Identity Theft Check

The utility of the British ID card programme is predicated wholly upon the success and efficiency of brand spanking new the National Identity Register (NIR) – started just this year (2008).

The system has been described by Government as being easy-to-use and extremely secure, containing personal identification for adults living in the UK – adults, in this case, being anyone over the age of 16 years.

The NIR scheme will be run by the Identity and Passport Service (IPS). The Government predicts that it will take several years yet for the NIR to become fully operational with everyone registered on and with it. Although this year saw the first enrolments of foreign nationals into the scheme, ID cards for British citizens are not expected to be available for issue in the UK before 2009.

The initial stages of the ID card programme will see them being issued to British citizens who apply for passports, either for a first time or to renew and old one, although they will eventually be available to people who do not want passports as well.

 For those who are resident within the UK but who are not British citizens, all residency permits, registration certificates or residency cards will take the form of an ID card instead.

The NIR scheme will eventually become compulsory, although the exact timescale of this has not been ironed out yet. Once it does become compulsory, all British citizens over the age of 16 will be required to have an ID card by law, although we are told that it will not be compulsory to carry it around with us at all times.

The information that will be stored on UK citizens will be a mix of unique biometric data, such as retinal scans and fingerprinting, and more other more mutable Person-Identifying Information.

We can expect the following personal details to be stored as part of the state-wide ID card programme:

- names

- fingerprints

- iris patterns

- facial image (as on passports and modern driving licenses)

- gender

- place and date of birth

- immigration status

- postal/living address

Details that we are told will not be part of our accessible personal database will include information such as:

Medical records

ethnic origin

tax records

religious beliefs

Your PII data will be stored on the National Identity Register database. Only Parliament will be able to amend what sorts of information can be stored on this database and access to the information will be very strictly limited and controlled.

That said, in addition to state agencies like the Benefits Office, the Police and perhaps certain elements of local government, certain private sector organisations will also be able to access your PII in the National Identity Register. So banks, for example, could ask you to prove your identity whenever you wish to open a new account, and accessing your PII will be part of that process. The same will apply when you register with a new GP.

Biometric identifiers are any unique elements of your Person-Identifying Information (PII) that can positively identify you above another person – so, for existence, your iris and fingerprint patterns are good examples of biometric identifiers.

The proposed British ID cards will have certain biometric identifiers coded into them, or, at the very least, certain biometric identifiers may be kept on a central database which can be accessed through use of the ID cards.

This means that the identity upon the cards will be linked even more closely with the individual it belongs to, making it harder for others to use. Indeed, because biometric data is even more personal to individuals and unique they can, generally speaking, be used to identify an individual even more accurately than other already existent forms of official authentication, such as passwords and PIN numbers that can be stolen, hacked or even guessed in some cases.

Biometric data is already being used in the British ‘E-Passports’, introduced in the UK back in 2006. In fact in the face of our globalising world where travel and the transmission and accessibility of information has and is becoming ever more easy, there has been a concerted effort across much of the rest of the world to further fortify state borders and personal and public databases against the possibility of intrusion by criminals and those who have no right to access them. In fact, at the time of writing, 21 of the 25 EU Members States have already brought in their own ID cards programmes, so the UK is far from being alone in this venture.

Because of the nature of the information stored on and through them, each ID card will exceptionally hard to fake, combining as they will the cardholder’s biometric identifiers (like iris scans and fingerprints) along with other checked and authenticated PII details (such as family names and home addresses), sometimes referred to as our ‘biographical footprint’.

Although most of the PII attached to the ID card programme will be stored on the as yet still nascent National Identity Register, some basic information will also be stored on the card itself,\probably in a chip as with bank and credit cards.

The British Government’s decision to bring in a National Identity Scheme, involving the creation and distribution of ID cards to the population, was announced formally on the 17^{th of May, 2005, in the Queens Speech. The Identity Cards Act subsequently received royal assent the on the 30th of March, 2006, becoming law.}

The Government commenced the introduction of biometric residence permits for foreign nationals this year (2008), and they have said that they anticipate that they will issue the first British ID cards to citizens in 2009.

The Government has said that its reasons for pushing through the legislation and issue of ID cards are predicated upon the national interest.

They suggest that ID cards will:

- make it easier to make use of public services and ensure that only those eligible for them can access them

- help prevent identity fraud by ensuring that people are who they say they are (at banks, shops and to any civil authorities etc)

- help tackle immigration abuse, ‘people smuggling’, and illegal working in the UK

- disrupt the wider implications and uses associated with identity crime including terrorist activities

Over the next few articles we will take an in depth look at what the Government has said concerning British ID cards and the state system that will surround them. We will also look at some of the controversies surrounding ID cards and will try to ascertain just how useful they will be to the public at large.

Over the next few articles we’ll be taking an in depth look at identity cards, their introduction to the UK, the reasons for their introduction and the controversies surrounding them.

The Government’s decision to start a National Identity Scheme, which involves the phasing in of mandatory identity cards for all British citizens, was announced on May 17th 2005 in the Queen’s Speech. The actual Identity Cards Act 2006 received Royal Assent a little under a year later on March 30th 2006.

The intention of the National Identity Scheme is to provide British residents, including foreign nationals, with a means to provide proof of their identity when necessary in a quicker, simpler and more secure manner, and also to make it much harder for criminals to create false identities or utilise someone else’s PII for criminal ends.

ID cards of different sorts are used in most other countries in the global north-west and have been for many years. The British system is intended to be even more hi-tech than these existing ID card systems in other countries, including such hard to fake details as a photo, holograms, a PIN and certain biometric information (such as fingerprints) which will be stored electronically in the card. The intention is that even if the card is stolen, all these details together will make it very hard for the thief to use the card without falling foul of the security measures implicit within it.

The Government regards the introduction of ID cards as a vital step in combating the growing number and manner identity crimes of the 21st Century. Although the exact details of what the British ID cards will consist of has not been decided upon yet, it is more than likely that they will be plastic and roughly the same size as a credit card, bearing the holder’s photograph and with a computer chip (like chip-based credit and debit cards) that will hold the bearer’s personal information.