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Given the current economic circumstances and the need to reduce Government spending dramatically, there are a whole number of projects that come to mind but ID Cards really are ‘up there’ near the very top of the list. The fact that the project is still running is a testament to the sheer stubbornness and asinine stupidity of the current occupant of Drowning Street, Gordon Brown.

Whilst there are some simple minded folk who think ID Cards are a good idea – “I have nothing to Hide…” it is just because they are simple minded. I have been commenting on the ID Card scheme since the idea was “sold” to that daft Tony Blair who, like most of the MPs in Parliament, are not qualified to make that decision and, do not have Civil Servants or Independent Advisers who are either.

Saving £5.5-10 Billion

To my mind there must be many “jobs” funded from taxation that could be ‘shared’, half a weeks pay for doing half a weeks work and this would reduce Government spending dramatically even if only 15% of the 5.5 million public sector jobs could be rearranged in this way. The benefit for the employee is that financially they will still be better off than they would be on the Dole plus, once the economy started moving again…

Cutting a project like this ID Card one and because of its size, there will be consequences. The vast majority of people employed are likely to be freelance IT Contractors of one sort or another who will lose the hourly/daily rate they are currently being paid and even full time employees could be laid off however and even if possible, extending this project through job sharing would be pointless because the project is useless, it needs to be killed off.

My Personal Objections are Simple…

Forget questions of Civil Liberties because the reason for dumping this scheme rest on the boring technicalities – it won’t work and can never be made secure from being hacked and people such as myself with relevant IT backgrounds have been saying this from the word GO. If it isn’t inherently secure then not only is it a waste of money whether it costs £100k or £10 billion but it also becomes a one stop shop for identity theft plus will not be accepted as proof of anything within 6 months of going live.

The technical arguments are frankly too boring to go through but perhaps the following concept might help to explain how hopeless this project is in practical terms:

Imagine you have 20 land based missiles any one of which can inflict major damage on any aggressor, do you:

Put all 20 in one place ?

Disperse them to 20 different sites ?

Obviously the answer is the latter because any aggressor would have to hit all 20 sites simultaneously to ensure no retaliation.

The Real Problem

Essentially the ID Card scheme itself isn’t the problem, the underlying database on which it depends is, it is a single source that once ‘cracked’ as it will be, becomes useless. Normally fraudsters steal specific details of say your credit card so that they can buy things which can then be sold for cash. With the ID Card scheme, once they have hacked into the system, they will be able to separate YOU from YOUR IDENTITY and once that is done they can control your assets – empty your bank account, sell your house from under your feet and so on.

Oh and don’t forget, hackers, the Government or foreign agencies could compromise you in a criminal way by leaving ‘evidence’ on other databases of your involvement in child porn, fraud, terrorism, money laundering… And given the “EU Wide Arrest Warrants” and the totally bodged by the UK negotiators “Extradition Treaty” with the USA, who knows what country and legal system you could end up being tried for on a crime you did not commit.  Trust me on this one, you really don’t want this scheme under any circumstances and if killing it off reduces Government borrowings, that would be a bonus, killing off this dreadful Government as well, would be far too much to hope for of course…