I was at this event too, but from reading your account it sounds like you were at a different event! There was actually one single pro question on ID cards and several anti questions from the audience (notably from a Lib Dem councellor I think, who clearly had a political agenda, and someone who claimed to be a journalist but actually did sound a lot like a consipricy theorist), as well as the detailed questions from journalists about the programme you might expect. You also make the assertion that the Government doesn’t want ideas from anyone who doesn’t like the programme. Well, if you mean ideas like scapping it, then who can blame them? It’s already up and working with thousands of cards out there. From her perspective why on earth would she even consider cancelling it? It’s a government IT programme that is on time and on budget, and working. Annoying for most IT journalists I would have thought. I what she was after was constructive ideas like what they do with ID cards in other countries for example, that might work heer in Britian too (and I thought the example of the Belgian’s barring entry to children’s chatrooms to anyone who can’t prove online with their ID card that they are a child was a very good idea, and as a parent I’d support that one). Rather than just resorting to sarcasm as a way of denigrating anyone who actually might think ID cards have benefits as a stooge or a plant, could you accept that actually opinion might be much more evenly balanced? And with that in mind, I’d be interested if you have any ideas on what might be a good public use of ID cards. Here’s a few ideas from Europe on what they do with thier ID cards: electronic voting to replace postal voting; digital signatures so documents can be signed online; setting up a business in an hour using your ID card; showing your ID cards if you forget your train ticket and getting seven days to produce it, rather than a fine. I could go on….

[…] Kobie writes in the IT Pro Editorial blog: My mum — and yours too, I’m sure — used to say this: […]

@Aurora

Sorry if it isn’t clear from the post, but I was referring to a group of people snickering at the back of the room, not the whole audience.

Like your ideas, especially the train ticket one. However, I also like the idea of not being fined for failing to update my address on a database. While I think the government wants your ideas, it doesn’t want anything negative - and that’s not the right attitude to take.

-Nicole

@Aurora : the UK ID scheme doesn’t have any scope for those eID uses to be added so we can’t have the Belgian online authentication or document signing without some major re-working.

Equally, asking business for ideas comes a bit late - they should have been consulted before it started so that the framework could be created as part of the scheme.

Wait, hang on - they did get someone to look into it - Crosby - they buried his report for a year and ignored almost all of his recommendations.

I don’t much like the idea of a fine either. It’s very similar to the fine you are supposed to get for not updating your driving licence, except it’s a civil offence for not updating your ID card and a criminal offence for not updating your driving licence, but it’s never enforced by the DVLA so why have it?. Not terribly customer friendly. I can’t imagine how they’d actually enforce it for ID cards either to be honest, I mean, they don’t know when you move anyway so how would they know if you hadn’t updated them?

You might find this interesting though - a white paper from Gemalto which looks at what other countries in Europe and the middle east are doing with thier ID cards. Some really quite exciting ideas, if you get excited by that sort of thing…!
http://www.securitydocumentworld.com/public/news.cfm?&m1=c_10&m2=c_6&m3=e_0&m4=e_0&subItemID=2010

@HW That’s true but we’re hardly going to stay with the mark one version of the card forever I would presume (and presuming it survives at all). I note that the contract to produce the initial card is quite short - signed in 2008 and lasting for four years. Who knows what might come next, and maybe that’s what the government was driving at a little yesterday.

I actually don’t agree with your second point about consulting with the private sector first. The customer, yes, but the private sector? The Estonian (I think) card is quite illustrative in that respect. They very much saw building the infrastructure first as the way to go, and then the addittional private sector functionality comes in.

And on your points about the Crosby report, I just re read it and the current system does tick a number of the boxes he hilighted, but I can’t get my head around the idea that they should be free. Nothing’s free - someone has to pay - and if I want a card then I should be the one paying for it, not getting it ‘free’ i.e. paid for by the poor old taxpayer.

ID cards are doomed.

@Aurora: You say that ID Cards should not be “paid for by the poor old taxpayer”, and I agree - but let’s not forget that the Home Office is spending £230,000 of taxpayers’ money every single day on this ID scheme. It costs them around £300 in advertising to sign up each of the people they’ve persuaded to get one. Since the holders can’t do anything with the cards that they couldn’t do with the documents they already have, it’s not surprising that the Home Office has to spend so much money persuading each person to get one.

Ask yourself who benefits from this scheme. It’s certainly not the ID card holders. It’s Whitehall. This is really about the centralised database of the UK population that the Home Office wants to build. The cards, and any idea of allowing people to prove their identities, are just a smoke-screen. That’s why all the independent experts have been ignored - The London School of Economics in 2005, Crosby in 2007/8, Prof John Daugman in 2008, Prof Ross Anderson in 2009. All told the Home Office the scheme would not achieve its purported goals. All ignored.

Instead, the Home Office is dazzled by the prospect of getting back the national database of the UK population it lost when Churchill abolished wartime Identity Cards in the 1950s. Nothing else matters to them. That’s why the promoters of this scheme will forever be deaf to proposals for an identity scheme that’s actually useful for the population.

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The national ID card has never fully been accepted by the public, because the public have never actively been asked if they want it. There’s close parallels to the community charge here. The government thought that just because it was mentioned in the manifesto it gave them carte blanche to put the legislation through, and by giving it a fluffy name “community charge” we would see it as something benefiting the community. It didn’t benefit the community and the public annoyingly started to refer to it as the poll-tax, and they got angry because they saw that there objections were being ignored, and then we had a riot and the rest is history.

If there were to be a referendum tomorrow on ID, or NO2ID, I think I know which one would win and so does the Government. Which is why they’re having to resort to paying huge amounts in marketing costs, £300 per person to get members of the public to accept it.
The government initially assumed we’d accept ID cards if they could persuade us that it will prevent terrorism, that failed, it won’t and they know it won’t. They then said it’s going to be great for young people, as they don’t need to carry a passport to prove their age in bars, and that’s failed. Now Aurora - whoever you are - seem to be implying that it’s a way of avoiding paedophiles joining forums, and it means you can start a business in an hour. This is clutching at straws. You can start a business in under an hour in the UK already, and you have been able to do this for tens of years. Plus the only way an ID card can effectively be used as an online ID, is to have every PC/laptop/iPhone etc fitted with a card reader and a camera or fingerprint reader and that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

It’s a waste of hundreds of millions of pounds and I’ve never met anyone who actually actively wants one. If they really have the courage of their convictions in ID cards then they would have a referendum on it.