Chris Williams writes in The Register:
UK election scrutineers are pushing for polling stations to require tougher proof of identity to reduce the risk of ballot-rigging, but do not want voters to be forced to bring photo ID.
The stance is a reversal of statements made by Electoral Commission chairman Sam Younger just a year ago.
The BBC web site carries a transcript of a commentary by Katharine Whitehorn, broadcast in Radio 4’s “A point of view” slot:
The great writer and journalist G.K. Chesterton once wrote that he had spent all his life finding out that platitudes were true.
And maybe some of them are, though quite a few are ambiguous. “Ne’er cast a clout till May is out” - no-one seems to be sure whether it’s until the May tree is in bloom, or the month of May is over.
But some platitudes are all wrong - “No smoke without fire” for instance, as any teacher smeared for life by a spiteful child knows only too well.
And there is one platitude going around which is seriously damaging.
Whenever doubts about nationwide computerised health records or DNA banks or ID cards or biometric passports come up, someone will smugly say: “If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to worry about.”
Oh no? What about the news item in last week’s papers that the police have kept the DNA records of 40,000 children who are innocent? And at the end of July some research by the Human Genetics Commission, funded by the Home Office, led to the Telegraph headline: “One million innocent Britons ‘criminalised’ says damning report.”
Rhodri Phillips writes in The Sun:
The Home Office has lost 43 laptops and 94 mobiles over the last three years in the latest data bungle to hit the gaffe-prone department.
It comes days after a memory stick containing the details of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales was misplaced.
The loss of the computers and phones was revealed after a query by Tory peer Lord Hanningfield. He said it was a “woeful failure” and called for an inquiry, adding: “Given the sensitivity of the Home Office’s work — including its lead role in the fight against terrorism — this is all the more worrying.
“This is, of course, also the Government department with responsibility for ID cards.”
Ben Russell writes in The Independent:
The Home Office contractor which lost a computer memory stick containing the details of 84,000 prisoners is at the heart of developing the Government’s controversial compulsory identity cards system.
PA Consulting – which on Tuesday told ministers it had misplaced the unencrypted names, dates of birth and expected release dates of the inmates, as well as the addresses of 33,000 prolific criminals – has won £240m of government contracts since 2004, including one as the Home Office’s “development partner” to “work on the design, feasibility testing, business case and procurement elements of the identity cards programme”.
The Home Office paid the firm a total of £95m between 2004-05 and 2006-07, including £25.4m to work on a national network of fire control centres. The company’s consultants have also been paid more than £33m by the Foreign Office to work on biometric passports and visas.
The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, faced angry questions from senior MPs from all the parties, amid accusations that the blunder would further erode public faith in the identity cards project.
Gerri Peev writes in The Scotsman:
The personal details of the entire prison population south of the Border have been lost in a massive security breach at the Home Office, it was revealed last night.
Information on tens of thousands of criminals – including expected release dates – was lost while private contractors hired by the government were transferring files between computers.
The blunder could lead to gang warfare and leave the taxpayer liable for compensation pay-outs to every prisoner in England and Wales, it was warned last night.
Critics of the proposed identity cards said the blunder was evidence that the government could not be trusted to run the scheme.
Allegra Stratton, writing in The Guardian, lists the data lost:
The data included the names, addresses and dates of birth of around 33,000 offenders in England and Wales with six or more recordable convictions in the past 12 months on the Police National Computer. Also lost were the names and dates of birth, but not addresses, of 10,000 prolific and other priority offenders, and the names, dates of birth and, in some cases, the expected prison release dates of all 84,000 prisoners held in England and Wales.
Douglas Fraser writes in the Glasgow Herald:
The next census will be the last of its kind under plans being drawn up for its replacement with a national population register.
The £500m census on March 27, 2011, will be the earliest in the year since the first Britain-wide survey in 1801, to avoid Easter and the Scottish Parliament elections, and would be the final such 10-yearly head count if the plans under preparation are backed by ministers in the next few months.
The proposed alternative is a National Identity Register:
In an interview with The Herald, Mr Macniven explained replacement of the census will require an identity register, which could be combined with an address register which has recently been drawn up for the whole of Scotland by local councils.
The identity register risks becoming enmeshed with the controversy over Labour plans to introduce identity cards. But Mr Macniven claims there are other ways such a register could be compiled, and at lower cost. His staff are preparing the ground for the NHS central register of GP patients to be used as “the spine” of an alternative census.
But the Registrar-General stresses he is independent of government, and there has been an assurance of Whitehall ministers that the data collected will not be used for the identity card system.
According to Kablenet:
The Home Office will wait until 2011 to issue the ‘vast majority’ of identity cards to students and young people.
