Good questions and comment from ZD net on the narrow passage of the ID cards bill through its third reading.
"Where are our legal safeguards against official abuse? Where is the detailed costing? Where is the biometric technology that will work for sixty million individuals? What will happen to us when our card goes wrong? All these questions have been repeatedly asked at every level within government and without. None has been answered to any testable degree.
Not for the first time, the proper protection of individual rights now falls to the House of Lords, who are showing every sign of acting on their responsibilities. They have only to look at what has gone before and judge the case on that evidence to come to the right conclusion and throw the whole compromised, incoherent, expensive mess back at the perpetrators. If they don't, we'll all pay for Clarke's mistake for decades to come. "
I have asked these questions of my MP who first wrote back to say that she disagreed and enclosed a leaflet explaining the gov position. The leaflet didn't really deal with the issues but simply asserted that cards would help in a variety of ways without actually spelling out how. I asked Ms Blackman Woods MP to deepen the answer for me [after all, she claimed to have been on the committee that finessess the legislation -I think she's ambitious to get on in government so she's likely to want to toe the party line, I suspect]. She is still to reply; my default assumption therefore is that there is no satisfactory answer to the questions.
Here's what I wrote on September 11
"I am heartened at your reiteration that you see legitimate civil
liberties concerns in the issue. Thank you too for the briefing
papers.
I have read these and find that they are strong on unsupported
assertions. It would be useful to know, for example, just how identity
theft is likely to be prevented or reduced -that being the area that
you identify as being a key factor in your own support.
I am particularly interested since there appears to be a substantial
body of evidence to show that the establishment of centralised
identity can increase the incidence of identity theft. The clearest
example of this relationship exists in the United States, where the
Social Security Number has become an identity hub and a central
reference point to index and link identity. Obtaining a person's SSN
provides a single interface with that person's dealings with a vast
number of private and public bodies. Hence the level of identity theft
in the US is extremely high.
How would this be addressed in the UK?
This applies similarly in Australia, where the introduction of a Tax
File Number has also increased the incidence of identity theft beyond
the levels experienced in the UK.
Again, what makes you so sure that this will not be the case in Britain?
The key factor behind identity theft is the widespread availability of
a central number, linked to a range of personal information. Consumer
groups in the US have recently criticised the Senate Banking Committee
for failing to take action to reverse this trend. The Consumers Union
argues that identity theft will continue to rise until the
relationship between the SSN and the publication of personal details
in the finance sector can be reduced.
I would also be interested to draw on your experience of the committee
on which you sat in this matter, particularly in respect of:
Is it true that I would be held criminally liable for official errors?
Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner has said that ID cards would
be "sleepwalking into a surveillance society", I cannot see how it can
not be a likely outcome that we will have function creep and a
"papers, please" Britain where we are bullied by petty bureaucrats and
officials (and I've been in situations where I have seen it happening
even under present conditions). We become the mirror image of the
tyranny and fear and that we are supposed to be protecting ourselves
against. Government 'assurances are not worth anything unless there
are very real and powerful protections. Any system is only as strong
as its weakest link.
I would also like to know what is proposed to deal with my and others'
nightmare scenarios.
Biometrics are far from "perfect" there has been further news of that
only recently as well as how internationally criminals are already
evading or misappropriating biometrics. So the stakes are really high:
there is the 'inconvenience' (to say the least) of errors and
mismatches — we risk becoming 'unpersons' and with all the data riding
on one ID system, that is quite terrifying. Your detailed explanation
of how these are to be avoided would be most reassuring.
I shouldn't have to mention the history of Government IT failure — CSA
collapse, passport delays, etc but it is hardly a confidence building
history, is it? I very much doubt that you can say anything very
reassuring about that, but I am open to hear it if you can.
These worries are exacerbated by current facts with regard to official
records; the Criminal Records Bureau assigns criminal records falsely
at the rate of 100 per month. I am also concerned about the dangers to
witnesses, people fleeing domestic abuse / stalkers / press harassment
that the proposals appear to represent, and again am seeking some
reassurance; after all I would like to be able to 'go with the flow'
-it's much less effort.
In view, also, of the role of passport confiscation in people
trafficking, it open the imaginitive space to conceive of ID cards
being seized by gangsters as a means of extortion.
As I say, the briefing papers really don't address these concerns and
they are real fears that are shared increasingly by people I know. I
suspect that they may be right who say that ID cards could be Labour's
poll tax."
Don't let up in ID card battle - ZDNet UK Comment
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