UK ID card: IT expert thumbs down

Believe it or not, when I first heard about ID cards I was marginally in favour of the idea. And I wonder now whether a lot of those in the UK who think it's okay do so because they basically assume that it would be what I assumed it was which is the alternative way of doing it that UKgov is not putting on the statute books.

an alternative, which involved keeping the data on the card. With such a system, only the template is downloaded and identity processing happens on the card using Java and local data rather using centralised storage and processing.

Let's be clear, that would not be such a big problem: when I say I'm opposed to ID-cards, it is mostly the National ID register that I fear: ie the centralised keeping and cross referencing of data. It is this that is the big achilles heel of the scheme.
The IBM expert, Michael Osborne recently outlined the problems:

Osborne... used a dozen criteria, including whether or not such as system is mandatory or time-limited , to show that on all but two, the UK Government's scheme fails - even before controversial civil liberties issues are considered.

And

Centrally-stored biometric data would be attractive to hackers, he said, adding that such data could be made anonymous but that the UK Government's plans do not include such an implementation.

And

"ID cards won't solve the problem because terrorists don't care about identification - and they'll have valid IDs anyway. The issue is the central database. But no-one knows if it'll work, or if it'll be accurate enough - it's more about perceived security than actual security.... since terrorists wanted to be identified, having an ID card was unlikely to be a deterrent."

And that's even before we consider the capacity of the Home Office to actually carry out this unprecedentedly huge IT project with technology that hasn't yet been tried in this way on this scale. As this other article says [and I don't normally go for right wing stuff such as the Torygraph, but they have a point in this case, I think]:

What is quite clear is that the Home Office has completely broken down under the weight of Mr Blair's initiatives. It is an utter shambles - and its employees cannot begin to cope with the work that has already piled up in their in-trays. Yet this is the department that is supposed to be introducing ID cards - one of the most ambitious and expensive schemes ever proposed by a British government in peacetime. It is a massive bureaucratic cock-up just waiting to happen.

Earlier in the same article we are told that it is now legal to carry and use a false British passport, in fact

a court case involving two men who are said to have been caught with forged passports has already had to be adjourned.

and this is because

when the new ID Cards Act gained Royal Assent in March. A clause in the Act, which gives the Government the power to go ahead with its ID cards scheme, repealed an important section of the 25-year-old law banning fake passports - the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981.

No-one at the Home Office noticed. A confidence inspiring fact. Not.
If you hope that the nearly inevitable happens and the whole thing collapses in on itself but want to keep clear of the debris, renew your passport now, before you have to also be entered on NIR as you do so. It is perfectly legal to simply renew even before the date of expiry, you simply have to stump up the 51 quid and fill in the form. You have only a few months to do so though. but that'd keep you out of it until 2016.
Techworld.com - IBM researcher slams UK ID card scheme:
Filed in: ID, ID_cards, UK, costs, IT, biometrics, IBM, terrorism, crime