Nouslife: Who do you think you are?

20 January 2007

Who do you think you are?

Some more food for thought on ID cards and the NIR.

Everyone has been talking about security. The real driver that I can hear as a secondary issue is efficiency; the trouble is that efficiency and security are not compatible. Secure systems introduce inefficiency as a means of safety, to stop the ease of the bad guy getting through. Efficiency is extremely dangerous, yet that aspect of it does not appear in the discussion at all.

-Professor Ian Angell (Professor of information systems, London School of Economics)

On the comments to the source article is this interesting point:

Fingercopies were proved in the UKPS biometrics trials to be around 81% reliable there was a 19% false non-match rate, people could not use their fingercopies to verify their identity, and what do we find in the US? Every day, 19% of US-VISITors have to be referred to secondary inspection.
The government are offering us a 100% solution. “What identity systems do is lock you down to a single identity”, Liam Byrne, p.6. But they can only deliver an 81% solution.
There will be such a coach and horses driven through that 19% gap that the scheme is not worth pursuing. In a population of 50m ID cardholders, we’re talking about 9.5m of them not being able to verify their identity by appealing to their fingercopies. Nine point five million people! If the government have any respect for evidence and logic, they will abandon the system now and wait until biometric technology can deliver. Until then, they should not waste our money. They have no right to. They are playing an international game of charades.

And another commentist adds:

Best quote is from Mr Byrne: “What identity systems do is lock you down to a single identity”
So true. And when some ID thief steal it and commits fraud with it, you WON’T hear a conversation like this:
“Someone has stolen my ID card.”
“Not to worry sir… place your fingers here and we’ll amputate them and replace them with a fresh set. Much better than a new PIN for a new card eh?”
Are they REALLY this stupid?