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From this weekend, the adoption of RFID tags in the retailing industry has become a matter of time. At a recent conference, organised by the RFID non profit standards organisation, EPCglobal, both Walmart and Tesco warned their suppliers that they expected takeup of this technology. By forcing the adoption of RFID technology through their purchasing power, RFID will soon become ubiquitous in retail, over the next two years.
Colin Cobain, UK IT director for Tesco, advised suppliers to get involved and take a considered view of the new technology. “Some manufacturers are going down the route of slap-and-ship – I urge you not to do that… If you start of slapping-and-shipping, you’ll get a bad name in your organisation.” He added that the question about RFID was not “whether or not it will make a huge difference in the world: the question is, will you be ready?”
Simon Langford, manager of RFID strategy for Wal-Mart and Asda, said “start engaging in RFID today… don’t sit back and wait for it to happen.” Wal-Mart, remember, were so enthusiastic about the technology that they issued a mandate telling their top suppliers to get the tags in their supply chain by 1 January, 2005, or else.
WalMart began their testing of RFID tags in the supply chain on Friday in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Their links with EPCglobal are also clear:
EPCglobal is a joint venture of EAN International and the Uniform Code Council. It is the organisation chosen by industry to develop standards for RFID technology in the global supply chain based on user needs and business requirements.
As a charter member of EPCglobal, Wal-Mart fully adheres to its core principles related to privacy issues, including consumer notice, consumer education and consumer choice. Wal-Mart’s Linda Dillman and HP’s Dick Lampman serve on the board of directors of EPCglobal.
To follow the work of EPCglobal, the website setting standards for electronic product codes can be found here, including details of their membership and policies.
The new Wired has an article about a survey by MORI that found out that about 80 per cent of 1,000 British adults want a biometric identification card, citing concerns about illegal immigration and identity theft.
Though the survey shows that most Britons back national identity cards, there’s a wrinkle: Half said they won’t pay for it, and few were very familiar with the cards. Contrast that with the government’s plan to charge 35 pounds for an identity card good for 10 years, or 77 pounds for a card including passport, for every family member 16 to 80 years old.
Concerns about Big Brother? Try “bumbling brother,” with 58 percent of surveyed Britons predicting the government won’t be able to roll out new ID cards smoothly, and one-third saying their stored information won’t be safe. Still, most support such cards, principally to tackle illegal immigration and identity theft. The latter costs the United Kingdom 1.3 billion pounds per year.
In the United States, popular opinion and embarrassing biometric-test failures have blunted overt national ID card efforts, though U.S. passports and some states’ driver’s licenses will store biometric information soon, leading privacy activists to warn the IDs could become de facto national IDs.
A letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, from Dr Chris Williams, European Centre for the Study of Policing, Open University, Milton Keynes:
One problem with the proposal for a national ID card (News, Apr 27) is the security of the information in its “clean” database.
Although police all sign the Official Secrets Act, and are well paid, well supervised and largely trustworthy, at least one policeman has been sent to prison for selling the information on the Police National Computer to the highest bidder – in this case, credit reference agencies. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary recorded their concern over this practice in 1999 and recommended measures to stop it, yet the Police Complaints Commission admitted in 2002 that “there will always be a few officers willing to risk their careers by obtaining data improperly”.
So we can’t trust the police to keep a sensitive database watertight. Can we trust other state institutions or outsourcing companies such as Capita? To be usable, an ID card database has to be accessible by hundreds of thousands of people. And the security has to be permanent.
In 1938, the Gestapo took over the files of Interpol’s predecessor when they entered Vienna. If we put all our data eggs in one basket, we need to be certain that a DVD with all our details on it never gets to al-Qa’eda, the IRA or the unknown evils that the future doubtless holds.
James Hammerton’s Blog has a sound fisking of two pro-ID card articles published in the Times yesterday.
Michael Gove, author of one of the Times articles argues that given the changed circumstances of the 21st century we may need to reexamine this prejudice [prejudice against the state exercising arbitrary authority] where, in the west at least, the main threat to individuals comes not from state power as it did in the 20th century, but from terrorists who have the will and may get the means to carry out slaughter on a horrendous scale.