The schedule is outlined in A Strong New Force at the Border, a document issued by the department on 19 August detailing plans for the UK Border Agency. It places the work in 2011 as part of a timeline, in contrast to earlier suggestions that it would happen a year earlier.
Christopher Hope writes in the Daily Telegraph:
Sensitive data for more than four million people was lost by Government departments in the past year, on top of the high profile loss of child benefit records.
Following the loss of details for 25 million child benefit claimants in November, Whitehall departments have begun including information on personal information losses in their annual financial statements.
Analysis shows that beyond the child benefit fiasco, Government departments were last year losing data at the rate of more than 300,000 people’s details a month in the year to April it emerged last night.
Some politicians are making the link to government database plans:
The Tories’ shadow Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said: “This shows that the government cannot be trusted to protect people’s personal details.
“Ministers should think again about its even more risky and intrusive projects such as the identity card database, the all-encompassing children’s database and the property database for the council tax revaluation.
“Tougher safeguards are needed to protect the privacy of law-abiding citizens from the government.”
Etan Smallman writes in The Times:
Trust Britain’s youth to be characteristically ungrateful. The Government goes to all the effort of making a website for 16 to 25- year-olds to express their views on identity cards, and all they get in return is a solid mixture of scorn, sneering and scepticism smattered across their fancy new forums.
In a bid to get the country’s youngsters on board the controversial scheme, the Home Office has launched MyLifeMyId.org, where 16 to 25 year olds “can have their say about identity issues in the UK.”
But anyone browsing the discussions on the site would be hard pushed to find a single positive comment, with contributors branding the controversial scheme as “creepy,” “dirty” and “illegal” and the website itself as an “online propaganda machine”.
Chris Hastings, Beth Jones and Stephanie Plentl write in The Daily Telegraph:
When Gordon Brown called on the British Library to stage an exhibition about Britishness he perhaps envisaged a patriotic celebration of the national identity.
What he would not have expected is the resulting event, Taking Liberties, which encourages visitors to contemplate the perilous state of civil liberties in modern Britain under his Government.
The exhibition, which is the most ambitious in the British Library’s history, is in direct response to a call from Mr Brown for the institution to hold a display of patriotism, and critics have described it as a “snub” to the Prime Minister.
Visitors will be asked their views on issues such as ID cards and detention of suspects for up to 42 days, both of which are key Government policies.
Exhibits will be displayed in space in the shape of a clenched fist. As visitors progress through the exhibition, the space gets smaller and smaller to give the impression of confinement. Each visitor to the exhibition will be given a personal ID number.
Christopher Hope writes in The Daily Telegraph:
The personal details of 45,000 people, including dates of birth, criminal records, National Insurance numbers and court information, were lost by a single Government department last year.
The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) annual accounts show the data was lost in nine separate incidents in the past financial year.
The worst incident, in June last year, saw the loss of names, addresses and some bank details of 27,000 people working for suppliers to the MoJ.
Opposition parties are making the link to the National Identity Register:
Liberal Democrat Justice spokesman David Howarth MP said: “Yet again the Government has shown that it cannot be trusted with citizens’ personal data.
“How can ministers possibly argue for the introduction of a universal ID Card scheme when they can’t even keep safe the data they already have.”
Alan Travis writes in The Guardian:
The national identity card scheme faces fresh problems following a warning from the government’s top scientific advisers that the quality of fingerprints from 4 million people aged over 75 may be too poor to be used to prove their identity.
The “gold standard” integrity of the national identity scheme would depend on all 10 digits of the hands of everyone in Britain over 16 being accurately recorded on the central register, but experts have now told Home Office ministers that it is “hard to obtain good quality fingerprints” from the over-75s.
They warned that “exceptional handling” arrangements would have to be made to handle the registration of those whose fingerprints are not up to scratch. This would have a “large impact not only on the technical elements of the scheme but [also] on businesses processes, schedules and costs”.
American experts estimate between 2% and 5% of adults have poor quality fingerprints, which means ridges on the fingers are not sharply defined enough to be reliably copied by an automatic scanner.
The warning is contained in a report slipped out before Parliament rose for the summer recess from the biometrics assurance group, which is made up of independent experts from Whitehall, the industry and universities and chaired by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington. The group was set up to review the science behind the ID card scheme.
Fergus Shanahan writes in The Sun:
But help has to be offered to EVERYONE and not just those receiving child benefit.
Handouts are just gimmicks, anyway. And they have to be paid for - usually through tax.
We need long-term solutions.
Brown should cut petrol and diesel tax, axe wasteful Labour pet projects like ID cards and freeze town hall recruitment.
