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Mistaken Identity: notes from the anti ID card event
Just a few highlights from that meeting about the ID cards that I went along to yesterday:
Preventing fraud:
The benefits bill for this country is between £2 billion and £7 billion a year, depending on which figures the government give you. Their own
estimate of the amount of this which is fraudulent claims based on faked identities is around £50 million - between 0.7% and 2.5% of the total. By far the vast majority of benefits fraud is based on people using their real identity and lying about their situation (claiming unemployment benefit when working, etc) - which an ID card will do nothing to prevent.
The NHS bill for this country is around £70 billion per year. They estimate that perhaps as much as £200 million of that is 'health tourism' - foreigners abusing A+E to get medical treatment they can't afford at home. Again, that's less than 3% of the total bill.
The ID card scheme is going to cost central government alone £3.1 billion to implement. By the way, apparently that doesn't include the money the NHS (for instance) would have to shell out to have ID-card checkers in hospitals - that comes out of the NHS budget and so isn't counted in the total price of the system (and obviously for every scanner thing they buy and every person they train to use it, that's less money spent on treating patients).
So... as fraud prevention systems go, it's going to cost more than it saves for a considerable time - and that's presuming it comes in on time and within budget. It was noted at one point during the day that the success rate for major government IT projects has doubled lately. To 34%.
Terrorism:
(a) The terrorists involved in the Sept 11th NYC attacks and the March 11th Madrid attacks all had valid identities that entitled them to be in that country.
(b) Spain has an ID card system, and the car the bomb was in was stopped at a police checkpoint that day... and waved on through, because the driver's ID was valid.
(c) The proposed system for the UK doesn't cover people staying in this country for less than 3 months - plenty of time to blow something up, I imagine. Also, as its not going to be compulsory to have the card on you at any time, even once it is made compulsory to own one, no-one can really explain how it will do any good in combatting terrorism at all. Or even general crime.
Illegal immigrants:
People who are sneaking into this country and working illegally are doing it because someone pays them (very little) cash in hand. It's a grey economy
thing. Having ID cards won't stop people paying cash in hand to people who shouldn't be working, any more than the perfectly good existing NI system stops illegal immigrants from working in this country. The government needs to spend money on policing and enforcing the system we have, not making up another one.
Cost:
As you probably know, the ID card will initially be voluntary and based on your passport and driving license if you have them. It's going to knock the cost of a passport up to around £75, and the cost of a driving license up over £50. If you have both, that's quite a chunk of money to pay out. You have to renew it every ten years as well.
By the way, to get one of these things, you have to go in person to the place that issues them and queue up to have your fingerprints taken and your face and eye scanned for the biometrics validation stuff. You can't just bung your photos and a cheque in the post. Those places should make the post office look positively swift, at a guess.
General:
It's important to remember that we're not talking about just an ID card here, despite that being where all the press attention is going. We're talking about an ID card and a HUGE database backend. It's the latter bit that has all the scariest implications for privacy, for security, and for the chances of the government not fucking the project up completely.
There was a lot more, but that's the main things that stuck in my mind. The Register handed out an absolutely brilliant analysis which was a few pages long. I imagine it's on their site somewhere, for those who don't mind reading that much.
Preventing fraud:
The benefits bill for this country is between £2 billion and £7 billion a year, depending on which figures the government give you. Their own
estimate of the amount of this which is fraudulent claims based on faked identities is around £50 million - between 0.7% and 2.5% of the total. By far the vast majority of benefits fraud is based on people using their real identity and lying about their situation (claiming unemployment benefit when working, etc) - which an ID card will do nothing to prevent.
The NHS bill for this country is around £70 billion per year. They estimate that perhaps as much as £200 million of that is 'health tourism' - foreigners abusing A+E to get medical treatment they can't afford at home. Again, that's less than 3% of the total bill.
The ID card scheme is going to cost central government alone £3.1 billion to implement. By the way, apparently that doesn't include the money the NHS (for instance) would have to shell out to have ID-card checkers in hospitals - that comes out of the NHS budget and so isn't counted in the total price of the system (and obviously for every scanner thing they buy and every person they train to use it, that's less money spent on treating patients).
So... as fraud prevention systems go, it's going to cost more than it saves for a considerable time - and that's presuming it comes in on time and within budget. It was noted at one point during the day that the success rate for major government IT projects has doubled lately. To 34%.
Terrorism:
(a) The terrorists involved in the Sept 11th NYC attacks and the March 11th Madrid attacks all had valid identities that entitled them to be in that country.
(b) Spain has an ID card system, and the car the bomb was in was stopped at a police checkpoint that day... and waved on through, because the driver's ID was valid.
(c) The proposed system for the UK doesn't cover people staying in this country for less than 3 months - plenty of time to blow something up, I imagine. Also, as its not going to be compulsory to have the card on you at any time, even once it is made compulsory to own one, no-one can really explain how it will do any good in combatting terrorism at all. Or even general crime.
Illegal immigrants:
People who are sneaking into this country and working illegally are doing it because someone pays them (very little) cash in hand. It's a grey economy
thing. Having ID cards won't stop people paying cash in hand to people who shouldn't be working, any more than the perfectly good existing NI system stops illegal immigrants from working in this country. The government needs to spend money on policing and enforcing the system we have, not making up another one.
Cost:
As you probably know, the ID card will initially be voluntary and based on your passport and driving license if you have them. It's going to knock the cost of a passport up to around £75, and the cost of a driving license up over £50. If you have both, that's quite a chunk of money to pay out. You have to renew it every ten years as well.
By the way, to get one of these things, you have to go in person to the place that issues them and queue up to have your fingerprints taken and your face and eye scanned for the biometrics validation stuff. You can't just bung your photos and a cheque in the post. Those places should make the post office look positively swift, at a guess.
General:
It's important to remember that we're not talking about just an ID card here, despite that being where all the press attention is going. We're talking about an ID card and a HUGE database backend. It's the latter bit that has all the scariest implications for privacy, for security, and for the chances of the government not fucking the project up completely.
There was a lot more, but that's the main things that stuck in my mind. The Register handed out an absolutely brilliant analysis which was a few pages long. I imagine it's on their site somewhere, for those who don't mind reading that much.
no subject
The ID card system that Hong Kong has requires every individual over 12 (or I think they might have pushed it down to 8) to carry their ID card with them at all times. The card has:
- a black and white mugshot of the holder
- their name in Chinese and/or English
- their date of birth
- their ID card number
- whether they are permanent residents/have right of abode/etc.
That's it.
The police can ask to see your card whenever they want, but to get any actual info about you they've got to phone their headquarters and in any case that'll only tell them what your criminal/immigration records are like.
I queued for I think 2 hours to have my mugshot and prints taken, and the law says that you have to get the card renewed when your face changes noticeably from what you look like on the card. Oh, and it cost me about $300, which is less than thirty quid.
I HATE the UK's proposed ID card system.
no subject
no subject
no subject
another huge flaw in the ID card argument...
we have lots of people pretending to be people they are not thus putting us at risk from benefit-defrauding-criminal-terrorists.
ID cards will enable us to identify them
and we will determine who they are in order to give them an ID card how exactly?
grrr.. oh and i think it's not just one Fuck Off Database but three to five FO database (databasen?) IIRC reading about this lunacy just depresses me to much...