Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have tried to convince the British public that, had the 25 million records recently lost been protected with biometric ID cards, the information contained within would have somehow been protected.
The letter points out that this is based on three suppositions – that the entire UK population can be enrolled on the database; that no one can forge biometric information; and finally that every ID check would include checks against biometric information on the national database.
Several leading academics felt compelled to write the Home Office to explain how ridiculous this claim is.
Even if, in this fairy-tale land, it came to pass that (a) (b) and (c) were true after all (which we consider most unlikely), the proposed roll-out of the National Identity Scheme would mean that this level of ‘protection’ would not – on the Home Office’s own highly optimistic projections – be extended to the entire population before the end of the next decade (i.e. 2020) at the earliest.
They also pointed out that, if so much information were to be cataloged in one place, it would be even more valuable to thieves and more likely a target by crooks.
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