Here (in the better a bit late than a bit never category) is vnunet.com reporting on Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech:
Plans to introduce identity cards have been included in the Queen’s Speech today, marking a significant testing ground for biometric security technology.
Details of the plans were kept to a minimum, with Her Majesty telling parliament that the government “will take forward work on an incremental approach to a national identity cards scheme and will publish a draft bill in the new year”.
It is likely that the cards will incorporate biometric technology. With potentially almost 50 million cards (for UK citizens aged 16 or above) being issued, this would be a major testing ground for the technology.
The technology is controversial, and the cabinet is not united:
Even Cabinet ministers have been sceptical about the plans. When talking about ID cards recently, Trade and Industry secretary Patricia Hewitt acknowledged that the government’s track record indicated that large IT projects had “a horrible habit of going wrong”.
And as civil libertarians predicted long ago, the Data Protection Act will only apply to the citizenry, not to the Government itself:
The legislation to be unveiled next year will also aim to iron out potential problems with existing laws, such as the Data Protection Act (DPA), to give the government greater flexibility on how it can use personal information.
Those pesky “existing laws”.
The DPA imposes conditions on how stored personal information can be used.
The government intends to combine information currently stored by the Passport Agency and the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency to form a national identity database. This procedure could face problems without the clarification.
Ah yes. Clarification.
The era of Joined Up Government approaches inexorably.
