Confusion still reigns within the UK government over plans for a national ID card. Home Secretary David Blunkett (the Minister of Internal Affairs) has continued to push his scheme despite opposition from Cabinet colleagues.

Though it is unclear whether carrying a card would be mandatory, Blunkett said at the very least no-one should be able to work or claim benefits without one.

While little principled opposition seems to exist within the government, the Treasury has refused to fund the cards. The Home Office has therefore suggested that citizens should be forced to pay around 60 Euro each to obtain a card.

A new price-scheme for public transport in London puts a high price on privacy. Bus and tube tickets in central London will rise up to 25% in price from January 2004. But passengers using the Oyster smartcard will be able to travel at 2003 prices. This plastic card, fitted with a contact-less microchip (RFID), was introduced earlier this summer for annual and monthly ticket holders and requires registration of name, address and photocard number. According to the official website, one of the scheme's advantages is that it will 'provide information that will help London to manage its transport system better. For instance, we will be able to identify where people, and how many, are transferring from bus to bus or from bus to Tube.'

For almost the same plans to register all travel-movements, the Helsinki

The UK Government has finally admitted that the public are overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of a national ID card. In response to a parliamentary question from member of parliament Anne McIntosh, Home Office minister Beverley Hughes has confirmed that over 5,000 of the 7,000 responses to a public consultation on the issue were opposed to the scheme.

Recently, government ministers claimed that they received around 2,000 responses, 2:1 of which were in favour of the idea. Yet stand.org.uk, which allowed user to e-mail responses to the consultation, report that they forwarded 5,029 -- mostly negative -- messages on behalf of users.

The controversy in the UK around the introduction of an 'entitlement card' was stirred up again last week by the Home Office (the Ministry of Internal Affairs for England and Wales). The Sunday Telegraph reported that Home Secretary David Blunkett (the minister) intends to charge people 35 - 43 euros for the cards. Thus he hopes to win over the Treasury department who balked at the estimated cost of 2.3 billion euros. Blunkett seems convinced that people's concerns over terrorism and immigration would mean that they would not object to the cost of the card.

Another issue raised in the consultation was the type of identity verification that would be used on the card.

Telecom providers in Switzerland must register user data for prepaid cards and keep the data available for a period of 2 years. Parliament decided today to add this obligation to a series of new anti-terrorism measures. None of the EU member states have a similar obligation. Telecom providers have always argued against mandatory identification, pointing at the high costs for the extensive network of resellers and the probability of people helping out criminals by buying prepaid cards for them.

The large support for the new measure seems to stem from the discovery that at least 1 Al Qaeda member used a Swiss prepaid card. Switzerland used to be one of the few countries worldwide to sell prepaid cards for international roaming. The new measure doesn't just require identification for those specific roaming-cards, but for all users of all prepaid cards. In her defence of the measure, the Swiss justice minister Ruth Metzler produced some statistics about telecommunications interception in Switzerland. Last year, law enforcement authorities made 80.000 requests for the identity of telephone users, resulting in 6.000 court-approved wiretaps. Of the 80.000 identity-requests, 30.000 were prepaid mobile phones.

Only a few EU-member states currently have ID-requirements. Privacy-authorities and civil rights groups alike doubt the practical effects and warn against highly arbitrary checks. Belgium, France and Spain, where ID-requirements have been in place for a long time, have bad track-records of police discrimination.

Belgium currently has the strictest legislation, requiring everybody age 15 and older to show ID when asked by a police officer, without the need for a suspicion. In the Netherlands, the minister of justice recently proposed an ID-requirement for everybody age 12 and above. According to research by the ministry of justice, published in a letter to parliament 29 October 2001, the Netherlands would suddenly have the most repressive ID-scheme in Europe.

According to this research, in Germany inhabitants 16 years and older are required to show ID to police officers. In practice ID-requirement is limited to financial transactions. In France and Spain, officials must provide some ground, like danger to public safety, to require ID, but in practice there is a lot of debate about arbitrary checks, like in Belgium.

Ignoring criticism from the national privacy authority, Belgian parliament approved of the introduction of an electronic passport. The new chipcard will be tested in 11 municipalities. If the pilot succeeds, all inhabitants of Belgium will have an electronic ID within 5 years. The new credit-card sized passport shows regular data like name, date of birth and national ID-number, but the chip will also contain the address-data.

The revised law simultaneously lowers the access barriers to the national register. Every public and private authority or any of its assignees are granted access 'to excise tasks of public interest'. On top of that, a newly instituted 'sectoral committee' can authorise any other sort of access-request.

The new credit-card sized passport contains several digital keys, to enable remote identification via internet. Personal data on the chip are secured via a public key infrastructure (PKI). To be able to read or scramble data, a combination is required of a public and a private key. The public key can be given out to everybody, while the 'private key' is locked in the chip on the ID-card.

Microsoft has agreed to change its Passport authentication system, after the publication on 29 January of a very critical review by the united EU privacy commissioners. Besides the Microsoft .NET Passport system, the commissioners, united in the so-called Article 29 Working Party, also examined the Liberty Alliance Project. The review concludes with general guidelines for future on-line authentication systems.

In order to comply with EU privacy rules, Microsoft agreed to substantially modify the Passport system, "involving in particular a radical change of the information flow".

Passport is a system that centralizes authentication and information sharing for users on the internet. The system stores user information such as addresses, ages, phone and credit card numbers and other personal details in a large central database. With one click, users can transfer their personal information to participating websites.