If you ever had any doubt as to the cost of funding an ID card, then this article from IWR's sister title Computing, may help dispel the last few nagging doubts that a national ID card might actually be worth the investment. So far, £53m has been spent on consultancy alone. Not only that, it appears that the goalposts have moved from the ID Card system as a standalone identity card to a more complex ID management scheme that ties in to a lot of other stuff. Forget about mission creep, this is beginning to sound like the sort of ungodly collaboration between IT consultant jobmakers and sneaky pols that John Pilger should shake a very large stick at.
Look back to 2005, and plans for an ID card were a lot more modest. The £3bn estimated cost was blown out of the water by a report from the LSE, putting the final figure closer to £10bn. Don't forget to look through suppressed documents made available under the Freedom of Information Act that suggest multiple reasons for the scheme.
There are various reasons why a national ID card won't do what the
government thinks it will do. At present, we rely on multiple forms of
ID, which create a patchwork of different points of contact with
officialdom, both commercial and governmental. This appears to work
quite well. Single ID cards, as used by Spain, for example, don't.
Every one of the bombers who attacked Madrid had a valid national ID.
Identity Fraud isn't necessarily a case in point, either. LSE estimates
that, rather than preventing £1.3bn of fraud a year, an ID card will
hit, at most, £35m.
Finally, it won't be compulsory to carry a card. One wonders if a nation that has alread sleepwalked into a surveillance society will refuse cards if they provide notional convenience, but the signs are that the public is becoming increasingly worried about these things. Let's hope that the spirit of Clarence Willcock
lives on. In the mean time, expect more spending, more consultants, and
the ID Card scheme to spread further and further afield.
Actually the goalposts haven't moved. The Home Office's plans have always included creating a master index for the population, cross-referencing all government and almost all private information. (Total Information Awareness done properly, if you like.)
ReplyDeleteWhat has moved is the presentation.
Originally it was sold focussing on the "ID card" because that's not frightening to the public. The public safely bored and mostly indifferent, the key to getting the scheme in place is to sell it to other government departments and to big business so that they will cooperate in forcing it on the population. It is therefore repositioned as a management tool and "vital national infrastructure" project.