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Lost Opportunity

by Richard Keatley

Lost Opportunity

Discgate led to calls for ID Cards to be scrapped. But government has argued that its National Identity Scheme will actually make our information more secure. That’s not only nonsense, writes Richard Keatley, it’s a wasted opportunity to pull back from the brink.

Unless the British public is dead from the neck up (and at times I wonder), the government has just blown its own ID Card scheme out of the water. Forget whether or not you've got something to hide. Forget whether or not it's an invasion of your privacy.

Forget whether or not it's illiberal, or unwarranted, or unbelievably expensive. All you need to know is this: the government will not keep your personal information safe.

They have lost - as in left lying around somewhere for anyone to find - the details of all 7.25 million families in the UK claiming child benefit. That’s every child in the country, and almost half the population. The lost data includes the names and addresses of children in protective adoption, families in witness protection, and single mothers fleeing violent partners. They have plumbed new depths of government incompetence, and put vulnerable women and children at risk into the bargain.

And these are the very same people who are going to take your fingerprints, scan your irises, compile a dossier of your most personal details, and store it all in just three linked databases. This won’t make your information safer; it will do the exact opposite. One security breach like last week’s and your intimate details – including your biometrics – will be in the hands of anyone willing to pay for it.

And pay for it they will. As things stand, any criminal that wants your iris and fingerprint information is going to have to target you specifically, track you down and wait for an opportunity to somehow physically take them off you, all without you noticing. Unless you have the launch codes or an inordinate amount of cash, that’s not worth any identity thief’s time or effort.

But give this information to the government’s proposed National Identity Register, and along with everyone else’s records it will be conveniently digitised and stored in a single system available to tens of thousands of eminently bribable government employees. And suddenly there is a prize that will attract organised crime from all over the world – people with the time, money and knowhow to break or fake any security measure put in their way.

Why is this worth getting excited about? Well, once a thief has used your ‘unfalsifiable’ biometric information to run up thousands of pounds of debt, you have no comeback. How, for example, do you prove it wasn’t you? The person opening the account had your fingerprints, after all. More nightmarish than that, what if someone hacks into the database and changes your biometric data? As far as the system can tell anyone, you aren’t ‘you’ anymore, and you become the identity thief.

These might be worst-case scenarios but they’re not far-fetched. The government has rushed into the National Identity Scheme with little thought about the practical implications, let alone the questions of principle. It could have used the Child Benefits data debacle as an excuse to stop and think about where it was taking us all. Instead, it is ploughing ahead.

Opposition to the scheme will grow, and it will become formidable. Already over 11,000 people have pledged not to register for ID cards even if it means prosecution, and both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats oppose the government’s plans. The scheme is a time bomb under Gordon Brown’s premiership; when it goes off - and in one way or another, it will - the damage could be irreparable. Perhaps he will only then recognise or regret that he missed this opportunity to defuse it.