the future.

However a an authoritative and well-placed source (aka “generally law-abiding taxpayer resident in Hambledon, Surrey") described the attempts by successive Home Secretaries and their minions to justify the ID System as “entirely wrong”.

Reply by on 01/28/08 at 10:26 pm
But the FT has a pretty sound editorial
In the two years since legislation for a UK national identity card scheme gained royal assent, the case against the multi-billion pound programme has become overwhelming. The government’s arguments in favour have crumpled. Now, if leaked official documents are to be believed, its roll-out is to be delayed until 2012. Some investors, concerned that it is not worth the wait, are already walking away. Gordon Brown inherited this deeply flawed plan from his predecessor as prime minister. He should follow his instincts and abandon it altogether.

Not only would ID cards be an unwelcome infringement of personal freedom – they were scrapped in Britain after the second world war because people resented being asked to prove who they were – there is no evidence their introduction would deliver tangible benefits.

Contrary to Mr Brown’s assurances, an identity register would probably not make people feel safer. Terrorists are unlikely to be deterred, because police will be unable to demand to see ID cards. Rather than encourage illegal immigrants to register with the authorities, the plan could have the opposite effect, forcing them to avoid contact with police and hospitals.

Ministers argue that ID cards would reduce identity and benefit fraud. But Revenue & Customs’ loss of two computer discs containing personal details of 25m people, including bank account numbers, has instead exposed the opportunity for abuse on an undreamed of scale.

Added to that is the prospect of spiralling costs. The eventual use of untested biometric technology risks saddling the taxpayer with a public spending albatross. Whitehall has a dismal record on managing the cost of big IT projects and has already revised upwards the cost of the scheme to £5.4bn. Despite claims that the project will be self-financing, past experience suggests the final bill will be a good deal higher.

These concerns should be enough to persuade Mr Brown to ditch the scheme. At the same time, he could distinguish his administration from the illiberalism of Tony Blair. Evidence of government prevarication over when to proceed makes the case against even more compelling.

To delay until after the next election the issue of large volumes of ID cards with passports smacks of political expediency. The prime minister may fear the project will be unpopular. A quiet retreat could follow. That appears to be the calculation of one potential supplier, which cited “political and commercial reasons” for pulling out of the procurement process. If so, Mr Brown should display more courage. This U-turn would be cheered.

Reply by on 01/28/08 at 10:28 pm
"Despite claims that the project will be self-financing”

err, is that ‘self-financing’ like the passport system, which delivers passports which I think are just about the most expensive in the whole world?

Reply by on 01/28/08 at 10:36 pm
"International travel documents have fingerprints”

Mine doesn’t.

“rather than a gold-plated, world-leading biometric identity scheme necessitating a risky IT procurement and a price tag of several billion taxpayer pounds.”

See, this is where we differ. I’m rather in favour of a gold-plated world-leading biometric identity scheme. Unfortunately, nothing’s been gold-plated except the taps in a management consultant’s bidet.

Here’s a cut out and keep three point plan:

1. Focus on the register, forget the card for the time being.

2. Only store the unique ID and the biometrics, do not store personal data (or any other data).

3. Make it illegal for organisations to use or store the ID number: they must use the derived sector-specific number instead.

Reply by Dave Birch on 01/29/08 at 5:02 pm

Next entry: "Various forms of coercion...": Wikileaks meets the ID System

Previous entry: HMRC's two-tier privacy system

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