James spots the consistency in the Home Secretary’s policies:
To take the last part of that first, I’d respond that Blunkett has not merely “rethought” civil liberites, he (and Straw before him and Howard before him) has set out to dismantle them plain and simple. A “rethinking” would not have attacked every single protection across the board. The right to a jury trial, the presumption of innocence, the right to security of property, freedom of expression, freedom of association, doctor-patient confidentiality, lawyer-client confidentiality, freedom from arbitrary surveillance, the right to protest, all of these have been sytematically eroded. Every year since 1999 (before 9/11!), the government has produced bills with swingeing attacks on civil liberties. Only a small proportion of them could possibly be justified on the grounds they may help protect us from terrorism. Even where such measures can protect us from terrorism they’ve often been applied broadly weakening protections when the authorities are investigating crime in general rather than just terrorism.
He concludes with the point that cannot be repeated laudly and often enough:
Thus the state incompetence or inability to actually control would be terrorists and criminals and the odd clever civil libertarian via the system does not transfer to the state’s ability to control the law abiding majority with the system. The cynical might suggest that controlling the majority is the whole point, whilst crime fighting and dealing with terrorism are just the sales packaging.
Read the whole thing, as they say…
Says government’s partner for passport trials…
Silicon.com reports that the company behind the biometric technology being used by the UK passport office says biometric IDs will happen – and they will happen with the blessing of the majority of UK citizens.
NEC technology is being used by the UK government in the roll-out of biometric IDs and, having already been involved in similar schemes worldwide, the company is confident that the UK implementation will be a success despite vocal opposition from “a noisy minority”.
The roll-out won’t be without problems, according to Gohringer, but he anticipates that the problems will owe far more to the complicated logistics of getting everybody signed up than to the issue of end-user opposition.
People need to realise this is not going to harm them – if anything it is going to be beneficial to them.
However, Gohringer believes that those opposed to the systems are actually a very vocal minority, making enough noise to get themselves noticed. He cited recent research – supported by that conducted by silicon.com – which shows strong support for biometric identification.
Mr Gohringer just does not get it. In his world the state is probably just doing its job and those who do not see that are just so… unreasonable. And in any case, they should be silenced by all the civilised and sensible people, you know, the majority. As we are so fond of saying here, the state is not your friend and anything that looks like infringment of your freedom, most definitely is. Despite the purported ‘benefits’ that the measure should bring. The government should be justifying its existence to you on a daily basis, not you proving your identity to the government.
Our worthy commenters yesterday mentioned the Big Blunkett’s nasty pre-emptive move against those who might object against ID cards by refusing to have one. The Guardian has more details.
People who refuse to register or cooperate with the proposed compulsory national identity card scheme will face a “civil financial penalty” of up to £2,500, according to the draft legislation published by the government yesterday. But the home secretary, David Blunkett, insisted that nobody would face imprisonment or criminal court action for failing to pay, because he had no desire to create ID card “martyrs”.
The draft legislation confirms that Cabinet sceptics have secured an assurance that while the scheme remains voluntary ID cards cannot be used as a condition of access to any public service currently provided free of charge, such as the NHS, or to receive social security benefits.
I want to know how long it will take before I will not be able to withdraw my money from a bank without an ID cards or sign-up for broadband, utilities and other everyday tasks…
The state is not your friend.
Computerworld reports that the U.K. Passport Service (UKPS) launched its six-month trial of biometric technology involving 10,000 volunteers, the same day that the U.K. government introduced a draft bill that could mandate compulsory biometric identity cards and a central database of all of its citizens.
As proposed by U.K. Secretary of State for the Home Department David Blunkett in November, the ID cards would carry biometric identifiers in an embedded chip, which would be linked to a secure national database called the National Identity Register.
The draft bill introduced today will be followed by a period of consultation, during which the public and politicians can voice their concerns or support of the proposal. The finalized bill will be introduced to Parliament sometime in the last three months of this year and will most likely become law before the next general election, which is expected to take place in the second quarter of 2005, Blunkett said.
The database would be created by 2010, and by 2013 ministers would decide if the ID cards would become compulsory for all U.K. citizens through the use of biometric passports or driver’s licenses. Though citizens would have to own and pay for the ID cards, they most likely wouldn’t be forced to carry them at all times, Blunkett said.
Blunkett has repeatedly hailed the biometric ID cards as a powerful weapon in the government’s fight against identity fraud, illegal workers, illegal immigration, terrorism and the illegal use of the National Health System (NHS) as well as other government entitlement programs.
