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National ID cards could cost as much as £230 per person, academics warned yesterday on the eve of the Government’s second attempt to pass the controversial legislation through the House of Commons. A six-month study by the London School of Economics found the lowest price each person is expected to pay per biometric card was around £170, a significant increase from the £93 predicted by the Government. The report claimed the scheme could end up costing £19bn - more than three times government estimates. Small companies will suffer in the nationwide roll-out, the LSE warned, as new smartcard readers are expected to cost around £250. Aside from cost concerns, the report’s authors warned that the technology supplier who wins the multi-billion pound ID card contract faces an untested IT challenge. “No scheme on this scale has been undertaken anywhere in the world,” said the report’s technology section. “Smaller and less ambitious schemes have encountered substantial technological and operational problems that are likely to be amplified in a large-scale national system. “The use of biometrics creates particular concerns, because this technology has never been used at such a scale.” The LSE added concern that the national identity cards database to support the scheme raises serious civil rights issues, while also providing computer hackers with a “very large data pool.” Unless such privacy concerns are addressed, the national programme runs the risk of being far less successful than a scheme that is “well-accepted by citizens,” the LSE said. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said the scheme is so unpopular that it would become Tony Blair’s poll tax. “A cost of billions of pounds would be bad enough if the Prime Minister's white elephant weren't quite so dangerous,” said Chakrabarti. “When you add this to the huge social cost for race relations and traditional freedoms, you have an extremely rogue beast-born of political machismo rather than concern for Britain's safety.” The LSE predictions and concerns yesterday prompted the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas to describe the data that will be required of people to provide ID cards as “unwarranted, intrusive and excessively disproportionate.” His lambasting of national ID cards comes after a report by a Sunday newspaper claimed Home Office officials had started talks with a number of private firms to sell the details of 44m Britons to help pay for the scheme. The Home Office has denied the claims, saying they are “without foundation.” Yet officials conceded that a fee-charging mechanism for banks to check data against details displayed on a biometric card would be in place as a safeguard against fraud. Officials rejected claims that private sector individuals would be able to go “fishing” for information. Tony Blair yesterday joined the defence of the high-technology cards, rejecting them as a “flagship programme of the government” and describing them instead as security issue “any government” would have to face. Dismissing the LSE figures as “absolutely absurd,” Mr Blair added: “No government is going to start introducing something that is going to cost hundreds of pounds for people, that would be ridiculous. “But there are genuine good reasons for doing this now, because of the change of technology, the fact that we will all have to pay for the biometric passport, and the identity card part of it is a very small additional cost.” He said because everywhere else around the world is opting for biometric technology in passports, Britain is going to have to “reissue passports… with biometric technology. “Now the point is that for a small additional cost, as I say under £30, not these wild figures that have been talked about, we are going to be able to give ourselves an identity card that then has these other benefits internally.” The PM advised the Information Commissioner to study “what will be happening” over the coming months, and said benefits of a secure system will combat identity fraud in social security, public services, illegal immigration and illegal working. The British public support the ID card proposal in principal added Mr Blair, who said the end-game for new biometric technology will see computerised embarkation checks from 2008. But in an open letter to the Financial Times, Neil Fisher, director at security experts QinetiQ, said the ID card programme warrants its own bespoke computer model that should be built from one single card, especially in the absence of “detailed validation” from the Government. “To validate the system credibly, a complex (but not complicated) computer model must be created and maintained. “By building up the model, from one single individual to a population of 64m registrants, all the challenges of a large information technology system can be tested, verified and understood before immense sums of money are invested. Even a small error, when scaled up, could prove very serious.” Meanwhile, anti-ID cards lobby group, NO2ID, condemned the government for rejecting the LSE figures when it still fails to explain its own figures of £93 per ID card. “If Charles Clarke wants us to believe his figure, he should present a detailed breakdown of how the Home Office have costed ID cards and the massive database behind them and stop making excuses,” said Chris Booth, group National Coordinator. “The LSE has done the nation a favour, revealing the true shape and scale of the problems with this ill conceived scheme." Mr Fisher added: “The government has only one chance to get the ID cards scheme right. If the system - which has to last for at least 15 years - is not a success the first time, the result will be disastrous.” Jun 28, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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