Will three-card trick fool public?

As a professor, passing through the post-modern groves of academe, I often run into obscure discussions concerning personal identity. In the land of IT, too, personal identity is a common topic. There is endless debate on authentication, verification, nicknames, chatroom identities and the construction of animated personal representatives, or avatars.

But what I rarely see seriously debated in either milieu is the government’s plans for electronic identity cards.

Home secretary David Blunkett’s consultation process on the matter ends on 31 January. It involves 15 focus groups, and a dialogue with the nation’s youth. But the government’s mind, Lord Falconer has hinted, is already largely made up. Nearly everyone who has been consulted has agreed that a card system would be useful, because it would reduce the attractiveness of Britain to illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. Blunkett himself is determined to stop illegal immigrants being forced to work in sweatshops and the sex trade.

It sounds laudable, doesn’t it? Currently, UK government sponsorship of smartcards is way behind that of humble Estonia, where the cards are also used for Internet banking. But renewals of driving licences and passports alone could build the government a base, across two ID cards, of 35 million people by 2007. All it would want by then is a third kind of card, entitling one to do more than drive and travel abroad. Cost: between £1.6bn and £3bn, depending on whether the card holds only basic personal details or something more.

Use of identity cards, in short, could soon grow. That alone makes me pause before lauding the plan.

With three cards, the government would need a new database, on top of those for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the UK Passport Service (UKPS), to assure data quality. Passports and driving licences are authorised by different international bodies, so their standards are quite different – they won’t be merged for a long time. The new central register would be the first to cover the 67 million people legally resident in the UK. It would include DVLA and passport information, along with National Insurance and local authority rate-payer numbers. Already the DVLA works closely with the UKPS, and with private sector credit reference companies.

Of course, Blunkett has said he wants a limited scheme, and that to extend personal details beyond the basics should be a voluntary decision – or one requiring extra legislation. And Richard Thomas, the new information commissioner, has also said that the central register should contain only the basics.

But this is a slippery slope. Already the government has tended to disguise the fact that though carrying cards would not be compulsory, it would be a legal requirement to have one. As happens with driving licences, it would also be a legal requirement to bring your ID card to a police station if requested.

As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, the recent police search of the North London Central Mosque uncovered lots of passports, credit cards and ID cards, presumably from foreign lands. One must ask: what kind of protection, precisely, did these ID cards afford us?