Sarah Spiller writes on the BBC web site:

The government’s ID card system will give thousands of “false matches” when more than six million people are registered on its database, an academic has claimed.

Biometric data holding a person’s unique physiological characteristics will be stored on a microchip in the cards.

But Professor John Daugman, said using fingerprints as a key biometric measure will cause major problems.

Professor Daugman’s conclusion:

“For the scheme as a whole it means that it can no longer deliver the goal of one citizen, one identity, because it cannot survive so many comparisons without making false matches – so there will be false claims of multiple identities.

“It could still be useful for other purposes but I think it would have failed for reasons that are probably to date, predictable.”

His comments are taken from a BBC Radio 4 “File on Four” programme first broadcast at 2000 BST on Tuesday 31 July, repeated 1700 BST on Sunday 5 August. The programme MP3 can also be downloaded here until Tuesday 7th August. A transcript should be available in due course via the programmes web page.

This entry was posted by andrew on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 23:45 and is filed under Biometrics, General, Neutral, UK News Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.