The UK Government's plans for a national identity card have come under renewed criticism in a report published last week by the London School of Economics.

The report, "The Identity Project: An assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill & its implications", featured contributions from experts across the LSE and from businesses that would be involved in building any ID system. The report concludes that the government's proposals are "too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence." It also finds that the risks involved in the government's proposals are such that "the scheme should be regarded as a potential danger to the public interest and to the legal rights of individuals".

The use of iris scans and fingerprints in the scheme is identified as a particular risk. "The technology envisioned for this scheme is, to a large extent, untested and unreliable. No scheme on this scale has been undertaken anywhere in the world... A fully integrated national system of this complexity and importance will be technologically precarious and could itself become a target for attacks by terrorists or others." Meanwhile however the EU Council of Ministers is pushing for the creation of an EU-wide biometric database.

The LSE report proved influential in this week's House of Lords debate on the government's ID plans. Peers from all political parties called on the government to abandon the legislation and to reconsider the issues raised by the report in the next Parliament. As there is now very little time left before the next election is expected to be called, it is likely that the government will have little choice but to take this advice.

The Identity Project: An assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill & its implications (March 2005)
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/PDF/IDrepor...

EDRI Open Letter to the European Parliament on Biometric Registration (26.11.2004)
http://www.edri.org/campaigns/biometrics/eu

House of Lords debate on the Identity Cards Bill (21.03.2005)
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd...

(Contribution by Ian Brown, EDRI board member)