Absolute Identification
The proposed UK ID card legislation will achieve a unique and unprecedented level of intrusive personal identification not seen in a free country since the second world war.
The inclusion of multiple biometric parameters will ensure that every British subject is recorded in minute detail. The legislation makes it possible for ALL the branches of the executive including the semi legal, and the QUANGOs to intrude absolutely in peoples lives.
It will cost each individual at least (100 sterling) 150 Euro in 2005 value, probably trebling by the year of deployment, and you will have to have one and pay for it yourself, and will have an implementation cost to the country at least four times the estimates bandied around by the politicos, and an unknown un quantified onward cost. Effectively a Poll Tax under another name.
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It will not improve security.
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it will not stop terrorism.
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it will not make the nation more secure.
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It will not stop identity theft.
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You will pay for the privilege of being spied on
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Your taxes will rise to pay for it.
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Correcting errors, will never be allowed.
You will be harassed to produce the card when it is absolutely not required (How will you feel when the sales assistant -part time/low paid following instructions- demands your ID card so they can process your cash payment for an MP3 player) Visit the Australian ID card scheme and see why it was repealed because of demands of 'inappropriate usage'.
The data base will have to be stored in the most secure location (n)ever seen, more strong than a nuclear bunker, with more backups than any bank has ever attempted to implement, it will be the ultimate hacker target, wipe that data base and every government department will be incapacitated. How will the managers ensure that all the backups are current?
The administrators of every facet of our life will all rely on the master data base in a location unknown to them and shrouded in the fiercest secrecy the country has ever known, and NO you will never be allowed to correct any entry in its contents.
Enterprises and Governing executives are frequently poor understanders of the ability of electronics, computers and software to deliver, they also do not read nor understand the detail in the statistics that underline some of the sales and marketing claims made by the vendors. e.g. When reject rates or false positive figures are quoted they need to be related to real world operating procedure not lab conditions. The fact that many of the specifications of the Biometric sensors touted deliver less than the data sheet claims seems to be no problem 'as the technology will improve by the time deployment takes place' -they say.
Actual conversations with vendors have illuminated the underlying facile premises that is used to illuminate the performance of these sensors. The data will be modified by compression/storage and recognition algorithms that also dramatically undermine the reliability of the data stored. Real world analysis will show that the combined false reading rate can approach one third of the reads on a regular basis. What impact will this have on everyday life?
The US biometric fingerprint data base will generate significant problems which will grow dramatically in the next two years as the frequent fliers have their fingerprints read/re-read and compared with the data-base, watch the press for some extremely embarrassed US immigration officers.
Absolute identification is a false premise, technology can not deliver a solution only reduce its likely hood of being fraudulent, and then only if the source data set is accurate initially. The question that should be posed 'is this an efficient deployment of a nations finances to fix an imaginary problem'. Or yet again what is the authoritarian driver within the political bodies in the UK and the ROW to implement a system with a moving target of 'really good reasons'. What part of it's the most invasive piece of legislation since the STASI don't the UK people get.
Biometrics is going to guarantee that a fingerprint belongs to YOU, that YOUR eye iris identifies YOU, and that the picture is an exact reproduction of YOU, ---Or will it?----.
It will be essential for the technology to reduce the data storage demands with compression algorithms. When data is compressed it is an absolute that data is lost. The greater the compression the greater the data loss. Whilst a picture reduced by 50% in size may look the same it will not look anything like the same when expanded back to the same physical size as the original.
So when your friendly thought policeman demands your Photo ID and says you don't look anything like it, tell him his hand held machines is incapable of showing him how your really look and see how far it gets you.