Home Office criticised for announcing ID card procurement
The Telegraph reports that the Home Office is already inviting companies to consider bidding for ID card contracts:
An advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union on August 9 states: “The Home Office anticipates that once relevant legislation, now before Parliament, has received Royal Assent, it would embark upon procurement exercises for the establishment of a National Identity Cards scheme.”
This move has attracted criticism from politicians and technical experts alike:
Last night David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “It is quite wrong for the Government to be prejudging Parliament on such a controversial issue as this.”
Sarah Arnott of Computing has been speaking to Neil Fisher, director of security solutions at defence technology supplier QinetiQ:
‘Telecoms systems are judged on an availability of 99.999 per cent, but even that level of accuracy of biometrics, across the whole population, would mean 6,000 people in the country being mistaken, and no biometric technology is anywhere close to that reliable yet,’ Fisher told Computing.
‘Unless there is a strategy to overcome that lack of accuracy, the system will be flawed as soon as it starts,’ he added.
Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum, concurs:
‘The government needs a dose of reality because its trust in the system is unfounded and doesn’t match up with experience.
‘The plan is working on the assumption that, by the time it is live, the technology will have come on in leaps and bounds. But that is not a reasonable basis from which to start.’
