<http://www.economist.com/world/europe/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2629019> The Economist Identity cards Will they work? Apr 29th 2004

From The Economist print edition

A national identity card is unlikely to deliver all the things expected of it BRITONS like to think of themselves as plucky individualists, resistant to authoritarianism both foreign and domestic. It's a self-image that is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. This week, David Blunkett, the home secretary, unveiled a draft bill that, if enacted, would create the most ambitious and intrusive national identity card scheme in Europe. For many, the only complaint was that it was long overdue. Over the past decade, opinion polls have consistently shown 75-85% in favour of ID cards. Oddly, people want them even though they don't trust the government with personal information. MORI, a pollster, reports that just 10% are "very confident" their details would be kept secure. A YouGov poll carried out last September found that two-thirds didn't trust civil servants to keep information from one another, while half suspected they would share it with outsiders. Clear majorities also predicted disruption, inconvenience, and a rash of forgeries. This puts unusual pressure on the scheme. Britons want cards to help stop illegal immigrants from working or using public services, and to fight terrorism and reduce fraud. They will compromise on personal privacy because they reckon the system will deliver on these things. Will it? The government's plans are certainly ambitious. Starting from scratch, it wants to build a central register that will hold the name, date of birth, current and former addresses, nationality, passport number and national insurance details of everybody residing in the country longer than three months. The register will also record every occasion on which this information is accessed or changed, and by whom. Keen citizens will be able to add more to the register if they find this insufficient. More ambitious still are plans to link the register to other government databases, and to incorporate biometrics such as fingerprints and iris scans. This is handy for deterring forgers, but it raises the price and complexity of the system well above anything that exists, or is being contemplated, elsewhere in Europe. Building a secure ID-card system is not difficult, says Richard Barrington, head of government affairs at Sun Microsystems. The real problems (and the costs) arise elsewhere: in collecting people's images or iris patterns, "binding" these to paper documents such as driving licences, and managing the system so that false and multiple identities are expunged. "If this is not done in a disciplined way, the register will become like every other government database-that is, full of junk," he says. This becomes exponentially more difficult as the job progresses. On the current, rather relaxed timetable for building the register (a pace forced by cabinet sceptics), it will capture about 80% of the economically active population by 2013. Then comes the challenge. The final 20% includes people on the fringes of society-those who do not work legitimately, drive, vote, or hold British passports; in other words, precisely the sort you would want in a database. Capturing them will be desperately difficult, despite a proposed #2,500 ($4,500) fine for non co-operation. A larger problem is one of function creep. There is likely to be pressure, not just from politicians but also from convenience-minded citizens, to make the card do more. Data will inevitably be added to the register, and (as MPs have themselves hinted) companies will make increasing use of it to check identities. The problem, say security engineers, is that the more uses for a card, the more rapidly it degrades. Even in Belgium, which has had compulsory identity cards since 1919, social-security information is kept on a separate bit of plastic. Those lonely souls who worry about the erosion of civil liberties might take comfort from the fate of the various "smart card" schemes already in existence in Britain. The most ambitious one was launched three years ago, in Southampton. By now, every resident was supposed to have a card, which would allow access to, and payment for, a wide range of council services. Electronic voting was mooted. But it proved difficult to get banks, transport operators, or even council departments on board. Today, the card is used mostly to check out library books and get into leisure centres. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'