ID cards to arrive in 2012

[Wizzo]

UK citizens will receive their compulsory national ID card two years after the proposed date, according to documents leaked to the Conservative party.

The National Identity Scheme Delivery Strategy document, which is marked as “restricted”, was prepared for the Treasury in December last year. It sets out a “high level roll out strategy" for the National Identity Scheme.

The document notes that "Borders Phase I", in which ID cards will be distributed to foreign nationals, will go ahead as planned later in 2008. Those employed in "positions of trust", such as workers at airports, could be enrolled in 2009.

However, the "Borders Phase II" plan, under which other UK citizens will be enrolled, will now begin in 2012, two years after the original 2010 deadline.

[Alianora La Canta]

This is really, really stupid. How about the government prove that the ID card scheme won't increase crime, terrorism and fraud before rolling out the scheme? While there's still one laptop per week getting stolen from the Ministry of Defense, I would not be willing to trust the government with that size of personal data database - or with everything needed to commit identity theft in one neatly-wrapped parcel.

[Steven Roy]

The cards are supposed to be near impossible to counterfeit.  Someone did a TV program last year and managed to produce perfect copies. 

There is no benefit to identity cards.  There is only huge risk.

[romephius]

For anyone that has a passport, you already have an Identity card.  For anyone that has a drivers licence, you have an identity card.  Both of these documents are all a crook needs to steal your identity as both are accepted as proof of identity.  Personally I couldn't care less if Australia introduces the National Identity card (and it has been discussed since 2002 here). 

Could someone please explain the problems they have with an Identity card?  I just don't understand the issue.  The government already has your information, so, to me, there doesn't seem anymore danger than usual of your information slipping into nefarious hands, and it's not like they are invading your privacy (as I said, the governemnt already has all the required information). 

Perhaps I am being too trusting?  Enlighten me....

Rom

[Alianora La Canta]

The government in the UK is pretty prone to losing its citizens' information at the best of times.  They are prone to losing discs (they've owned up to losing 2 child benefit discs, 4 DVLA discs (in two separate incidents) and 4 court case discs). It is worth noting that all of these discs, apart from the court case ones, were unencrypted.

They also have seriously insecure databases. Mostly they are insecure because too many people have access to them,

Their laptops are not secured properly and are often stolen. The MoD have lost an average of three laptops a fortnight to theft since 2004. One of the laptops stolen last week had 600,000 soldiers' details on them. The Child Benefits department's record isn't much better, because they had one laptop stolen from them only once a fortnight. Indeed, the Government does not even know how many laptops in legitimate government workers' hands could contain sensitive data.

All this data is very widely distributed and not properly tracked or verified - hence why when the Inland Revenue lost all the 2005 data, they couldn't just get the information from other departments. They had to go back and ask the people who'd already submitted their taxation details to submit them again. Both my parents had to re-send their entire financial details for that year.

The picture from this is that the more data the government is given, and the more ways it is given that data, the more threatened that information is. It has been worked out that somewhere between 25 and 37 million of the 60-odd-million British citizens have already had their data lost by the Government at least once - the last thing we should want to do is to give the Government another opportunity to lose more.

Furthermore, the ID card project involves linking three databases together, two of which are known to have been compromised already. This increases the risk to the data in all three databases.

Oh, and did I mention that nearly every major IT operation the Labour government in the UK has engaged in since 1997 has failed, often with criminal implications?

As to the cards themselves, RFID (the technology storing personal information on the ID cards - though the government won't call it that) is inherently insecure - US passport-level chips were readable at 69 feet back in 2004. At least it took a while for the US version to be cracked remotely - the UK test edition got cracked within 48 hours of issue. With just a £250 standard RFID reader, such as you would find in an average library.

This is about levels of risk. Frankly, it's a pretty major risk even being a UK citizen right now, but the more databases the government has, the more risk carried to any information in the database. Also, the more times data is lost, the greater the chance of someone with serious intent to commit a serious crime (aside from the information theft) against you becomes.

[CrazyHorse]

if they had said in 1997 they wanted to ban weapons and introduce ID cards as well, ppl would have laughed. So first they took our weapons of us, now they wanna do what ? lol
what comes after ID? a curfew becuase of drunken yobs?

www.no2id.net/