Robin Wilton's esoterica

       
 
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25 May · Wed 2005

Oh boy... it's as bad as I thought.


Well, it's hard to get the details I would like to see, just from the press coverage, but there are several phrases in the available reports which I find really unnerving. Here's the initial BBC article: Blair Defends Identity Card Plan Alarming statement #1: The Home Office will not put a figure on the cost of setting up the scheme, saying it is commercially sensitive. Hold on a minute: the "commercially sensitive" argument is used to, for example, avoid disclosing under the Freedom of Information Act details like the cost of a contract awarded under competitive tendering. If this legislation is only now going through parliament, how can commercial vendors have already reached the stage where they have competitive tenders or contracts to run the resulting system? This is a legislative measure which parliamentarians have described as "fundamentally changing the relationship between the citizen and the state". I think it's quite unacceptable to be trotting out a "commercially sensitive" defence against disclosing the cost case. Alarming statement #2: 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. So, in return for being issued with a credential which (as it contains biometrics) should remain consistent as long as the biometrics do, I could have to pay £93 a year in perpetuity, and presumably more as usage of the card becomes pervasive and the cost of operating the over-all system rises accordingly. If the benefits of a national ID card are (as the Government has been saying so far) improved management of benefit fraud, healthcare entitlements, immigration and asylum, then (to put it baldly) what's in it for me? A more cynical person than myself might wonder if that's why Mr Blair and others have suddenly started referring to the ID Card as "a defence against identity theft". Elsewhere I'll come back to why I think that's a bogus characterisation... Alarming statement #3: 'The prime minister's spokesman said ... "People are recognising that identity is just as valuable as possessions," This statement is alarming because it perpetuates the erroneous view that an identity equates to a possession. If identity is a possession, then it is a very special class of one, and needs to be legally treated like other possessions of the same kind (such as real estate). This is something I discussed in more detail in this earlier blog entry: Give me back my identity! I understand that what I have done here is in no way a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the bill and how it has changed, but to my mind, these three examples are enough to seriously undermine my confidence (!) in it.
Posted by racingsnake @ 03:39 PM GMT+00:00 [ Comments [3] ]

UK Identity Card Bill to be relaunched today


Link to BBC News article. The Home Secretary will today bring the Identity Card Bill back to the House of Commons. Apparently this is a version which has been revised to take into account the objections raised concerning the last Bill - although given the short time since the last attempt was withdrawn, and the fact that there was a general election campaign during most of that period, I find it hard to believe that the amendments will be either systemic or fundamental. And yet many of the objections could not be addressed without systemic or fundamental changes, not only to the Bill but to the Government's approach to the concept. Technically, it seems quite clear that the three major components of the ID Card architecture are extremely high-risk:
  1. The system relies on smart card and biometric technology (the latter being still relatively unproven), implemented in the tens of millions of units and kept up to date with a corresponding re-issue process. Think of the investment Banks have had to make in systems and expertise to 'cycle' their smaller card-holder populations every 2-5 years;
  2. It includes a centralised database of citizen data for all card-holders: controversial in principle; difficult to populate, maintain and secure;
  3. The cards and database are of little use without client-side terminals to read and act on the ID data; but that population of readers doesn't exist, least of all in the citizen-facing public sector.
Further, if this were a commercial undertaking, one would be looking for a compelling risk/benefit case for going ahead, and trying to build a 'return on investment' model. As far as I can see, there is nothing to indicate that the benefits of the system can be measured, let alone shown to outweigh the cost. My previous posts on US high-tech security measures indicate there are plenty of ways to get this wrong. Let's see how different the revised Bill is - frankly, I am not optimistic.
Posted by racingsnake @ 08:10 AM GMT+00:00 [ Comments [1] ]
 
 
 
 
 
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Such views as I express in this blog are based on my own opinions, experience and judgements. They do not necessarily represent the policy or views of my employer. It is not my intention to offend readers in any way. If you find anything on this blog offensive, please contact me in the first instance.
Robin Wilton
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