The database is expected to contain information such as name, address, date of birth, gender, immigration status and a confirmed biometric feature such as electronic fingerprint, a scan of the eye’s iris or of a full face, according to a Home Office spokesman.
The UKPS trial will test for all three biometric traits: electronic fingerprints, iris scans and full-face scans, according to Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for Atos Origin SA, the Paris-based company running the trial for the government.
This is the first time that three different biometric technologies from three different suppliers have been integrated into one solution. The technical challenges may also account for why the trial, launched at Globe House, the London Passport Office, is three months behind the originally announced launch date.
Oh, joy… But there is a good fight put up by the Law Society in its official response to the program. Apart from technology issues, the professional body for lawyers in England and Wales has expressed concerns that the program is too wide-reaching and that the Home Office has been unable to prove it would stop identity fraud.
The Government has failed to show that similar schemes in other countries have helped to reduce identity fraud. Indeed, in the U.S., the universal use of Social Security numbers – a scheme not unlike the one the U.K. Government is proposing – has led to a huge growth in identity fraud.
Despite a compulsory identity card scheme, France continues to battle problems such as illegal working, illegal immigration and identity fraud – the very things the Home Office hopes to address with identity cards. If an identity card has not eliminated these challenges in France, what makes the Home Office believe that these problems can be resolved with an identity card scheme in the U.K.?
Janet Paraskeva, the chief executive of the Law Society concludes an article in Law Gazette with a useful reminder:
History shows that all types of cards are forgeable. From National Insurance numbers to passports, each scheme has been riddled with technological problems and linked with forgery and a profitable black market. The government’s proposals do not inspire confidence that practical problems will be effectively addressed or principled fears allayed. It is the Law Society’s view that the case for identity cards has not yet been made, and extreme caution should be exercised before the government plunges headlong into implementing these proposals.
Quite. I am yet to hear one truly convincing argument for ID cards. It seems there is about five ‘arguments’ for ID cards – immigration and asylum seekers, NHS, terrorism, identity fraud and ‘what-does-it-matter-we-already-have-passports-driving-licences-and-store/loyalty cards… None of these bear closer examination and each raises practical and civil liberties objections. However, the majority of the population probably believes in at least one of them (they all agree that paying for is a bad idea) and so the government does not need to make a clear case, as most people make it for themselves.
Unless a clear and forceful case is made about how ID cards will make matters worse for each one of us, I cannot see how the Big Blunkett will be stopped.
Another article in The Times on ID and the ID Bill that will give officers right to scan eyes. The Home Secretary’s long-awaited draft Bill on ID cards, published today, will attempt to reassure civil liberties opponents by confirming that it will not be obligatory to carry the card even if, as expected, the scheme becomes compulsory in the next decade.
But police will be able to take biometric data from suspects on the spot if they are not in possession of their card. Officers would then be able to check the national database to find out who the suspect is.
Remember Minority Report?
The Times reports that David Blunkett will today publish his draft Bill on identity cards. Tim Hames writes:
Unless obliged to do so for professional reasons, I have no intention of reading it. He can appear in as many radio and television studios as he likes, talking about the virtues of his blueprint, but I will not listen to him. I neither desire nor need to know about the provisions of his forthcoming pilot scheme either. I am against it.
Not just a little bit against it, either. I am eye-swivellingly, limb-twitchingly, mouth-foamingly hostile to the enterprise. And, as will become starkly obvious, pretty unpersuadable to boot.
That works for us… We also like his summing up of the arguments against ID cards in Britain that he finds compelling:
It seems to me that there are three basic arguments against introducing ID cards in Britain which are so compelling that they should immediately end any discussion on the subject. These are “whose body is it anyway?”, “why should I have to?” and “it’s not British”.
The “whose body is it anyway?” thesis is in many ways the simplest. The cards are not the problem with this proposal, it is the implications they have for identity. The State exists because we individuals choose to permit it to exist, not the other way round. I might volunteer data to the authorities but bureaucrats and politicians are not entitled to obtain access to my personal details.
I am against ID cards for the same reason that I am vociferously opposed to the idea, put about by the donor card lobby, that parts of me should be whipped away on death unless I opt out of their beloved programme. It is my identity and I have every intention of keeping it.