Colin Coyle writes in the Irish Sunday Times:
When John Welford fumbles in his pockets for change as he boards the bus, fellow passengers often nod sympathetically at the pensioner and ask him if he has forgotten his free travel pass. Those who strike up a conversation with Welford will come away thinking that he is either paranoid or has discovered an unsettling plan by the authorities to introduce a national identity card by stealth.
Welford, an Edinburgh pensioner, is interested in the introduction of the Irish public services card, a seemingly innocuous travel pass to be distributed to the country’s 640,000 free travel recipients next year. He sees a parallel between the introduction of the card in Ireland with the rollout of the travel pass in Scotland.
Two years ago, Welford returned his bus card and asked for it to be destroyed. His fear is that the apparently benign identity card, which contains a name, photograph and unique number, is a Trojan horse, the first step by the Scottish government to usher in a national ID by the back door.
There are echoes of his suspicion in the comments of privacy campaigners last week in Ireland. They claim that although the public service card will be introduced as a free travel pass, it may gradually form the basis of a national identity card.
Nadine McBay, writing in Metro, reviews Lucy Porter’s Edinburgh Fringe show, and gives it 4 stars:
Her gentle rants about ID cards and reminiscences about buying Lidl gin may be closer to amusing after-dinner ramblings than hard-nosed stand-up, but that’s her attraction. Someone who can find sweetness even in the man who stole her credit card, Porter is a kitten with enduring appeal.
The show is at at the Pleasance Courtyard in Edinburgh until 25th August.
Richard Ford and Sam Coates write in The Times:
Opposition MPs accused the Government last night of being naive in believing that new microchipped passports would be foolproof against criminals involved in identity theft.
After The Times disclosed that new passports could be cloned and manipulated in minutes and would then be accepted as genuine, MPs also gave warning of serious implications for the security of the Government’s £4.7 billion identity card scheme.
The identity card project, which starts this year when cards are issued to foreign nationals from outside Europe, relies on microchips similar to those cloned in minutes by a computer researcher as part of tests conducted for The Times.
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, joined calls for the whole project to be scrapped. “The Government is clearly incapable of creating a criminal-proof gold standard for identity,” he said.
Politics.co.uk also reports the criticisms:
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: “It is of deep concern the technology underpinning a key part of the UK’s security can be compromised so easily.
“What is worse - the same technology will underpin the government’s identity card scheme, which risks making us less safe.”
Phil Booth, national coordinator of No2ID said the experiment showed ID cards would actually make people more open to identity fraud.
“By putting your private information on a chip on a passport or ID card, designed to let it be skimmed-off for official purposes, the whole centralised approach to ID makes it easier for your life to be perfectly stolen,” he said.
“The government cannot be trusted to look after your identity.
Steve Boggan writes in The Times:
New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.
Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged.
In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports.
Mr Boggan points out:
The tests also raise serious questions about the Government’s £4 billion identity card scheme, which relies on the same biometric technology. ID cards are expected to contain similar microchips that will store up to 50 pieces of personal and biometric information about their holders.
Nick Heath writes in Silicon.com:
A prototype of the UK ID card biometric database will be delivered by French firm Thales for £18m.
The defence contractor will design, build, test and operate an early version of the National Identity Register (NIR) and ID card application system for airport workers, which will go live from the second half of 2009.
The bill for the system has increased by £8m over previous estimates and the contract will run for four years.
ZDnet also notes that the estimated cost of this contract has increased by 80% over the course of 3 months:
In May, Identity and Passport Service (IPS) executive director Bill Crothers said the contract to establish the interim scheme would be worth “in the order of £10m”. A deal with the UK Border Agency for a case-management system will follow by the end of 2008, but the major contracts — creating the main scheme and worth around £500m each — are not scheduled to be awarded until next year, with ID-card production coming last.
Jenni Russell writes in The Guardian:
The new dividing line between Labour and the Tories is less about a left-right split than about an authoritarian approach on one side and a more liberal one on the other. And Labour are on the wrong side of it. Many of their social and economic policies may have failed, but where they have succeeded is in developing a targeting, controlling, distrustful state. From the micromanagement of civil servants, teachers, doctors and the police, to ID cards, super databases and the growth of surveillance, the government’s answer to too many problems has been the removal of autonomy from individuals and more oversight from Whitehall.
The Conservative analysis is that this over-controlling state is not only disastrously unpopular, it is also one of the key reasons why Labour, despite all its spending, has failed to achieve its goals. Endless supervision has been an expensive distraction, and has sapped energy and morale out of public life.
Sylvia Pfeifer writes in the Financial Times:
A controversial national identity card scheme took another step forward on Friday when the Home Office awarded the defence group Thales a four-year contract to help deliver the £5bn-plus programme.
Under the £18m contract, Thales will design, build and test a system to issue the cards, along with a computerised national identity register aimed at preventing fraud.
