Downing Street Says

Asked if the Prime Minister had been indicating in his press conference this morning that legislation on ID cards would be speeded up, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said he was not aware that the timetable had changed. Asked why the Prime Minister was so keen to introduce ID cards when, as he had noted this morning, it was much easier to forge them these days, the PMOS pointed out that one of the reasons why we were taking great care in terms of investigating the production of ID cards was because we wanted to develop the technology which would make it very difficult to forge them. The Prime Minister had been making the point this morning that it was relatively easy at present to forge identity using a variety of means. That was why we believed it was important to follow through on the ID issue following careful investigation.

3 Comments »

Are we intended to believe that existing manufacturers of secure documents (ID cards, credit cards, paper money, etc.) have not taken steps to ‘develop the technology which would make it very difficult to forge them’, then?
Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 26 Oct 2004 on 11:38 am | Link
Shame they’re not so eager to put the same amount of thought and consideration into the reliability of the technology too, eh?

The problem is that this is always going to be a rolling battle, in terms of both the technology required to forge documents, and the technology/wetware being used to validate documents (i.e. there’s no need to forge something perfectly if the validation is sloppy). Haven’t heard anything about how the HO will continue to assess this on a continual basis, which I figure they’ll have to do if this is supposed to be a long term thing.

Is it supposed to be a long term thing?
Comment by Scribe — 28 Oct 2004 on 12:34 pm | Link
It’s definitely supposed to be a long-term thing, but it seems like they’re not all that bothered about examining the details at the moment. The Home Affairs Select Committee (with the honorable and notable exception of two of their members) seemed relatively convinced that the Home Office had the minuti\xE6 in hand, though.

We definitely have some work to do, to convince the public that’s not the case.

And, in a shameless bit of self-promotion, concerned readers might be interested in NO2ID’s petition on the subject, at <a href="http://www.no2id-petition.net/">http://www.no2id-petition.net/</a> (I’m the Technical Manager of The NO2ID Campaign).
Comment by Owen Blacker — 7 Nov 2004 on 7:42 pm | Link

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» Monday, October 25, 2004

ID Cards

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