Home secretary Jacqui Smith has insisted biometrics taken from people in high-street businesses will be secure.
While anti-ID campaigners have said it will be almost impossible to lock fingerprints to biographical details in a secure manner if those biometrics are taken in a high-street business, Smith said on Thursday that the process would be secure.
"It is clearly important, and part of the work we are doing and the plans we have in place, to ensure the secure, controlled transfer of any biometrics," Smith told ZDNet UK at a press event. "I believe it is technically possible to do that. I don't see the challenge is greater because more people are accredited to do it."
Smith added that accredited businesses would have a strong competitive reason to ensure that the biometric transfers they perform are secure, as failure to do so would have an impact on their reputation. However, so far the Home Office has given no precise information as to how fingerprints would be linked to biographical data, or any details about how the National Identity Scheme would be implemented.
High-street enrolment-centre service providers would be accredited by the Identity and Passport Service, said Smith, who added that "enrolment should be able to take place in the post office and shopping centre".
Smith criticised both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats for saying they would scrap the scheme.
"I can't answer whether the Tories would cancel the ID scheme," she said. "[If they do] they will have to answer how they will fill the black hole not only left by ID cards but biometric passports. They would have to answer why they have taken away security and convenience from the British people."
Conservative shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve told ZDNet UK in an emailed statement that his party would discontinue the scheme, a move he said would benefit security.
"We would scrap this expensive white elephant and use the savings to do things that would actually improve our security," Grieve said. "The home secretary should stop kidding herself, admit this project is dead and devote her energies to carrying out her primary responsibility, which is ensuring the safety of the citizens of this country."
Anti-ID card campaigner Phil Booth said that far from increasing security, ID cards would be a risk.
"They are not introducing security and convenience, they are doing exactly the opposite," Booth told ZDNet UK. "Enrolment in the high street will introduce security holes a mile wide. People will link biometric details to false biographical details, while the system will be plagued by systems errors."
The campaigner added that biometric passports, drivers' licences and other forms of identification would not be affected if ID cards were scrapped.
"This has nothing to do with passports, driving licences, or anything else," Booth said. "Get rid of the ID cards scheme and all the issues go away. There will be no 'black hole' left anywhere."
Talkback
Oh come on now people, don't be so harsh to Ms. Smith.
She is obviously a world class security expert, so we should simply take her assertion that a system of sensetive personaldata collection that has yet to even be designed, let alone implemented, is secure!
Don't worry about the MI5 experts saying that ID cards would have no effect on terrorism, Jacki, as a highly skilled intelligence expert knows better than them, and assures us that the simple application ID-Card-Away(tm) will wipe all terrorism clean off our map.
We shouldn't worry about the panic inducing amounts of money being spent on this thing. I mean, they'd only waste it on boring stuff like decent police coverage or better schools or some such. We'll be far better off giving it to the usual corporate suspects. After all, the Labour government are going to need a retirement plan ...
... and as soon as %%%%ing possible as well !!
There are several reasons why someone as dumb as Smith would want to push ahead with the ID card. An interesting one might be the same as Yosser Hughes ‘gis a job!’
Is she perhaps looking to the not so distant future? Inept though she is, she not so useless as to become a European Commissioner. So maybe, to go with her 'Severance Peerage', she's on the look out for a few non-executive directorships, possibly on the boards of one or more of the supporters of the 'Parliamentary Information Technology Committee', (PITCOM) http://www.pitcom.org.uk
Some might say Associate Parliamentary Groups (APG), are a means for those with vested interest to ‘cosy up’ to those supposed to protect the public's interest, and as such form an insidious part of our political system.
It is the corporate members of these charitable APG's who, apart keeping the odd ex-minister off the dole queue, fund (via their subscriptions) those boring fact finding trips to 'mega economies' such as Tahiti' and 'The Bahamas', that our parliamentarians find so edifying.
I wonder why the expression "pigs at the trough" springs to mind?
If there are no vacancies at PITCOM, there are dozens (perhaps hundreds) more APG’s (All Pigs Grunt) to choose from.