johnfelstead

I dont know why they dont just go straight for the chip insert under your skin at birth method, that will be the eventual outcome of this law being passed, your entire life movements held in a data warehouse. Marvelous.

johnskelley

this aint as stupid as it sounds, we do it to dogs. Bet we would love it if we could trace our children by gps if they went missing. Of course it all smacks of big brother but we are most of the way there now, with all the camera's spying on us. I dont think there would be too much problem whilst we had reasonably democratic governments, the problems would arise if we were ever invaded and conquered or we were subject to a military coup. It seems to me that if your not doing anything wrong, then whats the problem, criminals would have to beware if everybody were able to be tracked and records were kept of our movements. We virtually do it willingly now ,when we carry a mobile phone.

Felix.

At the moment he will give a false name which will not be on PNC. Hence we can't disprove him and we let him go.

With an ID card, he will produce his true identity. So we can check him on PNC for his past record, associates, MO etc. If he has existing warrants, he will be locked up. If he is in a high crime area he can be locked up for conspiring to burgle etc.

Its a valuable tool for the police to use to target criminals.

Felix.

a) Why?? - What have you got to hide by the police knowing your name

b) Disturbing?? - Whats disturbing about proving your ID

c) Most police work is now inteligence led. We need to know who our target criminals are and where they are moving about and where possible to get them off the streets

Leslie

In the future, once our country has been totally turned around and fully "modernised", that fact that you have nothing to hide won't necessarily protect you!

Les

Felix.

Unless you know the ins and outs of the case - you can't comment. I have had violent 60 and 70 year olds who have never been in bother before. We cannot discriminate age

Felix.

At the moment, if i stop someone who is wanted or breaching his bail conditions, licence etc - he can give me a flase name and DOB. Unless i know him, i can't dissprove what he tells me, so i let him go. ID cards will change that.

I don't see how you can obtain a false ID card - unless you can find someone with the same DNA, codes etc.

Brendan Hughes

Thanks Felix. IMHO your first is a valid point - basically, to find people on the run. But I find it a scattergun approach, or a sledgehammer/nut one; how many people are on the run in the UK at the moment? Can't be more than a few thousand? And yet they want to issue ID cards to 60 million people in order to find them? Surely if they put the 3 billion quid into police resources, they'd find them just as quickly?

As for being locked up for conspiring to burgle, I find that moot - some citizens will appreciate the prevention approach, others will not like the assumption that just because he did it before, obviously he's going to do it again. If you find him tooled up, book him, but if he's gone out for a packet of ****, you can't lock him up as a precaution, that's just not legal.

johnfelstead

so you are going to be carying DNA test lab with you when on duty? I dont think so.

It will be a piece of cake to create false ID cards, they are no diferent to forging a credit card using chip and pin technology. All you need a programing system that is a clone of the oficial system, input your desired info and hey presto, an ID card. How do you think these cards will be produced in the first place? it isnt rocket science, any numptie can operate these machines.

Brendan Hughes

For the two Johns (felstead and kelley):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3307471.stm

Vegescoob

You have one last thing to hide. How you vote. When you vote you will have to produce your ID card. It will be scanned. By this time voting may computerised. All computers. Then so easy for computers to talk to each other. Result Government, of any party, will be able to find out how we all voted. Purely to improve services blah blah.

OllyK

And you think they don't know now???

Vegescoob

Yes it could be done now but I think it would have leaked out if it had gone on.
Except, oh b*gger who knows. I don't trust anyone in power.

Brendan Hughes

Interesting article on biometrics in schools:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/sto...358563,00.html

JohnS

iTrader: (1)

Some interesting comments made. I think there's one thing that people will be forgetting. As well as holding information on the card, the data will also be held in a big database somewhere. So although it will be easy to produce fake ID cards that look real, there won't be a corresponding record held in the database.

I'm presuming that the police will have readers that will extract the encrypted info from the on-card chip. This will no doubt be able to produce the person's photo, fingerprint and possibly some other info (sex, date of birth, eye colour, other identifying features etc). Of course, anyone clever enough could produce a fake card so that everything matched up. However, the card reader would no doubt be able to record the info from the card, and then later back at HQ (or on-line in real time using mobile technology?), it could verify all the cards read were real, and flag up ones that weren't. The police would then have the assumed name (probably fake) of the person, and also their photo and fingerprint. It shouldn't take too much extra effort to then trace the "real" person behind this.

Other things to consider: People's information changes all the time (ie home address, employer, marital status). How do people go about getting this information updated on their cards. People also change their appearance as they age. Will people need to get a new card every 10 years or so ? What about replacement cards for those that get lost/stolen/put through the washing machine. There will need to be a huge number of local sites where people can go to update their info, get new cards (at what cost ?), new photos etc. No doubt there will be charges to do this as well, but penalties if you don't....

