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Biotech Privacy Your Rights Online

Greece, UK Go Different Directions On Biometric ID 43

Posted by timothy from the mmm-mandatory dept.
An anonymous reader submits "David Blunkett, the UK's labour Home Secretary, today announced plans to fingerprint and iris scan all British citizens by 2013 for a new compulsory ID card. The majority of negative feedback to government consultation on the scheme was discounted because it was sent via an online service." On the other hand, securitas writes "Greece's Data Protection Authority - the national privacy watchdog - 'banned Athens International Airport from checking and recording passengers' fingerprints and irises as part of a pilot security program saying it was in breach of local privacy laws.' (That's 'pilot' as in 'trial,' not the people who fly the planes). The scheme, funded by the European Union and the Swiss government, involved embedding the biometric data on smart cards issued to travelers on a voluntary basis."
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Greece, UK Go Different Directions On Biometric ID More

Greece, UK Go Different Directions On Biometric ID

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  • A (non online) poll indicated about 80% of people in the UK were in favour of mandatory ID cards.
    • That's actually not entirely atypical; if you just ask people cold whether they think they are a good idea. Which is presumably why the government chose this route. However when people are actually forced to look at the issue in more detail; they mostly change their mind- the statistics typically end up more like 60% against.

      Noteably, this was roughly the result of the consultation period (presumably the people that bothered to reply to it had thought about the issues to some extent, and so were mostly ag

      • All in all, police state here we come.

        Sad, isn't it? And if you object "you must have something to hide."

        • Something to hide? I prefer to think of a police state as somebody to hide from.

          The gits are very probably already recording who and when I call, recording my internet usage, shopping items, email headers and so on. And they probably scan all transoceanic phone calls for keywords, and may well be recording them now the cost of storage is so low.

          And I say this without any trace of paranoia- they record these things for the whole country pretty much anyway.

    • That's meaningless, without seeing the questions, details of interview techniques used and sample selection procedure, etc.

      It's very easy indeed to skew a poll to give the desired outcome, just by carefully wording the questions and choosing the people you ask.

      That said though, I'd well believe that a majority of people here are at least not against them - they'll have been told that it'll help tackle illegal immigrants, benefit fraud and other crimes and terrorism, without a mention of anything to be con
    • The poll showed that 80% of the 2,000 votes that they counted were in favour. They did not count an additional 5,000 votes, nearly all of which were against.
      So in fact the results were, of 7,000 votes: 23% in favour, 77% not.

      The reason given for disregarding most votes made is that they came from an anti-ID card website, so they were biased.
      I swear I couldn't make it up.

  • a small, but possibly signifigant point. british people are subjects, rather than citizens.

    so... from merriam-webster

    citizen [m-w.com] - 1 : one that is placed under authority or control: as a : VASSAL b (1) : one subject to a monarch and governed by the monarch's law (2) : one who lives in the territory of, enjoys the protection of, and owes allegiance to a sovereign power or state

    subject [m-w.com] - 1 : an inhabitant of a city or town; especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman 2 a : a member

    • I'll bet HM the Q (or K perhaps by then) won't be carrying an id card.

    • (I assume you deliberately got the definitions the wrong way around, BTW...)

      In any case, it's perhaps worth pointing out that I (along with most of the rest of the British population) am both a British Subject and a British Citizen. So, not only am I a Subject of HM Queen Elizabeth the mis-numbered (sorry, I'm a Scot), but I also have the right of abode in the UK.

      A point sometimes missed is that being a British Subject does not, in and of itself, grant you this right...

    • > british people are subjects, rather than citizens

      Funny.. it says "British Citizen" in this passport that I'm looking at.
    • I assume you realized that those two definitions are reversed? Anyway, though historically one has said British subjects, more recently creeping Republicanism (this is the British version of "Republicanism" I'm talking about here) has dictated the use of "citizen." The distinction is most important in French history, at a time when the French crown was far more controlling than the British one had been for decades.

      • Are the French more controlling than the British?

        I thought it was the other way around. In the nanny state in Britain a person's not able to defend themselves. Why, I read an article recently about how a woman was going home from her knitting circle when she was attacked and to defend herself she used her knitting needle. Because she used a "dangerous weapon" she was charged. I haven't as yet heard that a person isn't able to defend themselves in France.

  • As technology advances, those in power expect to be able to use it to keep tabs on us all, for reasons of safety and security and economics. Very few people will object to the state having complete knowledge and power over us since "obviously" those who object must have something to hide. Me, I think that the system will implode under its own beurocracy following the inevitable farce it will become.

    Currently you need several forms of identification to get anything important. When there is a one-size-fits-al

    • That's a rather unscientific doom'n'gloom approach.

      Why would it collapse under its own beurocracy? Yes, ID's _are_ meant to keep tabs on people. They proved their usefulness well and beyond in allowing governments to control the populace (for the populace's own good). How would you like to drive around a place where anyone can print out a phony driver's license, kids with no driver training just go sit behind wheels, and people get killed daily by the doesen?

      What is being said here about bio ID's invading
      • No, I still assert that it will fail.

