The pseudonymous ‘Slowjoe’ sends in this article to ponder on the subject of ID cards. Incidentally, anyone with articles on that subject would do well to consider submitting them to our sister site White Rose, which really specialises in civil liberties issues such as this.
The Register has the story of a man jailed because of a flaw in a fingerprint identification program which appears to have been chosen as the basis of the UK ID card scheme.
A number of disturbing points:
- The victim in this case didn’t realise that the software was flawed until 4 years after he’d been jailed.
- There have been at least 97 cases where mistaken identification took place that the state of Oregon was aware of. Since these involved fingerprints, it’s likely that this means “97 cases of wrongful arrest”.
- This story appeared in the Register on May 11th. No mainstream news site has considered it worth covering. (My basis for this is are two searches at new.google.com, a search of the UK site and of the US site. For the lazy, these links show that no mainstream news organisation has gone beyond printing Mr. Benson’s press release. A couple of finance websites and trial lawyers sites seem have also run it.)
- The defendants are crass enough to ask for the suit to be dismissed because the victim didn’t know about their software bug in time.
Next time someone suggests that “fingerprints are flawless”, the kicker is, the chosen system apparently cannot distinguish between men with 10 fingers, and those with only 9. How anyone can trust such a system is beyond me.
Is anyone still in favour of ID cards?
Slowjoe
Remember people, when asking for fingerprints make sure that everyone use the same set. Fingerprint scanners and biometric data can be beat.
Using gelatin and copying one set of fingerprints can be…useful.
The state is not your friend.
Even if the biometric data sytem was utterly flawless it would only take one crook using fake references working wherever they process the data to create false ID cards.
Actually if the scheme goes ahead I may make a career change just to discredit it. Anyone want an ID card made out to Micky mouse?
While your offer of a card in the name of Michael Mouse is intriguing, I have to refuse. I want no part of the ID card system.
If you were offering a card in the name of I. Huntley, and could combine that with the fingerprints of one D. Blunkett, I’d be far more interested.
For purely academic reasons, of course.
I recently had to wait for an hour and a half at the Department of Motor Vehicles to get my ID card renewed (a process that took a few minutes). There has to be a better system.
A friend of mine is a cabin crew member for a transatlantic airline. The week they brought in the fingerprint system for visa holders (flight crew need visa’s) he has his taken and thought nothing of it.
On his next trip he was stopped by the INS because… his fingerprint did not match the record. The reason being they had mixed his prints up with somebody else. It was 2 trips before they sorted it out.
Fingerprint systems, especially many-to-many matching are simply not that effective. Even with a biometric card to match against there are a huge number of potential error points.