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U-Turn On UK ID Cards
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Nov 10, 2008 02:41 PM
from the from-bad-to-worse dept.
from the from-bad-to-worse dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The UK appears to be watering down its national ID card system, with the revelation by the government that it will now only check the cards against a central biometric database in a minority of cases. Critics are saying it not only renders the whole scheme pointless, but will pose a security risk by making it far easier to use copied or cloned cards. 'But an Identity and Passport Service spokesman denied the system would be vulnerable to fraud: 'The majority of instances where people use their identity cards will be day-to-day situations where the cards offer a convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol,' he said.'"
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Submission: U-turn on UK ID cards by Anonymous Coward
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What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard not to be a cynic when you live in a country that pulls this off so many times. What we have here is a not a U-turn but a well-used method of having your cake and eating it.
Don't take this as the truth but unfortunately I'm beyond the point of accepting "incompetence" instead of "malice" when it comes to my (ha, "my"...) government.
Parent
Not a U-Turn, just boil frog more carefully now... (Score:5, Insightful)
But its wrong for the opponents of this system to say this is a U-Turn. "U-Turn" is political talk for implying a back down. This isn't a back down, the control freaks still want this system, no matter how many times they are told it will not work.
Parent
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny/tragic thing about that is that we already have a scheme for that :
http://www.citizencard.com/ [citizencard.com]
It's government approved but run by non-profit. This statement is just yet more bullshit and hot air.
Parent
Re:What a waste (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed - and it's worth noting that passports were far cheaper before the Government started upping the price in order to combine the passport with the national ID card scheme.
So all these people whining they support ID cards because they want a convenient means of ID - they could have just got a passport, which would've been cheaper, and less hassle (no having to be fingerprinted, and pay for the privilege, for example). But if they want to be stupid and support a worse system, that's up to them; the most annoying thing is that they use this argument to support a compulsory ID card scheme, and thus their idiocy forces this unnecessary system onto the rest of us too, who already have perfectly good ID.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In other words in order to prove your age a document specifically intended to prove your age isn't acceptable. However one granting you permission to drive on public roads or one to allow you to travel to foreign lands is...
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to quote an old post [slashdot.org] from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" [slashdot.org] article:
Without transparency or oversight, who the public really doesn't know what their government plans to do with those ID cards.
Parent
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. The correct response to this is "if the law is never going to be used like that, and we agree that it would be wrong to do so, why is the law not framed to make it illegal?"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
'course, it's more common now for the government to say that the law would only be used to its extreme 'in extreme circumstances', which makes it OK.
The logical conclusion of this argument is that any law covering government or police should be abolished, and only in extreme circumstances will they act in an illiberal manner.
Re: (Score:2)
because if there's one thing England needs it's more louts drinking... "weeeheeeey!!"
Re:What a waste (Score:4, Insightful)
it's budgeted to cost around 5-7 billion, with the LSE and others saying that's grossly underestimated.
Gordo could fund his proposed tax cuts if he scrapped some of the his horrendous police-statist measures. But no, he'll get us ever more into debt whilst scrambling for some way to boost his political reputation.
C*nt.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I've got nothing against a biometric card which shows my name/date of birth when inserted into a machine.
But does the machine need to be networked and have a massive database behind it?
The problem is the feature creep, not the card.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Just how many reasons for this card have we gone through now? I've lost count.
It was to win the war against terrorism. No, wait, it was to prevent illegal immigrants flooding the country. Errrm, noo, it'll stop Social Security spongers. Your key to a seamlessly integrated health care system? No? A fun techno gadget that everyone will want? Oh, come on, still not going for it?! Ok, how about a way for 18 year olds to buy alcohol?
I mean, how clear an indication do we need that this is a project that's not so much gone of the rails, but never had rails in the first place and never knew where the hell it was supposed to be going and what it was supposed to do once it got there? Either those driving it forward are fumbling cluelessly in the dark towards the inevitable large pay-off bonuses, or someone somewhere, has a very definite plan for this ridiculous waste of money that they really don't want to tell us about.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ha, it said this system cost 150 million pounds to the gov't, and now their purpose is for a convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol
I think everybody knows that the purpose of this scheme is simply to create a central database of all citizens and where they live, which they don't have now. This will not only help in fighting benefit fraud, but also make it almost impossible to hide from creditors. The question of "national security" doesn't enter into it at all, at least not until they want to sell it to the public; which is why that explanation has always sounded hollow.
