Thursday, November 27, 2008

The REAL problem with biometrically verifiable ID cards

There has been a recent push towards ID cards for everyone in the UK. There is a huge backlash against this idea, partly because of recent incidents which tell us that the government cannot be really trusted to keep the data safe. But a far more serious problem is that biometric ID cards are unforgeable and can be used by even less trustworthy people, Islamic terrorists for instance, to target specific people:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/iraqi-exodus/violence-targets-iraqs-christians/3456/
On Sunday, Farques Batool, a Christian who owned a music store, was gunned down and killed in his shop. His teenage nephew was also wounded. A pharmacist was killed Friday by a man who pretended to be an undercover police officer, asked to the pharmacist’s identification card, then shot him. Religion is listed on government-issued ID cards in Iraq.
Verifiable identity is a grave security risk, never mind all the useful side effects, such as being able to get your tax refund without actually filling in forms, based on unique ID as primary key into different data bases.