Good news on ID cards?

From VNUNET:

Plans to use iris biometrics for the government’s national identity card scheme have been shelved because of cost and technical uncertainties.

I.e. they won't scan your eyes, but will still take your finger prints (even though some people don't actually have fingerprints due to genetic conditions and the prints also match up with Koala bears!). What about the plans for face scans (which only work if you're white and young)?

Also Not Saussure has stumbled across an article by Bruce Sneider which shows that the Yanks are no longer wanting facial and fingerprint scans, as the technology is too expensive and won't work! One of the reasons our Dear Leader is in favour of ID cards (see here for an article he wrote in the Telegraph, which I fisked) is due to US pressure, so now what will he do?

More technological problems with ID cards

From the Register:

The EU-funded FIDIS (Future of Identity in the Information Society) project has warned that implementation of the current generation of biometric travel ID will dramatically decrease security and privacy, and increase the risk of identity theft. In the Budapest Declaration, which derives from FIDIS' September meeting in Budapest, FIDIS calls for short-term damage control measures to be taken (because biometric ID is already being rolled out), and for "a new convincing and integrated security concept" to be developed within the next three years.

FIDIS points out that the new generation of biometric Machine Readable Travel Document (MRTD) is remotely readable at a distance of 2-10 metres, and that current security simply isn't good enough to protect it.

The most significant problems with these MRTDs are:

• Biometrics in MRTDs currently cannot be revoked and since biometric features of the users such as fingerprints and facial features cannot easily be changed, "stolen" biometrics can be abused for a long period of time
• The key to access data on the RFID tag is stored on the passport itself and can be read by humans and machine scanners.
• Eavesdropping of communication between RFID tag and reader
• Cloning of RFID tags in MRTDs
• Abuse of the remote readability of RFID tags in passports

Even more evidence against ID cards, not that Blair’ll listen of course…