Are copied cards really that much of a concern? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I'd be more worried about some junior level government worker losing my data along with that of everyone else in the country when he goes digging through his pocket for enough change to buy lunch at the pub down the street.
Re: (Score:2)
Man, I love it when a plan comes together :D
I've got a No2ID car sticker in my rear window - I drive a g6 Celica so it's out of sight in my rear-view mirror and I always forget it's there, which makes for much hilarity when people start flashing their lights at me after I've overtaken. Once a carload of wasted student-types pulled alongside me as I cruised down the M40 in the low 90s, gurning and grinning and giving me thumbs-up signs... it took me quite a while to work out it was the sticker.
Re:Are copied cards really that much of a concern? (Score:4, Informative)
i totally suck, too, which is why I have to reply to my own post -- I failed to link to No2ID.org [no2id.org] and recommend interested UK types to tip them a tenner if they can afford it. Oh well, having failed to do so the first time, I may as well get ORG [openrightsgroup.org] in the frame too.
Well, with this and Nov 4th and some hope for proper action on climate change and all... I'm starting to wonder about paying my subs to the Total Fucking Cynic Club this year. Perhaps if Obama doesn't get shot or co-opted I'll start to believe it...
Parent
It's not Stupid, it's Advanced! (Score:5, Funny)
Obvious tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
They feel the resistance so now they roll the IDs out as an inferior version of the original proposal. As soon as they push them through, they will turn around and make them mandatory in every possible situation, blaming it on worsening terror and crime situation.
Re: (Score:2)
I fully intend to refuse. I may even get my hands on some copies of the home secretary's fingerprints that the guys at no2id [order-order.com] are cooking up and use them instead. I'm a free citizen and I'm not going to be coerced into this bullshit.
Want freedom? Vote Liberal.
Re: (Score:2)
Good.
Did you sign up to the refuse petition when this was first announced?
It was a pledge to refuse and to put 10 pounds into the pot to buy lawyer time for the first case that goes through the courts. They got several tens of thousands of signatories IIRC.
Re: (Score:2)
I never heard about it. Link?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.no2id.net/pledge/ [no2id.net]
Actually, it looks like I'm rather behind the times and they called in the pledge sometime last year (when the rhetoric was really gearing up) in order to have the fund ready:
http://www.no2id.net/pledge/defenceFund.php [no2id.net]
Guess I ought to send my tenner in...
No2ID seem to be on the level, they've recently acquired Jacqui Smith's prints and are coming up with some sort of anti-ID publicity stunt. The legal defence fund is a damn good idea though.
ID, Democracy X509 (Score:5, Interesting)
UID, which given the history of UK government seems most likely.
While a Brit, thank God I live in Switzerland, where the populace is educated, public data secure and FOSS is ever more popular while the Bundesrat can't pass laws the people don't like.
What the USA and UK need is Universal Democracy, and the Internet would allow large populations to get there.
What the democracies also need to is to issue X509 certificates, free, to everyone at birth
keeping the key card till children come of age.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, Switzerland, that bastion of sanity -- where one must consider the "dignity" of plants.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/065njdoe.asp [weeklystandard.com]
http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2008/04/the-dignity-of.html [practicalethicsnews.com]
(and numerous other references, these were just the first two I came to)
Re: (Score:2)
A funny and true story proving plant sentience:
About the third time I mow the lawn each summer, ten minutes later there are dandelion heads raised high above the grass which I just got done cutting. After some bafflement, I figured it out -- after a few mowings teach them the folly of remaining upright, as soon as the mower noise starts, all the dandelions lay down flat, thus avoid being decapitated. As soon as the noise stops, they stand back up.
I've never seen any other plant do this. Dandelions re clearl
As a Brit... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm jealous of you folks in the US, at least you've got a new government in 2 months time. We're stuck with the same leadership over here for likely another 18 months or so. Given the current recession and the billions plowed into bailing out the UK banking system, I'm pissed off that such big budget projects such as this - with dubious benefits - are still on the agenda.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm jealous of you folks in the US, at least you've got a new government in 2 months time. We're stuck with the same leadership over here for likely another 18 months or so. Given the current recession and the billions plowed into bailing out the UK banking system, I'm pissed off that such big budget projects such as this -
which are an egregious, malicious misuse of public funds -
are still on the agenda.
There, I fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:2)
We can cut you a great deal on a low mileage used executive.
If W can pretend to be from Texas, I'm sure he can fit in over there.
