Passing Thoughts

This is my bag at the moment, and the article makes some good points and some lame ones. What it does not represent, is balanced reporting. It's definitely right in pointing out that the ID card will have little or no impact on terrorism (nothing will, actually - the only thing you can do with terrorism is plan how you're going to respond to it). However, it will have an impact on welfare and identity fraud - one of reduction rather than elimination. Yes, the technology gap is minor between government and criminals, but it's also only narrow at the higher end. From experience, for example, I know that it's very easy to get a fake NINO at the middle to lower tier of criminality (in my line of work, this comes up all the time). The more expensive the technology used to produce the card, the more effective it will be, unfortunately for the taxpayer. What I anticipate is a lot of lower tier, everyday identity fraud will be wiped out, but the top end of the game will recover after a few months experimentation.

The card could also have a significant impact on illegal working (by unregistered foreign nationals), simply by creating a recognised Universal Standard of ID. At the moment, an employer could be presented with passports from dozens of countries (all with different security issues(, work permits, a variety of visas, Home Office documents by the shedload, and so on - all of which entitle the holder to work. Unsurprisingly, the wealth of possible documents means most employers don't know what they're looking at. A lot of AWFUL forgeries get passed by employers through thier own ignorance, rather than any skill on the part of the forger. A Universal Standard that everyone recognises will make a difference in this area, although not a watertight one.

Erm... end of random typing... need coffee...

Congratulations on the first honest answer I have ever seen on ID cards and what they will actually mean. :-)

Presumably if the lower end criminality it reduced it will actually reduce the workload of people like yourselves and hence reduce costs. I wonder if this is why the government want them? I have been trying to work out why they are so determined to push through such an expensive project that clearly isn't going to do the things they claim it will. If they see that it is going to reduce the cost of running the various services (without providing a universal panacea to anything) then that would make a lot of sense. Still begs the question why they don't just come out and say this

Heh - you're welcome.

Personally, I don’t think the Government is very clear on exactly WHAT they expect ID cards to do, hence the confused message. Possibly their advisers are, but the spokespeople all seem very hazy. The lower tier ID crime does cost the country hundreds of millions every year, and it’s far too easy to create entirely new identities for committing financial fraud (adding hundreds of millions in rising costs and inconvenience). In fact, a NINO and an address is your starting point for a very credible false identity, that will certainly pass muster at a lot of financial institutions. Add a halfway convincing fake passport to that, and you’re away. Once you’ve then got a bank account, you can keep adding layers of credibility, such as a credit history, that are going to perplex even close scrutiny.

But definitely not the catch-all cure for identity crime that the Home Office idiotically tried to paint it as. Now they’ve been caught out, public trust is all but dissolved. And just because there are benefits to the card, doesn’t mean that there aren’t downsides too – the potential future abuse of personal details by future governments worries me too. While I don’t believe the current regime has any desire to Big Brother us, it’s easy to get paranoid, and who knows how future governments might use such a tool – endless possibilities!

Spooky, that I wrote the first comment just before the bombing in London, and worth pointing out that whether or not the culprits were carrying ID cards wouldn’t have made a blind bit of distance to their ability to scurry onto public transport with a rucksack full of high explosives…