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UK Gov't To Require ID Cards For Some Foreign Residents
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Sep 26, 2008 04:02 AM
from the show-me-a-card-with-your-picture-on-it dept.
from the show-me-a-card-with-your-picture-on-it dept.
craigavonite, writing "It's looking like the UK is in for biometric ID cards within the next few years, despite widespread protest from groups such as 'NO2ID,'" excerpts from an article at the BBC describing a UK identify card to be issued starting later this year: "The biometric card will be issued from November, initially to non-EU students and marriage visa holders. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the cards would allow people to 'easily and securely prove their identity.' Critics say the roll-out to some immigrants is a 'softening up' exercise for the introduction of identity cards for everyone."
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Mobile: Passport Required To Buy Mobile Phones In the UK 388 comments
David Gerard points out a Times Online story that says:
"Everyone [in the UK] who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society. A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say."
We've recently discussed other methods the UK government is using to keep track of people within its borders, such as ID cards for foreigners and comprehensive email surveillance.
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In Soviet Britain ... (Score:2, Funny)
... card identify YOU
the opposing group is "No2ID" (Score:4, Interesting)
As in "say no to ID". Makes a lot more sense doesn't it?
Stop! (Score:2)
Didn't I see an hilarious piece on You Tube [youtube.com] recently about redesigning the Stop Sign? Well these things look the same! What a waste of time and money. I don't even need one...I know who I am.
Where to begin. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It wont stop illegal working.
Anyone who is supposed to have such a card but doesnt can just pretend to be on of the 99.9%
of the population that is not required to have the card.
2. Whats the point of the frigging fingerprint?
Who has got the both tha equipemnt and the right to check it?
3. The variously elected and appointed idiots are in thrall to various "consultants".
To paraphrase Warren Buffets immortal words "Never ask a consultant if you need an overpriced solution".
4. Lastly but most importantly -- there is no "problem".
Various candidates for the problem to which id cards are the solution have been proposed and they have
all been found wanting.
First it was terrorism -- but it was pointed out that all known serious terroist attacks in hte UK
were carried out by terrorists using thier real names, and, that at no point in the leadup to any attack
were they required to identify themselves.
Second it was illegal immigration -- but some 350 million EU citizens have the right to work in the UK
anyway, the much villified asylum seekers are attempting to immigrate legally, plus nobody is going
to check the documents of thier Russian nanny or Morrocan cleaner.
Thirdly it was "identity theft" -- but if the banks give money/credit to unverified strangers it is
thier problem. For this to be effective lenders would need to have; the equipment to read the card,
the right to ask for a fingerprint and access to the central database to verify the validity of the
card.
Currently Jaqi Smith cannot come up with any reasonable justification for this system at all but is
still pressing ahead with a system that will dump billions into the coffers of the "usual suspects"
Accenture, EDS (now HP), CAP and IBM.
Well at least the labour party will be more or less extinct in a years time, but the civil servants who
are pushing this idea will still be there, and the Conservatives look even more prone to SnakeOil salesman that the incumbent idiots.
Re:Where to begin. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually from an European country which has ID cards and i'm living in the UK at the moment.
My ID card is actually quite handy as means of identification since it's basically a plastified card with my photo and thumbprint on it, small enough to fit in my wallet and accepted everywhere in Europe as means of identification.
That said, here is why i am firmly against ID cards in the UK:
The problem aren't the ID cards, the problem is that the local institutions and politicians cannot be trusted with anything that can be (mis-)used for surveilance or constrol of people.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where to begin. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of your points would be valid if the government were proposing a universal id card for all citizens.
But they are not proposing this because they know there is large scale opposition to this ( as in civil disobedience, refusal to pay, court challenges, and, quite possibly riots).
Instead they are trying to sneak in a small scale implemetation for spurious reasons in hte hope that onece the infastructure is in place they can push the boundries until is does become a universal id card.
As for the fingerprint issue. The fingerprint data is stored electronicly on a chip within the card, therefore special equipment (which must have the the RSA key to decrypt the data) is required to check the fingerprint.
Either only heavily restricted government agencies are allowed this equipment or the RSA key becomes public knowledge. Given a public key to test, known plaintext and a large number of samples the time required to crack the private key is much less than expected lifetime of the average card so the technical implementation is deeply flawed. I.E. The UK public is being forced to pay over $100 US for something that is no more secure or reliable than a 90 cent plastic photo id.
Aside from the technical implmentations, the matter of principal for the average Brit is that while they live in a deeply flawed democracy and in theory they have less rights than the citizens of many other countries they have (or imagine they have ) much more personal freedom/privicy than the citizens most other countries.
