Identity Theft Check

Critics of the British identity card scheme suggest that they will compromise our civil liberties in the UK, that they will be too expensive and that they will do little to counter problems like terrorism (mentioned in a previous article).

There are also concerns that ID cards will cause tension within ‘ethnic minorities’, particularly groups that have been affected most by police stop and searches. Some people have even suggested that ID cards would force illegal immigrants to avoid contact with police and hospitals.

The government has tried to assure people that whereas the government does hold information about citizens, such as medical records and driving licence information, so do many private companies from supermarkets to insurance firms.

But the government emphasises that neither they nor the public at large have a system that proves who people really are without a wide margin for abuse and fraud.

Signatures and photo IDs are no longer considered enough in a world of hi-tech and often uncontrollable dispersion of personal information. The British ID cards, however, are intended to link biometric Person-Identifying Information, like iris patterns and fingerprints with the ID document itself.

It is hoped that this would make it nearly impossible for most criminals to impersonate other people for fraudulent ends, or to create entirely fake identities for similar purposes…