One of the parts of my day job is to look after a system that tracks the details, training and movements of people in the offshore oil and gas industry. OK we've only got a database of say 300,000 people compared to 60 million or so, but it's still a considerably sized system. We also produce ID cards for the workforce, incorporating smart chips 5 years ago, though we've now moved to holding all the info on the database (including photos etc), as the smart chips ones were expensive, more time consuming to produce, and just as easily lost as any other card! The system is secure, reliable, and in use in hundreds of offices and locations throughout the UK and overseas now.

johnfelstead

interesting John, didnt know thats your field of work. So based on your experience, is a 60 million user system going to be workable? it sounds like a massive beurocratic mess to me when you consider the real lives people lead.

Thats a good point about cross referencing databases, so rather than stealing someones identity as happens now, you kill the person who looks like you and steal their ID card instead. Excelent new crime there.

OllyK

I think it is unlikely that there will be significant live data corroboration. It may well happen at ports etc, but not on day to day usage. Read the article mentioned earlier on The Register which goes in to some detail about the problem with live transactions (and not).

lmsbman

I think that at the present time these new i/d cards will be a complete waste of time. Unless someone can prove me wrong, at the moment the government are proposing to make these voluntary and the carrying of them will not be compulsory. If they say that by paying your £30 you can just have the one card instead of driving licence, work i/d, passport, insurance certificate, video card etc, then it might be worth having. However, judging by the previous IT cockups I can't see that happening.

I understand Felix's arguments (being a copper), but I personally would prefer to bring in branding (when you tattoo the cro number of persistant criminals in a prominent position on their body). That way everyone knows who/what they are

Dream on.... Imagine the cost of having a card reader in every Police Car. The original idea with the photocard driving licence, was to hold information about convictions....but what did we end up with? A hi tech seperate piece of paper

Brendan Hughes

Must say, when he mentioned they tattooed themselves, I did seriously consider this - a lot better than 60 million ID cards...

Jerome

I can comment and I do know the ins and outs. The little old lady was my mother.

Felix.

In our town we have four lever-arch files full of court warrants (which are single pieces of paper). These are people who have not attended court and given false addresses. They will know they are wanted and so will always give false details if stopped. If we can't doubt what they say - we let them go. These files also only contain warrants so people who are wanted for crimes, breach of bail, breach of injunctions, breach of licence etc etc are not included. So it could be that they are millions of people currently outstanding.

Conspiracy can cover a lot of things. If it is not legal, he would not be accepted by the custody sergeant - simple as that. If there is a reason to lock up a known criminal, we tend to grab it. At the very least we can obtain an intelligence interview, you will be surprised how many criminals fall out with other ones and will gladly drop the others in it.

Brendan Hughes

It's a fair cop...

johnskelley

We are not only talking about criminals. There are an unknown amount of illegal immigrants in this Country and we have no way of knowing who or where they are.
some estimates judge illegal immigrant populations to be about the size of Birminghams population a small percentage of these people will be here with the intention of doing harm to our country.
These people will have their effectiveness limited and our chances of discovering them is improved by the absense of a legitimate id card in their possession.

Felix.

So, thumbs up for ID cards then.!!!!!

boomer

When BlindGit was on Dimbleby last weekend, he made an interesting statement.

After being questioned about the scenario of a crim being arrested but without an ID card, BG said that the crims biometrics (fingerprint, retinal scan, facial coordinates, chocolate starfish etc.) would simply be read and matched against The Database to prove his or her identity.

So if an actual card is not required, why the **** are we being asked to fork out GBP35 to GBP85 (initial estimates) EACH for a piece of plastic that is unnecessary???

..and in response to the BiB in this thread. Even if an ID card (or Big Brother Database) guarantees that you know WHO a person is. How do you determine WHERE he lives the moment he is released on bail????

ID cards are only useful in tracking honest citizens!

mb

Senior_AP

Why don't we put tags around the neck of all the pikeys and peasants. If they go into a nice area a warning light comes on and says:

"Do not lower the tone, you have 10 seconds to comply, leave the area". If they don't comply it blows their heads off. However, it should do so after 6 seconds as they all have a fundamental design flaw.

David Lock

So question for all the peeps who reckon that fraudulent cards (like fake passports) will be on the market as soon as any ID card scheme starts. Say the genuine ID card has "owner's" finger print stored. Police are suspicious about someone and asks person to produce his ID. He pulls out card and finger print on card memory and on his actual finger are compared. They don't match so card must be false. How could this be rigged by criminals producing dodgy ID cards? Same with DNA stored on card. DL

boomer

David,

perchance the ability for every Bobby to perform a "fingerprint, retinal scan, facial coordinates, chocolate starfish" check, directly online via the wireless interweb to The Database might slightly exceed the expectations of the supposed billion squid implementation costs for ID cards!!

Besides, as Donal Wankentyre proved only the other day - crims walk proud and free no matter what the authorities do

mb

David Lock

Well OK

But....... in 10 years time I can see coppers having a device no more complicated than a chip and pin terminal to check?

Felix.

They are required so that if we ask for them on the street, they can produce. ie they can't hide their identity anymore. Also their address is not important as most move or get evicted every other day, we just need to know who they are.

Also, immigration have hand held scanners which will read a persons fingerprint and compare it to the database. So card readers in patrol cars is not that far fetched