While this has been deeply eroded over the last century these freedoms are still cherished and the any attempt to interfere with this will be strongly opposed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Singapore is already effectively a police state. That's how.
pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
Sigh (Score:2, Troll)
this is just the first part, sooner or later everone will have one, so your argument is null and void. As well as pretty stupid.
For now you can claim that you don't need a card. This will pass with time. That is the entire plan. Start small, then slowly get everyone to have to ID themselves.
Sometimes you wonder how the goverment can introduce such schemes without people protesting and then you see people like you and you know why. The voter is stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the voter is stupid. That's why whenever there is a bombing I chuckle. Stupid bastard cancers deserve to be blown up.
When have you last heard a report say "first the terrorists released all the slashdot posters"?
ireland (Score:2)
They already have biometric Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) plastic cards with chip and other info on you here in Ireland (Republic of) for non nationals, and it must be on you at all times...
All terrorists required to have one (Score:3, Insightful)
Identity cards introduced for those foreign Johnnies, not you [today.com]. "The card will be compulsory for foreign nationals. All terrorists and illegal immigrants will be required to obtain one and show it to policemen, council officials or dog catchers on request. LOOK! TERRORISTS!"
This is largely from (a) civil servants who think it'd be convenient to their jobs to have everyone filed and numbered (b) private contractors like EDS and Capita who have been promised CASH CASH CASH for consulting on such schemes, and certainly don't have a track record of employing ex-goverment ministers and senior civil servants at vast consulting fees 12 months after they leave the government. Well, maybe a bit of a track record.
The ridiculous thing is that this is a creature of the Labour government, who are vastly unpopular, and will likely be kicked out on their corrupt arses in the 2010 election. This scheme is set only to be fully implemented by 2011/2012. EDS and Crapita will, of course, still be paid in full.
UK passports are already biometric.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the data isn't stored on the RFID in the passport. But there's the headshot ; such an obvious biometric that people forget about it.
What many people noticed on applying for a UK passport recently was the leaflet that came with the form telling you exactly how to pose for your photograph... you were only allowed certain margins, certain backgrounds, you had to face forward, you had to take off your glasses. It was pretty clear to those with a technical bent that the photograph was intended for consumption by a computer, so I'd suggest that anyone with a recent UK passport is already in a large database of facial geometry metrics somewhere in the Home Office (and maybe on your passport chip too). This would mean that you are ripe for rapid recognition from any sufficiently detailed CCTV footage ; and as we know, the UK has more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world. Nice.
Now, people don't habitually carry their passport in the UK, partly because it's a valuable document, partly because you don't need it for everyday usage, and partly because of the form factor - a little red book that doesn't conveniently fit into your pocket without the risk of being bent. A credit card sized ID on the other hand, is VERY easy to slip into your wallet and forget about.
If I were the UK government wanting to promote the routine carrying of an RFID enabled ID, I'd make the UK passport modular - a red book for the visa stamps, with a pocket in the back to carry the wallet-sized photo / RFID card when you're travelling. A lot of people would take to carrying their "passport card" routinely because suddenly, it's convenient.
Many is the time I've turned up at a place and found I needed a photo-ID or my passport and not had one, buying foreign currency, for example. It would probably work on me (after I put the tinfoil weave in my wallet, of course).
Feature creep (Score:4, Interesting)
At present I carry a passport, a driving licence, another chipped card for the tacho in the truck and various other cards for entitlement to drive various machinery.
The lame brained would say it is more convenient to have all the relevant data stored on one card. I disagree.
If I travel to a foreign country, I need a passport and maybe my driving licence (to hire a car). If I don't travel, I don't need the passport - why should I prove my entitlement to travel if I am in my native country ? Why should I open my complete life to inspection every time I "prove" my identity. The passport application process surely proves my right to be here. My driving licence proves my entitlement to drive on public roads in the UK, why should it identify me to the immigration dept. too ?
There will gradually be feature creep in the system leading to even your bank cards migrating onto this one evil card. Fine you say, less to carry around. Except that you will be required to use it more and more to gain access to anything. This means your entire life is recorded - which roads you used and when, what you bought and where, who was nearby when you drove and or bought anything etc etc.
The question you should be asking is not, can the cards be forged ? The question should be - can the system be hacked ?
Is there anybody here that thinks that any networked computer can be hack proof ? In that case, what happens when somebody breaks in and uses YOUR primary key to create a totally ficticious chain of events placing you in the vicinity of a robbery, murder, terrorist act, or even in the same building as other known criminals. As far as the police are concerned, the system doesn't lie and since your card contains your finger prints, it can't be anyone other than you that the records refer to. Not a problem ? Well not a problem until you are late for a train and they think you are about to set off a bomb and decide to shoot first and ask questions later. Quite a bit of incentive for terrorists there I think. Create a false trail for themselves, showing nothing but innocent activity, and a damning trail for some innocent who will be miles away from the action but conveniently will have the police trailing them, not the terrorists.