The “why should I have to?” assertion is no less powerful. ID cards are, in theory, a weapon in the War on Terror. Now I am well aware that a small set of fruitcakes out there have convinced themselves that if they blow me up while I travel on the Central Line into work, then they will secure some kind of “Get Into Heaven, Free” pass. I think we should be draconian with them.
Let Mr Blunkett’s men follow them around, tap their telephone calls, lock them up without charge and throw away the key (although, admittedly, al-Qaeda’s de facto allies in the legal fraternity may well release them).
I personally couldn’t agree more with his cry:
Forget the Magna Carta when it comes to Osama bin Laden and his lackeys. I do not, though, see why the existence of these fanatics should compel me to carry, and at all times, a piece of plastic, possibly containing a photograph, which, if the mug shot accompanying this column is any indication, is hardly destined to be flattering. There must be a better way of dealing with terrorism.
Can anyone spot which continental country he means?
Finally, the real clincher, “it’s not British”. ID cards occur in dubious continental countries whose constitutions keep collapsing, which have been democracies for about 20 minutes and where the policemen wear funny-shaped hats and carry firearms. They do not happen here.
And a rousing finale:
So my sincere advice to the Home Secretary, who in most regards is a quite splendid chap, is to abandon this legislation. If you cannot move me on this matter, a person who is otherwise a model of moderation, pragmatism and sanity, then your chances of convincing an utterly unreasonable bunch of headcases such as the House of Lords that this is a decent idea are minimal.
Furthermore, do not take at face value opinion polls which imply that 80 per cent of the electorate favour ID cards. What they mean is that eight out of ten voters believe that other people should have to suffer the inconvenience of carting them around. As far as I am concerned, the letters ID stand for the place that this draft Bill should be directed. In the Dustbin.
Hear, hear.
Thanks to Alex Singleton for the link.
The Guardian reports that thousands of Muslim women will be exempted from having to show their faces on identity cards as the Government moves to allay fears among British Muslims that the new cards will be used to target them in the ‘war on terror’.
As David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, faced attack for not allowing enough debate over the introduction of the first ID cards in Britain since the Second World War, officials made it clear that if Muslim women do not want to reveal their faces in public, that would be respected. Instead of a photograph, there would be an exemption for certain people, who would only have to give fingerprint and iris-recognition data.
How about wearing a veil and refusing to be taken a photo on ‘religious grounds’. It may be worth a try…
Here’s one I almost missed:
CCTV footage sought for TV show
According to The Publican, Sky are seeking pub landlords who can provide them with “dramatic or funny” CCTV footage. Faces of those “not involved in the incident” will, of course, be blurred out.
Which implies that faces of those who are involved will be visible. Maybe acceptable if the footage shows a crime – but what if it’s just “funny”?
I don’t know about you but I reckon my friends would recognise me even with a blurry face (situation normal?).
My Mum definitely would.
As if to address Trevor’s post from Tuesday, QinetiQ gives evidence to Home Affairs Select Committee on ‘ID cards’ promising that cards which hold information confirming an individual’s identity, could be produced for far less than £30. Neil Fisher, QinetiQ’s director of security solutions, who gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee today, outlined the potential ‘benefits’ of an appropriate biometric identity authentication system – one that incorporates a unique physical signature such as facial recognition.
Encapsulating individuals’ biometrics in one or more authentication devices will ensure that their identity cannot be stolen and that they can prove, swiftly and simply, that they are who they say they are. In today’s digital age, this will give them secure access to a huge range of services. Additionally, if a portable data storage device like a barcode is used, it can link people irrefutably to their possessions – to their luggage at an airport, to their cars, and even to their baby in a maternity ward.
Absolutely, just moving the cattle, move along, nothing to see here. But why do I have to prove, ‘swiftly and simply, that I am who I say I am? Missing the point here, Mr Fisher…
We automatically assume that the so-called smart chips, which are relatively expensive, will be used in identity authentication devices such as ID cards. But by using current technologies like 2D barcodes or memory sticks, which cost from fractions of a penny to less than £1 to produce, it is possible to develop low-cost data storage devices without compromising on security.
Yes, tag them all and keep the change. For you, Mr. Big Blunkett, only £5 a piece.
Note: Thanks to Malvern Gazette reporter for alerting us to the story.
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