Compulsory ID cards for UK citizens within five years

News SG

http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39156423,00.htm

Compulsory ID cards for UK citizens within five years
Critics warn UK is "sleepwalking towards a surveillance state"

By Andy McCue
Published: Tuesday 14 February 2006

UK citizens will be forced to register for biometric ID cards when applying for a new passport within two years after MPs voted on Monday night to make the controversial scheme compulsory and to not put the costs under independent scrutiny.

In the end Prime Minister Tony Blair's enforced absence from the ID cards vote due to a faulty plane in South Africa didn't matter as the government comfortably defeated a threatened backbench Labour rebellion, albeit with a reduced majority.

A late round of lobbying by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in Blair's absence ensured the government won the crucial votes in the House of Commons and overturned amendments made to the ID cards bill last month by peers in the House of Lords.

A halved majority of 31 saw MPs narrowly vote to reject a wrecking amendment that would have made it completely voluntary for citizens to register for an ID card when applying for a passport.

MPs also voted, by a majority of 51, in favour of making it compulsory for citizens to register their personal and biometric details on the National Identity Register when applying for or renewing "designated" documents such as a passport despite warnings from Conservative shadow home secretary David Davies that the UK is "sleepwalking towards a surveillance state".

MPs accepted without a vote a government amendment that requires a separate Act of Parliament to make ID cards officially compulsory. Home Secretary Charles Clarke has indicated the government would move to do this by 2011.

A rebellion over an amendment that would have forced the government to make the full cost calculations of the ID card scheme public before awarding any contracts to IT suppliers was also staved off after Clarke agreed to report to parliament every six months on the costs. That was carried by a majority of 53 votes.

The ID cards bill now returns to the House of Lords where peers will vote on whether to approve the legislation or return it to the House of Commons with more amendments for MPs to vote on.

News SG

Brown backs biometrics

But what are his words built on?

By Dan Ilett
Published: Tuesday 14 February 2006

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said the UK will use biometrics on a national scale for cross-border control, for anti-terrorist measures and to combat identity theft.

Brown, who has in the past been silent over such issues, said supermarkets and banks will use biometrics in the future and the government would follow them.

He said: "Today Californian supermarket shoppers are paying with a finger-scan at the checkout and Japanese cash machines are asking for a finger-scan rather than a PIN. The reason is simple: they are more secure against fraud and theft.

"And with passports now requiring biometrics, a necessity people understand, 80 per cent of the adult population will have to register their biometrics to ensure our borders are secure and so they can travel freely across the world."

But as part of his speech at the Royal United Services Institute yesterday, Brown cited inaccurate Home Office figures of £1.7bn as the cost of identity theft to the UK.

He also used Bill Gates' prediction that by 2010 people will use biometrics to access computer services "through a fingerprint touch of a screen anywhere in the world", to build credibility into his speech.

Brown said: "Already one million people have bought and use an IBM laptop which uses fingerprint recognition to control access. And for the future, manufacturers are looking at the same fingerprint recognition technology to make mobile phones and MP3 players worthless if stolen."

Brown said 40 other countries plan to introduce biometric passports by the end of the year. "So the question is not whether we have a national identity register - we have had so for years - but whether we are prepared to consider the most up to date and the most secure means to protect our identity from being stolen."

Brown added that the information commissioner could play a large part in controlling any cases of data abuse.

He said: "An independent commissioner should have oversight of the database and how it is used - testing it against data protection laws, ensuring individuals will have the right to see the information held on them.

"Private companies will not be able to see the national database, nor will government departments in their routine business."