Bad idea.
Scary (Score:3, Insightful)
It's scary how V for Vendetta is slowly turning from a work of fiction into a documentary.
Frog into pot, Gas on 1. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK government has shown countless times that it's unable to keep its citzens' data secure.
If someone gets hold of my credit card and CCV number and creates a forgery I ring up and get a new one.
If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?
Parent
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if someone does, it's funnier if you say "pull my finger" first.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Use another finger. You've got ten of them.
From there, ten toes.
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:5, Insightful)
No-EU students etc have to have a passport anyway just to be able to come there, so they have an internationally accepted way of identifying themselves.
How will an additional ID card help to do anything?
Parent
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how much of this really works the way he described it, but this seems to be a very good reason to introduce id cards...
The National ID register is going to cost (IIRC) 4.5 billion pounds at the governments estimate. The LSE estimates 19 Billion. The type of fraud you describe actually makes up the smallest proportion of benefit fraud that the UK suffers from, most of it is just done by people lying. If they are trying to stop that form of benefit fraud with these cards, they have chosen the least cost effective way of doing so, and this card gives no other benefits that I can see.
full disclosure: I'm a fully paid up memb
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally think its a better idea to stop giving money to people simply because they're in our country and have a nigerian passport.
Parent
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?
From what I've seen with biometrics previously, I doubt that your fingerprint would be stored in any sort of image-like or exportable form. Normally, a hash is taken based on your fingerprint (think GPG singing) and that hash is stored. It's a one way calculation, you can't then turn that hash back into a fingerprint but you can verifiy another fingerprint to the hash.
Parent
Minutiae Points (Score:3, Informative)
Fingerprints are stored in the form of Minutiae Points rather than scanned imaged.
But that doesn't mean they can't be reconstructed. [ieee.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I suppose you could change which fingertip you used for authentication...
"guard: place your finger in the reader please sir"
"you: ah, I got hacked, so I had to change it."
"guard: fine, put the appropriate finger in the reader please sir"
"you: trouble is, I can't remember which one it was, oh bollocks"
"guard: unusual, but if you'd get them out, and place them in the reader please sir"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not exactly like that. The new biometric cards are safer than the old ones.
In my country we had paper ID cards with fingerprint printed on it. Now we have smard cards and the fingerprint is in a file inside chip, and it's not readable. So, it's actually improving privacy, not making it less.
The card can be used to perform a match-on-card (MOC) operation. You put your finger in a reader and it asks the card if it matches. This way you can validate if someone holding the card is REALLY the card owne
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How exactly is the fingerprint not readable if it, rather than just a hash, is stored on the card?
As for the RSA keys, governments, especially the British, have a very bad track record at keeping data safe. Keys of such importance are a very good target for a social or even technical attack. Knowing the track record, however, they will probably end up on some laptop, usb stick or cd forgotten on a public bus or train, sparing the attacker the effort.
And as to the forging, it may be harder to do it, but once
Re: (Score:2)
Does anything rubbery still fool those readers?
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:4, Funny)
If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?
Good god, you're right! You'd better wear gloves all the time when outside!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?"
Um, anyone who follows you round for a few minutes could probably get hold of your finger prints, without need for an ID card.
That's why police love them so much, it's not like criminals deliberatly leave theirs at crime scenes!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:4, Informative)
No. The term "British subject" is pretty much obsolete in law since 1983. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_subject)
(There are a few small exceptions for some classes of people who used to be British subjects and are entitled to keep that status if they hold no citizenship of any country, but no-one can now become a subject, so once the people who still fall in this category are gone, there will be no more subjects.)
Parent
Re:Big Fricken Whoop De Woo (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't a big thing. It's an ID card that holds a fingerprint record. How is it bad to tie a card to a person?
It's not the card that's the issue. The problem is that as part of the ID card program the UK Government want a centralised database behind this card that holds personal info on each citizen. To be honest, I don't think it's been clearly defined what the data is but it's expected to be DOB, national insurance number etc. The main concern is that the UK Government has a very poor track record in keeping this type of information secure. If this particular database, containing what most people expect it to contain, is compromised then it's ID theft-galore in the UK.
Parent
The secondary concern (Score:2, Informative)
We already have a serious UK fraud problem originating in the Indian subcontinent - Mumbai was for many years the iden
Re:The secondary concern (Score:5, Insightful)
God I hate the "paedophile issue".
Yes paedophiles exist. No, none of these schemes will do much to stop abuse since the vast majority of abuse is by a family member of friend.
