infinite ideas machine

Re-posted from archive of infinite ideas machine 2004:

According to evidence given by the Director of the Identity Cards Programme, Katherine Courtney, to the HAC on 4th May, the UKPS biometrics pilot has suffered from a few gremlins!

Old news if you read SpyBlog, I know – but I was a little surprised to hear that the much-vaunted trial is, in fact, “not about testing the robustness of biometric technology, it is instead about the customer experience, customer acceptance and the time it will take to enrol”.

Huh?

Not only can’t they get the capture process to work properly, but they’re not even trying to find out if the underlying technology itself is up to the task! David Blunkett expects people will be “queuing up” for ID cards, and he could be right – but not for quite the reason he thinks…

Re-posted from archive of infinite ideas machine 2004:

After a couple of well-informed comments from wtwu at Spy Blog, I’ve been trying to plough further through the Home Office Publications and Consultations Archive, Hansard and HAC transcripts [see below] in an attempt to bring myself fully up to speed (going back through the whole sorry history) in time for the 19th May. I think I need more hours in the day, and a new printer cartridge…

Re-posted from archive of infinite ideas machine 2004:

‘They’ in this instance refers to the Home Affairs Committee on Identity Cards, who have published the uncorrected transcripts (i.e. neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record) of oral evidence presented to them on the following dates:

11th December 2003 – Nicola Roche (Director, Identity Card Policy Unit), Katherine Courtney (Director, Identity Cards Programme), Stephen Harrison (Head, Identity Card Policy Unit, Home Office).

3rd February 2004 – Shami Chakrabarti (Director, Liberty), Simon Davies (Director, Privacy International) and Vicky Chapman (Head of Law Reform, the Law Society) then Richard Thomas (Information Commissioner) and Jonathan Bamford (Assistant Information Commissioner, Identity Cards).

10th February 2004 – Martin Hall (Director-General, Finance and Leasing Association), Gerald Vernon-Jackson (Local Government Association) and Jan Berry (Chairman, Police Federation).

24th February 2004 – Nick Kalisperas (Senior Programme Manager, ID Card Working Group, Intellect), Geoff Llewellyn (Member, ID Card Working Group, Intellect), Ross Anderson (Foundation for Information Policy Research) and Martyn Thomas (UK Computing Research Committee).

20th April 2004 – John Harrison (Edentity), Andy Jebson (Cubic Transportation Systems), Richard Haddock (LaserCard Systems Corporation) and Neil Fisher (Qinetiq).

27th April 2004 – Len Cook (Registrar General for England and Wales) and Denis Roberts (Director for Registration Services, General Register Office) then Charles Clarke (Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills), John Hutton (Minister of State for Health) and Chris Pond (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions).

4th May 2004 – David Blunkett (Home Secretary), Desmond Browne (Minister of State for Citizenship and Immigration), Katherine Courtney (Director, Identity Cards Programme) and Stephen Harrison (Head, Identity Card Policy Unit, Home Office).

There’s a lot to read here, but bits of it are really significant – e.g. its, hopefully, the primary source material for some of the articles you may have read in the Press – and reassuring(?) evidence of Parliamentary process in action. I’ll leave out any comments about horses’ body parts (front or rear) and let you decide…

Re-posted from archive of infinite ideas machine 2004:

OK, before I get stuck in today I *highly* recommend you read John Lettice’s excellent articles in The Register, Everything you never wanted to know about the UK ID card and Glitches in ID card kit frustrate Blunkett’s pod people. The latter makes particular reference to Mr. Blunkett’s recent ‘jelly nailing’ performance in front of the Home Affairs Committee:

Blunkett’s evidence does not seem to have been particularly enlightening. It was, he said, largely the media’s fault that the counter-terrorism aspects of the ID scheme had been given so much attention, and he cited a Today programme interview of 14.9.2003 where he claims he said that although the ID card and the Register [the National Identity Register – let’s be specific, please!] would help, they would not resolve the terrorist threat.

