LSE report draws sane conclusions from insane government Bill

A group of over a dozen senior academics from the London School of Economics have released a report that condemns the government’s ID Cards Bill (PDF), stating the legislation to be “too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence”, and that although “the concept of a national identity scheme is supportable, the current proposals are not feasible.”

The report – prepared in consultation with representatives from business and industry, government suppliers, the DTI and Inland Revenue – is a detailed examination of the proposed government legislation, and the authors come down hard on its numerous flaws.

All the stated aims of the Bill – protecting the citizen against terrorism, crime and identity theft, ensuring the legitimate use of health and benefit services, and clamping down on illegal immigration and working – are stated by the report to be better met by other means, such as increased spending on border officials, frontline policing and the security intelligence services. The projected cost of £5.5bn are set to more than double – as the NHS IT system did – and these costs represent considerable investment that could potentially be placed in the hands of police and immigration forces.

In some cases, terrorism and identity theft in particular, ID cards would increase existing problems; by centralising identity, providing a single document that would then be prone to error, corruption and forgery, identity theft is made simpler.

NO2ID National Coordinator, Phil Booth, said:

"The government are trying to nationalise our identities, opening us up to new dangers, and then getting us to pay for it. This report lays bare the technocratic delusions of the Home Office and flaws in a scheme that would have terrible consequences for the country. Let us hope that this unjust and unjustified Bill is now laid to rest, never to return."

Biometrics, the report says, have “ never been used at such a scale” and the system proposed would be “ technologically precarious and could itself become a target for attacks by terrorists”. Other countries such as China and Korea that have previously implemented biometric technology are now reviewing its use due to the logistical problems involved. The airline Quantas used biometric checking for its staff, and found an error rate of between two and ten per cent – on the UK population of over 60 million at projected rates of use, this would mean millions of errors a day.

The legitimacy of the proposals is also questioned. There is little accountability, the report says, with even the Commissioner for ID cards reporting to the Home Secretary and not Parliament. There exists incompatibility with a string of UK and EU laws, including the Data Protection Act, Race Relations Act, Disability Discrimination Act and European working and freedom to travel laws. And with so little time for Parliamentary scrutiny given to the Bill, whole sections have gone unexamined.

The second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords on Monday saw their Lordships condemn the government for the way in which the Bill has been forced through Parliament. There is strong opposition to the Bill in the upper chamber, and Lords quoted from the report and from NO2ID literature. With potentially only a few weeks until the end of Parliament, the Bill is in for a turbulent but brief ride.