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Byrne predicts the scheme will become "part and parcel" of British life but critics doubt the government's ability to deliver on the project.
The determination of New Labour to enfranchise the British public into the National Identity Card Scheme was underlined on Tuesday, in a speech delivered by Home Office minister Liam Byrne in which he described the controversial initiative as a “public good” that is destined to “become part of the fabric of everyday life”.
Speaking at the famed Chatham House institute, Byrne, who is Minister of State for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, predicted that the National Identity Register will come to assume the same status in the life of British citizens as the national grid and the railways.
“In 20 years’ time, I suspect that the National Identity Card Scheme will be part and parcel of everyday life in Britain – another great British institution without which modern life, whatever it looks like in 2020, would be quite unthinkable,” he argued.
Revolutions in globalisation and technology have brought in their wake a slew of new risks to personal identities, creating an “identity challenge to our country and to communities and to citizens”, said Byrne. The National Identity Register, in which British citizens will be required to submit personal identity details and biometric data to a national database, will be the only way to protect individuals against fraud, and the wider British economy against abuse, he claimed.
Byrne’s optimistic tour de force will do little to assuage the scheme’s numerous critics, however, many of whom have cast doubt on the government’s ability to deliver on such a vast IT project.
“Government has systematically failed on big IT projects, and I have no faith whatsoever that my data will be secured,” Nigel Stanley, security expert and Practice Leader at analyst house Bloor Research, told Information Age. “The technology is out there to make a secure identity system impenetrable to any unauthorised user, but I don't believe the government has the management capability to either implement or manage such a solution.”
Byrne’s speech follows the announcement in early June that the European Union has approved a European visa data system, which will store biometric information on more than 70 million visa-holders who pass through the EU’s borderless travel zone annually. The scheme will involve the creation of the world’s largest common database, accessible by 15 EU countries.