And yet idiots who read the Sun et al are willing to accept anything in the name of fighting paedophiles.
It's the biggest hole in the armour of the civil rights movement too. Since any legislation can be pushed through no matter how absurd if you say it's to combat paedophiles. Said legislation can then be used to arrest whoever you like etc and nobody wants to get killed by a lynch mob for defending "paedophiles"
Socialy it's a crime you can't even be found innocent of.
If a court finds someone innocent no matter how rock solid their defence then "you never know! people are always getting off on technicalities! I saw it in a movie!!".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even more:
I would certainly hope that simply being a paedophile would never be illegal.
Actions may be illegal, but what you think being illegal?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just the fact they can't keep our data secure
I can see the headlines now. "Unencrypted CD containing names, addresses and nationality of all immigrants falls into BNP hands."
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't a big thing. It's an ID card that holds a fingerprint record. How is it bad to tie a card to a person?
"It's looking like the UK is in for biometric ID cards within the next few years, despite widespread protest from groups such as 'NO2I"
Nice troll.
There was a similar push for biometric ID's in germany.
A hacker protest group lifted his prints and published them on a t-shirt.
Including biometric identification info on a card which can be stolen, lost, hacked, or otherwise tampered with is a very good way to assure a security breach has no viable means of recovery.
The implications considering other "biometric" security devices are pretty horrible, especially if the foreign nationals/immigrants in question were brought in to assist high level corporate, d
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. It's part of the creeping UK Police state
2. We had them during WWII and they were struck down as unlawful a few years after the war was over
3. It's not just the card, it's the massive unified database of everything you do that's going to be behind the card. Not only should the government not have that sort of power, but they are incompetent with data protection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But there is a difference between "here" and "there". The information from boarder crossing etc are well protected by privacy laws here in most of the EU. This is not the case in the US. And as someone has posted below. The fear in the UK is that the
Re: (Score:2)
Actually in all of post-Napoleonic Europe ID cards are required.
This is pretty much the whole EU apart from the pieces us Brits were sitting
on when Bonaparte made his first attempt at European union
-- UK, Ireland and Malta ( The Ottoman family were administering Greece at the
time but I think they got ID cards in the 1930s).
Mostly these are bits of cardboard with a picture on backed up by a central register.
Though some counties like Belgium have high tech plastic cards with digital signature
capabilities so y
Re: (Score:2)
The catch is that places like Germany, where ID cards aren't a big problem, happen to have strong Constitutional protection on personal rights, freedom and information. Britain doesn't have that.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
What's wrong with carrying an ID card?
Well, some people (who, presumably, live in the woods, don't have bank account, don't drive a car and never leave the country) just object on principle. Personally, I don't see that one: in this world you need to prove your identity from time to time, and without having a "proper" identity scheme we end up using all sorts of inappropriate kludges (e.g. banks tend to ask for a gas or electricity bill).
Then there's the fear of police having the power to stop people and demand "papers". Now, that's a legitimate fear demanding eternal vigilance and all that but its really got naff all to do with ID cards: there's nothing fundamental about ID cards which says that police have to be given the power to inspect them. Plus, if the Fascists take over then it will take them a whole week to print and issue "papers".
Now we get to the more serious objections - primarily "mission creep". If the Government were simply rolling out a better alternative to current "ad hoc" methods of identity checking then it wouldn't be so bad. However, these are being touted as the answer to terrorism, fraud, illegal immigrants, healthcare provision and whatever was on the front page of the Daily Mail yesterday. Consequently, more and more bells and whistles are being added, meaning more and more information about individuals will be gathered to protect us against the barbarians at the gate, but will probably end up being used to police dog fouling [bbc.co.uk].
Finally, even if the conspiracy theorists are right, the government's track record on large IT projects doesn't bode well. (1984 is scary enough, but Brazil is even scarier!) Currently, we're getting almost daily stories of government departments losing laptops, CDs and memory sticks containing personal information, which doesn't help.
Parent
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I've only had to "prove my identity" twice in the last five years: once when I did jury service, and the second time was to my company accountants because of money laundering regulations or something. This is so infrequent that any extra benefit of simpler ID is much, much less than the additional risks of the government losing my data.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, generally not.
Huh ? No one's asked to ID in pubs unless they look like they're not tall enough to see over the bar. I've certainly never been asked since I was 16.
We're British and we are not in the habit of carrying papers or having to prove who we are to every tom dick or harry or jumped up offical we come across. The last time I think I had any need at all to prove my identity was when I got my driving licence 5 years ago and the tim
Re:another perspective (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the card that freaks people out, it's the massive, unified and probably insecure database that it implies!
Parent