UK Can't Read Its Own ID Cards

An anonymous reader writes "Despite the introduction of ID cards last November, it has emerged that Britain has no readers that are able to read the cards' microchips, which contain the person's fingerprints and other biometric information. With cops and border guards unable to use the cards to check a person's identity, critics are calling the £4.7bn scheme 'farcical' and a 'waste of time.'"

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Where exactly are these cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cards dont exist yet and wont until 2011 or 2012.

Still, dont let truth get in the way of a good rant.

Kids these days

[jsse]

Yesterday you rant about giving up too much piracy, today you rant about them not being readable? I pity those cluelessnesses' failure in appreciating the beauty of unbreakable security with Write-Only-Memory(WOM) [national.com] technology from Sygnetics in 1972.

Enough about it. Get off my lawn.

Re:Where exactly are these cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its partly true, part headline grabbing. Some foreigners have been issued with cards, more as a trial than anything else, and readers outside this trial havn't been bought yet.

Not much of a story really.

Re:Where exactly are these cards?

[Chrisq]

RTFA: "The first UK ID cards have already been issued - but no UK police officers or border guards have any way of reading the data stored on them.". They are already issuing them to asylum seekers, people freed from Gitmo, etc.

Maybe thats the plan - just say "sorry, just wait over there until we can read your card. You should be allowed into the UK sometime soon".

Re:"in response to an FoI request"?!?

[Xest]

About 9 years ago.

Re:Offtopic?

[Hognoxious]

It is offtopic. "Dad's Army" was at best tangentially related to the government.

What you want is "Yes, Minister". Down the corridor, third on the left.

Re:"in response to an FoI request"?!?

[Davidis]

Freedom of Information Act 2000 Only exceptions to this in government is the Official secrets act. which means the information comes out in 50 years. this is better than the US where 90% of it never comes out at all. The Act [direct.gov.uk]

Re:Where exactly are these cards?

[Archtech]

Actually, the first ID cards were issued last year (2008).

Re:You don't say.

[Bazman]

I was going to explain this meme to people but someone seems to have accidentally the whole of encyclopediadramatica.org

Google cache tiem:

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:w7oVzuVvJRYJ:encyclopediadramatica.com/I_accidentally_X+accidentally+encyclopediadramatica&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a [74.125.77.132]

Re:"in response to an FoI request"?!?

[XSpud]

Exceptions include information other that that covered by the Official Secrets Act.

There are also a whole lot of exemptions, such as data that is commercially sensitive, related to criminal investigations or where disclosure would contravene the Data Protection Act etc. When a request is refused the reason for the exemption must be given to the requester.

In practise the Act has meant a lot of information is now public where it wouldn't have been before.

Re:Where exactly are these cards?

[Sockatume]

Not just asylum seekers, anyone here on a settlement visa. My wife's got to have a card now, even though she's here fully legitimately and I'm a full-fledged British citizen andsubject of HRH Queen Elizabeth the Second. And students are next in line, which as a PhD researcher means yours truly. If you refuse? Well, you lose your visa or your student status as appropriate. They're targetting those that are least able to object in order to build up an "installed base".

Re:Look at Belgium

[blaine the monorail]

Interestingly, the first year the new ID cards were issued in Belgium, there was also a shortage of readers in police departments. If you had a new ID card, you were required to keep a printout of the data with you in case the police requested your ID :-) (it wasn't that bad though; the only information on the chip that isn't also on the front of the card, is your address)
The police have enough readers now, so it's not necessary anymore.

HRH Queen Elizabeth the Second?!

[pjt33]

Her Royal Highness? Did Her Majesty abdicate?

Re:Look at Belgium

[berend botje]

I'm Dutch and we also put copious amounts of mayo on our fries. And even though "we" are in friendly rivalry with those wacky Belgians (well, the Flemish anyway) I will readily admit that the Belgians have the upper hand on us with regards to fries. And mayo, and certainly beer. Oh, and waffles. And chocolate.

Although I can't imagine how drunk they must have been to invent 'tartarsauce' for on their fries... :-)

Re:Where exactly are these cards?

[Sockatume]

For a troll with a supposed interest in history [slashdot.org] you don't seem to get that "limey" is an insult you'd use against an Englishman, and that England is a subset of Britain, not the whole. So you manage to fail basic trolling, basic geography, basic social history, and by implication would fail basic politics. That's an astounding failure rate for someone who takes so much time out of his day for lofty proclaimations and trolling on Slashdot. You'd think that you'd pick some of the basics up by osmosis if nothing else.