        You see, many people think that biometric identification is fool-proof and that the ID cards will be perfect and unforgeable.

        Both of these premises are false. Try finding out what the reliability of DNA fingerprinting is. The probability of a flase match with someone else's is not infinitessimal. Fingerprint readers have already been fooled, people have made copies of fingerprints left on surfaces and used them to fool machines, and iris scans have been duplicated as wel

        • One of the main things that bothers me about the retinal scan (this is not my area of expertise) is how they conduct the scan. Given how delicate eyes are by comparison with most other organs in the body, these guys would have to have a pretty damn good line of evidence to support any claim that the equipment is not dangerous, and furthermore cannot be made dangerous either wilfully or otherwise.

          There's no way I'm letting anybody fool around with my eyesight, thank you very much. And I, for one, won't be pr

      • Why would it collapse under its own beurocracy?

        My take is that the victimization of innocent people will be so rampant that the government won't be able to cover things up fast enough.

        If you didn't do something bad, keeping bio tabs on you makes framing someone innocent or wrongful accusation harder.

        Actually, it will be harder for juries to see the logical holes in the database schemas. It makes it easier for lawyers to sway juries into believing what the police say, because it takes much much more i
        • What will happen is that the courts will accept certain evidences as un-contestable.

          So persons with access to the evidence trail/databases can more easily prove someone guiltly (who isn't) because the forgery is percieved to be difficult.

          When the storage methods for evidence etc are themselves subject toi screcy, proving tampering will be very difficult for the defendent.

          There is a solution: prosecution must prove that the evidence was not tampered with.
      • >populace's own good). How would you like to drive
        >around a place where anyone can print out a phony
        >driver's license, kids with no driver training just
        >go sit behind wheels, and people get killed daily by
        >the doesen?

        I don't know about Britain, but here in Canada all those things happen every day despite our mandatory drivers' licenses. /shrug. Clearly a national ID card will do much better, though. Terrorists are so much more likely to obey the law than teenagers.
    • I agree that the fraudsters will only be a few months behind the technology, but what we have at the minute is far from perfect.

      There was a BBC news item on a couple of months ago that stated that the 'several' forms of identification required to obtain a passport are unfortunately simple for criminals to obtain and have been for years due to a flaw in the system. In the report even the passport office acknowledged this, although they dismissed it since they reckon that only a small number of them are obt
      • So you really think its worth 3.5 billion UKP to stop a few months benefit fraud? (And that just the cards, not the card readers and other infrastructure.)

        Me thinks there are _many_ better things on which to spend the money than setting up the infrastructure of a police state.
        • Unless what you REALLY want is a police state, and everything else is just a smokescreen to convince the sheep^H^H^H^H^citizenry it's a good idea.

  • No Contest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ratboy666 ( 104074 ) <fred_weigel@[ ]mail.com ['hot' in gap]> on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @11:52AM (#7453472) Journal
    The main problem with biometric schemes is that it is (almost) impossible to contest.

    The card holds your biometric data (say finger-print and iris scan). If card production is cracked, the cards can then be forged -- making the biometric data useless. This is comparable to pasting in another picture on a drivers license.

    To prevent this, the biometric data can be stored elsewhere. One copy (the one that can't be repudiated) is on the person. One copy may be on the card (if the card is secure). Typically, one *more* copy is on a computer.

    The "client" is scanned, and biometric data is compared against the stored copy. Hack attempts portrayed on movies have the "bad guys" using cut off fingers, etc. to beat the system. But this isn't the attack point of choice.

    If the biometric data is modified in the stored computer file, we have a problem. Someone makes a change saying "this person is a terrorist". Or another identity change. You CAN'T change your biometric data, and governments aren't likely to reveal what is in the "secret" files.

    So, a hacker seeds data in a computer somewhere, and the next time you travel, BAM, you are arrested with no way of proving that it ISN'T you. Of course its you, the biometric data matches.

    Any compromise in the system is very bad. This is a very bad thing. The privacy thing is a canard -- not being able to repudiate the biometric data makes it almost impossible to correct records, and reclaim identity through government layers.

    Ratboy
  • "The majority of negative feedback to government consultation on the scheme was discounted because it was sent via an online service."

    How convenient.
  • The Telegraph newspaper said in Leader today (12 Nov), "Opinion polls show that a majority of the public supports ID cards, as long as they are paid for by somebody else".

    The main problem is that people's opinions are being shaped by the false distorted view, that ID cards would solve our ills of illegal immigration, crime and terrorism.

    The carrying of these biometric ID cards is a red herring - there is no need to carry a card - you carry your data on you at all times.

    Your eye scan and/or fingerprint da
  • This British citizen lives in the US and has never been back. I'll be very impressed if they manage to issue anything for me. And I was born and lived in 3rd world countries most of my life so all attempts at tightening up birth certificates etc issued in the UK won't achieve anything.

    And of course all the tourists plus citizens of other European countries working in Britain (as allowed by EC rules) won't have them either.

    So if someone is supposed to check your biometric id and you say you don't have on

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