27 August 2009

Millions of people working in education in health or as volunteers could come under pressure to be fingerprinted and obtain a national ID card, it was revealed today.

Research by online IT magazine The Register [1] has uncovered proposals to use ID cards and the national database behind them to support Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks – which are due to be extended to many more categories of people.

From October this year people working in all sort of roles will be compelled to be registered with a new vetting body the Independent Safeguarding Authority, which may eventually keep tabs on around 11 million workers and volunteers at any one time. ‘Enhanced’ CRB checks mean not just criminal records, but police intelligence files containing suspicions, opinions and unsubstantiated allegations, may be used for the purpose.[2]

To make this massive administrative task a manageable one, officials are aiming to use the Home Office’s ID database, which is going ahead. ID records and police intelligence records would end up connected for millions. One of the most frightening predictions of campaigners against ID cards – that the ID scheme will be an easy reference to all official files and a key to the most private information about every one of us – could be coming true before a single ID card has been issued.

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID [3] said:

This is entirely consistent with the various forms of coercion strategy they’ve been working on to create so-called volunteers for ID cards.
Biometrics are part of the search for clean, unique identifiers. But it’s patently ridiculous given another part of the plan has people registering fingerprints in high street shops.

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID said:

Ministers are always quick to point out the ID database itself will not contain criminal records. The covert programme unearthed by The Register shows what a fatuous piece of misdirection that is. If the CRB gets its way, then for millions of people their ID card would be directly LINKED to a detailed police record and a scoring system designed to evaluate their suitability for various jobs.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) ‘CRB looks to ID cards to solve accuracy woes’ The Register – 27 August 2008 – see
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/27/crb_id/

2) As widely reported. See, for example: ‘There’s no escape from the past in this kangaroo court’ Guardian, 17 June 2009 –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jun/17/mark-johnson-prisons-probation

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.

For immediate release 6th August 2009

Technical expert Adam Laurie has demonstrated copying, cloning and changing details [1] on the biometric visa cards being issued by the government to foreign nationals – the same technology that is to be used for the UK ID scheme.

This is just the latest in a series of ‘hacking’ exercises showing the technical insecurity of the Identity and Passport Service’s products [2]. Officials have repeatedly declared them impossible, despite clear evidence and open demonstrations for the press. The very information most useful to identity thieves and fraudsters is made more vulnerable by using microchips *designed* to broadcast your personal details for official convenience.

NO2ID [3] today condemned the Home Office for knowingly making ‘ID theft’ easier, ignoring dangerous vulnerabilities in the ID card as it pursues its real goal – the universal population register that would give officials unprecedented control of our lives, and make the Home Office king in Whitehall.

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID said:

‘This shows up the big con. The Home Office doesn’t really care about ‘ID theft’, or it wouldn’t be pushing technology that any competent crook can
subvert.

‘The ID-obsessed officials are putting our personal information at risk in their scramble to control it. They want to build a population register – the database for which the card is just a Trojan horse. It doesn’t matter how shoddy the card itself is, or what it costs the public.’

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) ‘New ID cards are supposed to be ‘unforgeable’ – but it took our expert 12 minutes to clone one, and programme it with false data’, Daily Mail,
6/8/09 – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204641/New-ID-cards-supposed-unforgeable–took-expert-12-minutes-clone-programme-false-data.html

2) The microchip, also embedded in ‘e-Passports’, was first cracked in 2006 – ‘Cracked it!’, Guardian, 17/11/06,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs
Then the data was stolen from a passport still inside the envelope in which it is delivered – ‘Safest ever passport is not fit for purpose’, Daily Mail, 5/3/07,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-440069/Safest-passport-fit-purpose.html
Finally details were changed and the passport chip cloned over one year ago -’Fakeproof e-passport is cloned in minutes’, Times, 6/8/08, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4467106.ece

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.