Internet Security and Programming

Recent comments to my last post about biometric passports have raised wider questions about the general purpose, risks and benefits of new government-supplied identification mechanisms (the wider “ID card debate” in the UK). So here is a quick summary of my basic views on this. For some years now, the UK government has planned to catch up with other European countries in providing a purpose-designed identification infrastructure in order to make life simpler and reduce the risk of identity fraud (impersonation). The most visible of these plans center around a high-integrity identity register that keeps an append-only lifetime record of who exists and how they can be recognized biometrically.

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