Come on, you know you want another King George.
We'll even through in Uncle Dick for free (shotgun not included).
Re: (Score:2)
We're stuck with the same leadership over here for likely another 18 months or so.
Not just that, the just elected the Democrats, traditionally the more liberty friendly of their two parties. We currently have the Labour party in power, the only people we can elect who stand any chance of winning are our Conservative party who traditionally are the more right wing of our two parties.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't equate right wing with freedom unfriendly.
Odd as it may sound to those that make that mistake, 10 years ago, pre-Labour, we had a lot more freedom here in the UK than we do now. A LOT more.
Re: (Score:2)
"Spend your money like you want but we'll lynch ya if you don't share our values"
I think you missed the part where they spend way more than the democrats and ratchet up debt like nothing else on the planet...
(not american, can't vote in us elections, just wanted to point out what I see as a bit of a fallacy, that old "republicans are fiscally conservative" thing)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes folks, things can get much worse... and it's looking like there's a good chance they will regardless of who promises what. We are nowhere close to the worst economic situation the nation has seen in the last century but w
Don't worry guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that the idiots will find a way to leave a copy of atleast 1m people's biometric and other details on train or on a usb stick left lying around in a public place....
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is there some aspect of this that isn't completely insane that I've missed out on?
3) Profit!
Not vulnerable to... HAHAHAHA! (Score:5, Informative)
If they're seriously proposing this as being used primarily for things like proof of age when buying alcohol with no means to confirm the validity of the card, how exactly are they going to protect against things like this [bbc.co.uk]?
Frog (Score:2)
Douglas Adams on identity cards (Score:3, Interesting)
There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant (or nearly instant -- a good six or seven seconds in tedious reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions about members of their family they didn't even remember they had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours. And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the weekend. If you were trying to raise a loan for a jetcar, sign a missile treaty or pay an entire restaurant bill things could get really trying.
Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. This encoded every single piece of information about you, your body and your life into one all-purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around in your wallet, and therefore represented technology's greatest triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense.
But, I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards'" (Score:4, Insightful)
But I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards' [bbc.co.uk]":
The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said: "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long."
Someone should tell Jacqui that the people who stand to make lots of money from producing ID cards for the government wanting it to be done sooner don't count as a representative sample of the British public.
Re:But, I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:But, I thought "People 'can't wait for ID cards (Score:4, Funny)
I bet she weighs the same as a duck.
Parent
Different, minimal cards for different purposes? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that much of the problems with any form of national ID card could be mitigated if you had different cards for different purposes. If I need to be able to assert that I'm old enough to buy something, all I need is a difficult-to-forge card that asserts that fact, and ties that fact to me (with my photograph perhaps). Such a card has no need for my name, my address, or any other facts about my identity. If you wanted to get fancy, you could digitize all of this information and have nothing appearing on the card at all.
Similarly, a license to drive should be based on my ability to drive. My identity doesn't matter, at least beyond what's needed to prove that I'm the rightful holder of the license. I might need to present some identification to the government when I obtain the license, but that doesn't need to remain with it. So you could have a separate card (or set of digital credentials) for that.
It's the concentration of all of this into one card that makes that one card so valuable to thieves and a police state. But for most of the uses of the various identity/license/payment/shopper cards, they need to know very little about me. Usually just an account number of some kind, a way to ensure authenticity (digital signature, watermark) and a way for people I present the card to to verify that I'm the rightful holder, if that even matters (like a photograph, or a hash of any kind of biometric data). Why must everything be tied to a government identity?
Thin edge of the wedge (Score:2)
Remember, if don't like this scheme... (Score:2)
.... even in its watered down state, donate a little cash to the splendid NO2ID campaign: - I gave them £20 earlier this week and every little helps.
Why is this a watering down? (Score:2)
Did anyone really expect that the back end database would be checked for all use, no matter how trivial? No, of course not, so saying this is simply a statement of fact, and, if anything, an attempt to convince people that they are backing down, when it is nothing of the sort.
The most worrying aspect of the id system is the creation of the biometric database, not the card itself. The card itself may be the most visible, but it's almost a red herring, so you will see more ploys like this to show the governm
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"check the cards against a central biometric database in a minority of cases."
More like "check the cards against a central biometric database if your a minority"
Re: (Score:2)
One word: chavs.
Re: (Score:2)
UK != racist America I know it's a difficult concept to grasp.
Sadly, in some sectors, not that far off. And before anybody wonders, I live here.