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Sunday, November 13, 2005

UK Identity Card Followup

Katherine Courtney, Director of the United Kingdom's Identity Cards Programme, notes in the October 2005 issue of the IMIS Journal:
“Twenty-one of the 25 member states in the European Union already have some form of identity cards, and the information that will be contained on the proposed ID cards in the UK will be no more than is currently stored on an individual’s passport or driving licence.”
IMIS stands for the Institute for the Management of Information Systems.

The controversial ID card completed its parliamentary committee process in July, so it is slowly moving toward implementation. Assuming the bill passes, the British government hopes to have the first identity cards issued in 2008. The card is designed to help the UK prevent terrorism, control and/or manage immigration, curtain fraudulent access to government services, and assure "accredited users" efficient confirmation of their identity.

The programme will certainly be unprecedented. Ms. Courtney, again:
"with 90 to 100 million records, each holding at least three pieces of biometric data on an individual, we expect ours to be the largest programme of its kind in the world.”
The three biometrics will be "iris, facial, and fingerprint." It's actually 13 sources of biometric info if you count each finger and eye separately.

I blogged previously about this topic in December 2003.

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