UK government plans to sell ID card data

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Date: June 26, 2005 12:17:40 PM EDT
To: Blaster <rforno () infowarrior org>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: UK government plans to sell ID card data



Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash
By Francis Elliott, Andy McSmith and Sophie Goodchild
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=649780

26 June 2005

Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be  
sold to
private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling  
costs
for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this
week.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened  
talks
with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an  
initial
cost of £750 each.

Amid warnings today that the cost of a card for each adult in Britain is
likely to double to £200, union leaders predicted that millions of
public-sector workers could refuse to co-operate with the scheme,  
prompting
claims that the ID scheme will become Labour's equivalent of the poll  
tax.

Unison is the latest and biggest trade union to come out against the
controversial government plans. The Transport and General Workers'  
Union and
the GMB have already urged backbenchers to vote against the Identity  
Cards
Bill next week. Unison said that ID cards would be ineffective against
terrorism and that its 1.3 million members working in healthcare may  
have
the right to refuse to co-operate in enforcing their use.

Bob Marshall-Andrews, one of the Labour MPs opposing the Bill, has  
accused
the Government of doing a "back of an envelope" calculation to reach its
figure.

The opening of commercial talks contradicts a promise made when the Home
Office launched a public consultation on ID cards in April last year,  
when
officials pledged that "unlike electoral registers, the National  
Identity
Register will not be open for any general access or inspection."

Public support for the scheme has been falling away in recent months  
amid
gathering fears over costs. A report by the London School of  
Economics is to
show that the card's cost to individuals will be around £200.

In addition, firms could be charged up to £750 for technology that would
allow them instantly to verify customers' identity through iris  
scanning or
finger-printing, according to official documents.

Whitehall insiders, who have already been passed a copy of the LSE  
report,
say it also includes a warning by a former Nato security chief that the
cards could be a "security disaster", are "too risky" to introduce, and
could lead to a national meltdown in the event of a security breach  
of the
central database.

After 2008, a machine similar to credit card readers will be a common  
sight
on the counters of banks and large retail stores. These new machines  
will
potentially be able to read a customer's biometric details, such as
fingerprints and facial measurements, to check that they tally with
information on the customer's ID card.

The Identity Cards Bill has a rough passage ahead, with Conservatives,
Liberal Democrats and some Labour rebels joining forces against it.  
Although
government whips are confident of winning Tuesday's vote, rebels are
predicting that they can kill the measure off later in the process, in a
slow war of attrition, on the grounds of the costs involved and the  
risks of
computer failure.




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