Mystic Meg's miracle cure

Identity card junkie Meg Hillier MP has once again been caught pushing the abhorrent pink plastic.

This time she has written a piece for Progress (the New Labour think tank) where she suggests ID cards could be the miracle cure for social exclusion.

The bulk of her argument focuses on the flimsy claim that:

Currently 80 per cent of the population have passports. That means 20 per cent are without access to the highest standard of identity verification.

Firstly, the majority of that 20% are not without access to the highest standard of identity verification, they simply do not have a passport. Secondly, we at Big Brother Watch do not think that the offer of a £30 ID card that has so far cost the taxpayer around £4.5 billion, and levies punitive fines at people who don't keep their details up-to-date, is the silver bullet to social exclusion.

It should be noted that many individuals may not want or need a passport. Hillier may enjoy playing the social exclusion card to her home crowd, but most will see it as another shallow smokescreen in the Government's quest for total surveillance of the general public.

On several occasions Meg suggests the importance of building an identity footprint. She presumably has a size 13 and leaves a trail of bank statements wherever she treads.

But, as always, Meg is on hand to provide us with some unintentional hilarity, writing:

My vision is of an identity service where government's role is limited to ensuring safety and security in providing the infrastructure...the technological possibilities are exciting.

On the same day that Kable reported:

Alan Johnson said in the last year five people had been disciplined or dismissed for falsifying records or manipulating Home Office systems…. Six people have been disciplined for unauthorised access to a database or letting someone else use their log-in.

Hmmm, safety and security. For all you technological thrill seekers, you must agree that is quite exhilarating. 

By James Stannard

Comments

[alastair]

I'll say it again: *if* they did it right, ID cards could be a good thing (for one thing, they might mean that leaving a trail of bank accounts behind you wasn't likely to result in someone applying for bank loans in your name).

Unfortunately I don't rate the changes of the government getting this one right, since I don't think they really understand where the genuine benefits might lie, and I don't understand why it's taken them £4.5bn to do this either… that seems a thoroughly ridiculous sum, and I'm pretty certain that I could do it cheaper, *and* end up with something that actually made peoples' lives better (rather than worse, which these certainly do if there are punitive measures for "failing to keep data up to date").

On databases, there's no reason for them to not be properly secured. Government shouldn't be using Access databases (or similar) for this kind of purpose - it should be using proper client-server database software with access controls and an audit trail. Client-server databases *can* be properly locked down, and indeed will let you detect things like unauthorised access or misuse where a paper filing system most certainly would not. I wonder whether these figures from Alan Johnson reflect that (for instance, I know HMRC's databases flag up accesses to celebrities' and other high-profile figures' tax records, and I know people have been disciplined for unauthorised access to those, which wouldn't have happened if all of the files were on paper because nobody would have known what they'd looked at).

[Max]

Tsk! £4.5 billion is the cost of running the ID card AND passport system over the NEXT ten years. And it's not taxpayers' money - the money comes from the sale of the products in question: ID cards (currently £30) and passports (currently at least £77.50).

[Purlieu]

She says that passports are 2the highest standard of identity verification".
Agreed, so where does that leave ID cards, #2 at best LOL

[Mishmash]

"Hillier may enjoy playing the social exclusion card to her home crowd..." If they are her home crowd, I'm starting to feel sorry for her: see the comments beneath the article; if I were Meg, I'd be weeping.

[LeChiffre]

In this article

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-17/u-k-may-ask-rbs-lloyds-to-subsidize-identity-cards-update1-.html

Meg Hillier says that ID cards could replace bus passes for the over 60s and be used in supermarkets to prove age for those buying booze (until, that is, New Prohibition is introduced): a far cry from preventing terrorism and the other grand objectives New Labour previously said the NIR and ID cards would achieve. The NIR and ID cards policy has become a farce; it’s a policy which, so far, has failed to find a role. Desperate. Ridiculous.

[Redacted]

Who actually owns my identity?

[Purlieu]

Another thing ... what exactly do I need "identity verification" for ??

[Redacted]

Mishmash: You are right about the comments under Hillier's article. My favourite:

"When they brand cattle, it's for the farmer's benefit, not the cow's." :D

[sean]

alastair...there is no way that an ID card is a good idea...there is also no way to 'properly secure' any database...period! you have a very simplistic view of a very technically and architecturally complex 'solution'. this is symptomatic really- people (like our lying, cheating politicos) not fully understanding the complexities involved and the very real dangers of such a system...apart from the very fact that the idea of ID cards is absolutely abhorrent. information on ID cards is also likely to be sold to, accessed or managed in some way by third party private entities with complex data-mining capabilities and access to multiple source 'data marts'. if ID cards were utilised as the govt is pushing for then it would be very easy to build up a complete picture of an individual. lumping one's eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

[ERM]

Followed your link & made a suitably unsupportive comment on the original article.

[Bob Morgan]

Unfortunately, 'Mystic Smeg' (Meg Hillier MP) has not got this quite right! - A 'Passport' is not the 'Supreme form of Identification' that she insists! - Apparently, A 'Gas Bill' takes precedence over a Passport in the UK!

[[email protected]]

Please everyone: go to the article and post a comment; Meg may be reading the comments ... and weeping.

http://www.progressives.org.uk/articles/article.asp?a=5562

[Pin Badges]

I am agree with you james. Nice topic to debate & great analysis have been made. But the largest problem is that how we can easily & efficiently can sort out it.