The House of Lords, Britain's upper house of parliament, has dealt three blows to the government's plans to introduce national ID cards. Uncertainty surrounding the costs, fears over the security of the information contained on the cards and their impact on the everyday lives of Britons has thrown the future of the cards themselves into doubt.
Above all else, the Lords disliked the sums that would be required to implement the state-of-the-art project. They voted by 237 votes to 156 for a resolution demanding that the National Audit Office justify its estimate of the costs for such a scheme. In other words, the Lords expressed their distrust at the figures put forward by the lower house after a parallel study by the London School of Economics suggested that the cost of the cards would be three times the government's estimate.
One member of the House of Lords remarked that it was essential that an exact description of the spending was outlined because it was believed the government was trying to hide the real costs.
The government suffered a second defeat on the question of how to securely store the personal information on the ID cards. According to the Lords, there is widespread public concern as to the accuracy and how up to date the information on the cards will be, and how well it will be protected. The latter aspect is seen as particularly relevant in light of the growing problem of identity theft and fraud.
The third defeat came over the compulsory nature of the cards. The Lords voted 194 to 141 for an amendment limiting the potential for ID cards to be required before people can access public services.
In its current form the legislation does not clearly state where the ID cards would be used. In practice, it would allow any of the numerous public services to demand an ID card, as long as the government claimed it was in the interests of efficiency. The House of Lords, however, wants the number of those services to be limited.
The government will now either have to adopt the amendments or itself make changes when the bill returns to the lower house of parliament.
“The questions raised by the upper house are particularly pertinent. However, the problem of security is far more serious, considering the fact that the costs are decided on the level of the state treasury, while the question of applying the laws is decided by the introduction of amendments to the text of the bill," Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch, believes.
“Particular attention needs to be paid to the problem of making the private information on the cards secure, as well as the information stored in archives at the different agencies and companies that read the personal data from the ID card. That issue demands very thorough development and can't be resolved by the government and legislation. It is essential to involve experts and the respective companies who are capable of assessing security measures and putting them into practice," Denis Zenkin adds.
Source: vnunet.com
