‘RFID the lot of them!’ UK ID card to use ICAO reader standard
John Lettice of The Register has been trawling through the long list of ID-card-related parliamentary written questions answered (or in some cases, not answered) by ministers over the last couple of weeks, and has come to some interesting conclusions, such as:
The Government last week confirmed that the UK’s planned ID card is intended to operate as a ‘passport lite’ that could be used for travel within the European Union, and signalled that Home Office thinking may be moving towards the use of a PIN as a common mechanism for verification. The card’s operation as a passport, said Under Secretary of State Andy Burnham, dictates that it will need to use ICAO standard RFID contactless reader technology, while use of chip and PIN would allow it to be compatible with banking and retail systems.
That means, he said, that it could function both as a contact and contactless card. PIN would also provide some measure of protection for internet transactions, but on its own, no more than that of a credit card. Nor is it immediately obvious what kind of transaction an ID card holder might want or need to conduct via the national chip and PIN infrastructure. There are however possible advantages for the Government in using the commercial chip and PIN network, not least of these being that audit trails would be far more extensive, providing a far more detailed picture of the user’s movements.
There’s much more in the original article, including an entertaining aside quoting GCHQ’s published position on biometric verification.
