29 Mar · Wed 2006
Compromise on ID Cards
The Lords/Commons deadlock has been broken after five successive rejections of the Bill over the issue of compulsion.
The compromise which won the backing of the Lords uncouples registration in the National Identity Register from the issue of an Identity Card. Applicants for new or replacement passports will still have their biometric and other details stored in the NIR, but until 2010 will have the option of not being issued with the corresponding ID card.
At least this simplifies one piece of what is still a complex system, both politically and technically.
One interpretation is that it also reduces the ID Card to its 'real' pragmatic status: an extra physical credential which adds little identifiable value in a national biometric authentication scheme. That is: if a relying party has the citizen in front of them and access to the biometric details stored in the NIR, then the scheme is workable for any relying party who can afford to deploy biometric verification terminals. For any relying party who can't cost-justify that expense, the ID card would probably revert to little more than a photo ID or the mooted chip-and-PIN card.
Mangling the Semantics...
No, it's not a cover of Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives", though now I come to think of it, that might sell.....
As I mentioned yesterday, the government and a majority of peers are still at loggerheads over the issue of 'compulsion' in the proposals for a UK ID Card. The government says that because getting a passport is voluntary, so will getting an ID Card. The peers say that that's not what the government's election manifesto promised.
What the Home Office are relying on, as I see it, is this: the manifesto commitment says that cards will be issued 'initially on a voluntary basis'; it does not mention any conditions. The ID Card proposals, however, make having a passport conditional on agreeing to have an ID Card and an NIR entry.
That may or may not be compulsion: it is certainly coercion, and I think most citizens can tell the difference between something they do voluntarily and something they do because they are coerced.
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