Identity Theft Check

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.