This latest Blunkett stance is however somewhat undermined by the alacrity with which both he and the Prime Minister have used the terror threat as a wedge to win approval for the scheme and to accelerate its introduction. Blunkett’s position on the card vis a vis terrorism therefore seems to be that it is a useful weapon against terror, but when asked to explain how it will be useful against terror, he retorts that he never said it was a complete fix, and that the terror aspect had been greatly over-emphasised by the media.

As the Committee chairman testily remarked, this is a little like nailing jelly. But the serious point underlying this is that the Home Office’s complete failure to nail down the specifics of what it wants, why and how it will work is vastly increasing the probability that the project will be a total catastrophe.

Following on from yesterday, when I was wondering about the figures and calculations behind the Government’s £3.1bn estimate, I begin to think I would far rather hear a clear explanation of precisely what systems and approaches to digital identity the Home Office et al. have considered – and their reasons for pursuing or rejecting (aspects of) each.

[N.B. I would be very surprised to hear that any solution not involving a centralised database was up for serious consideration at any point. A NIR is about surveillance, whichever way you want to play/spin/use it – and if its not going to be used, what’s the point in spending the money?]

Of course, we have the Draft Bill and Consultation Document – but these only outline what Mr Blunkett would like ID cards and a NIR to be able to do, not how they propose to achieve these goals in practice – nor, more worryingly, whether these goals are even reasonable in theory (based on past & current evidence). Before deciding policy, implementing legislation and imposing a phenomenally expensive scheme on the British public the Home Secretary should at least have to make a proper case for what he is doing.

What we have at present is mere assertion – par for the course, unfortunately, and in the context of Iraq, the ‘War on Terror’, etc. depressingly familiar.

Taking us into a war that many (1,000,000 marched!) did not want was bad enough. Using the same, or related, fears and excuses in an attempt to fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and State demonstrates a level of arrogance and disconnect that supercedes even Margaret Thatcher’s worst efforts – e.g. “there’s no such thing as society”, the Poll Tax (and look where that got her). Misjudgements of this kind have the potential to twist society for generations to come and I, for one, would not like to live in a UK that treated me and my family as mindless sheep at best, and potential criminals at worst.

Mr. Blunkett, either give us a proper explanation of what EXACTLY it is you are going to do and how – or stop wasting your time and our money on pipedreams!

Re-posted from archive of infinite ideas machine 2004:

So, if each ID card costs £35 (barring replacements) while we ‘officially’ DON’T all have to have one – unless, e.g. we want to drive a car or go on holiday – how much money will the Government raise before making it compulsory? According to Mr. Blunkett’s current ‘vision’ it will be of the order of 80% x 60,000,000 x £35 = over £1.5 billion, crudely speaking.

Making the cards compulsory from the outset would, of course, raise the spectre of having to make the damn things free – as are, e.g. NI cards currently – which would never do! I’m sure a certain Mr. Brown would have something to say about that – hence the Home Office’s ‘softly, softly, makee money’ approach…

It’s also not clear in anything I’ve read yet whether these fees will form a part of, or be in addition to, the billions that this whole scheme is supposedly going to cost. We have been told for over a year now that Government estimates are £3.1 billion for a card priced at around £40 – with independent experts raising this to £5 billion, even apart from the almost inevitable overspend. See, e.g. the Foundation for Information Policy Research who brand the UK Government’s ID card scheme an expensive flop.

So where are these estimates – surely the public deserve to see the figures and calculations used?

Are we ‘early adopters’ (bar the initial 10,000 – unless their details actually are “destroyed at the end of the trial” as promised) therefore expected to bear a huge chunk of the cost of the implementation, development and maintenance of the NIR and associated systems? Or will yet another layer of muddled-up Government bureacracy that fails to address the real problems in hand end up being funded from our overstretched taxes?

And finally, can we (the early adopters) expect to get a refund when ID cards are finally made compulsory – but if so will we have to agree, e.g. to have our tax code entered into the NIR to receive it? Beware of ‘feature creep’ marketed under the banner of ‘convenience’…