Robin Wilton's esoterica

As part of a general intention to improve the reliability of UK state-issued credentials, the Home Office Identity and Passport Service (IPS) is increasing the rigour of the passport issuing process by insisting on face-to-face interviews for first-time applicants.

There have been various reactions, including comments that

• - citizens will have to devote too much time to travelling to and from the interview;
  
• - interviews 'may deter "chancers", but that "hardcore" passport fraudsters will not be put off';
• - some fake passports are validly issued but then modified.

I think all I would say is this: any credential, whether it's a userID and password, a chip and PIN, a driving licence or a passport, has a lifecycle. As the credential-holder, obviously the part of this lifecycle which you see most is the authentication step, where you present the credential and someone/somthing else verifies it. But other parts of the lifecycle are every bit as important - for instance, the credential-issing process and the expiry/revocation process.

That lifecycle can be undermined in many ways and at many points. For example:

• - if you can convince the credential-issuer that you are someone who you are not, then you stand to get a perfectly valid credential which happens to identify you as someone else.
• - if the credentials themselves are too easy to modify or forge without detection, then both the registration and the authentication steps are fatally undermined.
• - if the authentication step can be subverted, then invalid credentials can be made to appear to give a valid result.

So it would be foolish to claim that a more rigorous enrolment process alone can fix the problem of dodgy passports, but it should also be clear that if the enrolment process is fatally weak, then all the subsequent phases of the credential lifecycle are undermined.

One final point: another reaction to the interview plan was a comment that "We have to go through a ridiculous amount of red-tape and nonsense to get out of this country". I think that is missing the point.

For instance, the Schengen countries* may not require people to show credentials when leaving the country, but on the other hand they all (as far as I can see) have a compulsory national ID card... which citizens would have to have whether or not they ever plan to leave their country.

Second, the fact that you need a passport when leaving the UK is not (currently) so that you can show it on exit - although I can remember when that was required: it's so you can show it when you enter another country. That's not UK red tape...

Third, the fact that law-abiding UK citizens have to go through a degree of red tape is in part simply a side-effect of making life difficult for non law-abiding individuals. That's significant because of the importance of being clear about the objectives of this kind of scheme. If your aim is to keep dishonest people honest, you may end up with a very different implementation from one where your aim is to keep honest people honest. That's a principle which the architects of the National Identity Scheme would do very well to keep in mind. 

*The full Schengen countries are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and (from the EU) plus Iceland and Norway (which are not EU members). If any of those does not have a compulsory National ID card, please let me know.