ID Cards Looming For Australia And The UK
ID Cards Looming For Australia And The UK
April 26th, 2006: Federal Cabinet will today consider a single “smart card” for every Australian adult. The card will be designed to provide easier access to Medicare services and Centrelink welfare payments, however, it will also function as a national identity card.
As reported in The Sydney Morning Herald with heavy deployment of the “T” word, the cards will include a photograph and computer chip to reduce identity fraud and protect against terrorists.
Two cards were originally being pushed by the Government and the Australian intelligence agencies. However, instead of separate (and costly) Healthcare and ID cards, features of the two will be combined in a single new card which will replace up to 19 others currently used for various government payments and benefits.
Costing up to $1 billion, the new card will undoubtedly draw debate not only because of the cost, but also as potential loss of civil liberties are weighed up against possible security benefits.
“You have to put that against the right all of us have to expect of our Government that it takes all reasonable measures to protect us against the behaviour of terrorists," Prime Minister Howard said last year. “I think when people talk about civil liberties they sometimes forget that action taken to protect the citizen against physical attack is a blow in favour and not a blow against civil liberties.”
As debate seems to be warming up again in Australia, it is already on the boil in the UK. In the wake of the London bombings, The Register is reporting that after just three weeks of overcoming opposition to ID cards in England’s House of Lords, the Home Office has published a controversial ten year plan for implementing the system.
Critics are claiming that the government is rushing with the system, and because of its haste it is not open to valid criticism, debate or even the diversity of opinion required to implement what could be the most ambitions project of its kind in the world.
The London School of Economics for example has released a report asserting that the ID system could cost as much as £19.2 billion, £13.4 billion more than the governments estimated £5.8 billion, that has fallen on deaf ears.
"There's a problem for anyone who is vaguely critical. The reception the London School of Economics got has put anyone off putting their head above the parapet," says Jerry Fishenden, national technology offiver at Microsoft UK speaking to The Register.
IT vendors are particularly concerned about the haste in which the system is being prepared. They say that they will be expected to implement the scheme and will get the blame for any IT related problems in the end, when at least half the blame would rest on inadequate planning on the governments side.
“What is being proposed is no accounting system,” says Fishenden. “It is one of the most ambitious projects, with the most alarming social consequences, ever undertaken. Biometric technology is unproven on armies of co-operative corporate drones. It may not be easy to get it working on a population of 60m people, many of whom will resist its imposition. That's another significant reason for the failure of major IT projects - what they call "user acceptance"; or as government ministers would have it nowadays, "customer satisfaction".
The Howard government will no doubt be watching the ID card situation in the UK very closely as it develops.
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