"Centralised ID" The problem is that we're giving people a one-stop shop to steal identities. The cards won't be unforgeable. Don't kid yourselves, they won't. All anyone now has to do is find a staffer at the IT centre who's willing to clone an ID and give them a new national ID number which they fit to the card together with YOUR address/employment history and their biometrics. It'll be accepted. Of course it will - the government will insist that the cards can't be forged, so it MUST be a genuine card. So it MUST identify you. There'll be low-level forgery for things like kids getting into 18 films, which won't even bother with the biometrics - the cinema isn't going to have the requisite readers to verify everyone. But then you have a society where people have false ID... and it becomes almost acceptable. Every kid in school is going to know who to buy a fake universal ID off... There'll be fraud, made easier by the cards. The biometrics on the card match the carrier, they MUST be the person named on the card. The card names you. They therefore can take out loans... and you have no defence. You MUST have been there, because your card was there. You either have to prove an "unforgeable" card was forged or the debt is yours. There'll be high level forgery -- the creation of entire new identities including passports and a new name. They'll be expensive but worth it if you've just been banned from driving and need a new licence. And they're unforgeable and hence accepted without question. There'll even be LEGAL forgeries. Police on undercover missions will need fake IDs. So will the SAS. The kids who were convicted of toddler-killing were issued new birth certificates to change their identities to shield them from retaliation. They'll need new ID cards with their former identities hidden. Ministers won't want their kids wandering the streets identifiable for kidnapping, they'll need sealed cards with some information "hidden". Think about all those loopholes. "Biometrics" They don't work. They don't work in a HUGE array of circumstances. Fingerprint readers -- don't work if you're missing that fingertip, or if you do manual labour (which blurs the prints) or if you have eczema (and the skin there is frequently damaged). These produce known false negatives. People who, permanently or usually don't match their own card. Iris prints -- these require very precise lighting conditions, and change with age (so will need re-reading) and don't work with quite large portions of the population who have certain types of iris or certain eye diseases. They produce many, many transient false negatives -- people who won't match their prototype this try. Photos -- even photos don't work. Allegedly about 5-10% of the population of the same gender is a good enough match for a photo of you. This is a false positive case. It's very, very easy to match, too easy in fact. DNA/Blood. DNA analysis would be the "gold standard". You're unlikely to get anthing over a few dozen people in the world you could pass for. No-one's likely to put up with invasive testing, however. "Finding People" This affects finding people. False positives are VERY high. This means that if you go looking for a terrorist, you'll find a lot of people who might match. You can't do that. False negatives aren't such a problem. You match the person to the card, the card tells you who they are. Sometimes the match fails and you have to do more work to match the person to the card. If the match is positive the person is who they say on the card and if that's not your terrorist, they pass. That's no use finding terrorists. Even if you know the ID number of a terrorists, matching passengers against their cards just tells you they have a card matching who they say they are. That's no use if the card or the centralised record is forged. The other problem is that when 300 people queue to get on a jumbo jet, they end up trying to match each person to their prototype on their card. What's more likely is that 5-10% of the idents fail to match the card. That's 15-30 people who get pulled aside and you have to wait for them to be matched. You can't leave without them... their luggage is in the hold and there's a long standing rule that luggage doesn't fly without its owner (on the assumption bombers aren't suicidal!) So you have to either unload and find their luggage or wait for them to be cleared. What are the chances of all 300 matches of your co-passengers succeeding properly? How accurate does the system have to be? 1/100 won't do -- every flight is delayed. 1/1000, an accuracy no-one is promising, still means that roughly 1 in 3 of the planes you get on is delayed, misses its slot and is hours late leaving. You could ignore a lot of the negatives, but that just means you'll miss a few terrorists... Note, of course, that government ministers are immune to this effect - they have their own personal flights (for security reasons) and hence won't be held up like everyone else... "No-one with anything to hide..." Lots of people have things to hide. People who've left abusive partners or parents and use assumed names. Ex-cons who are desperately trying to go straight. People having affairs. Transsexual people or people who just didn't like their birth name. None of these people are doing anything illegal, but they'll all risk being "outed" by ID cards. We all currently have a historical "right" to anonymity. Everyone has bits of their past to hide or things they'd rather just weren't public knowledge and the government's ludicrously unsuccessful attempts at security in the past demonstrate the risks. Your tax records and DVLA information are already for sale for small sums of cash. Is everyone really ready for their medical records to be the same? The problem is that politicians and the police will be given opt-outs to all this. Their records will end up sealed or wiped "for security reasons". They'll be able to check into a hotel effectively anonymously to have their affairs. They'll be able to hide their NI numbers so you can't find their tax records and see if they pay properly. Their data won't be for sale, but yours will. Think really, really carefully. Do you REALLY have nothing about you you'd object to being published on the front page of the local paper? Really? Here's an example. Would police officers be happy having that fact tatooed across their foreheads? "Police Officer" in big letters. Leave space so "retired", "dismissed", "ex-" or "disciplined" can be added later. Would that be acceptable? Of course not. It might make certain social situations... uncomfortable. It might mean they find it harder to get jobs. It might mean they're open to being attacked on the streets... So why is it acceptable to publish personal information about everyone else? "Immigrants" Immigrants manage without driving licences, birth certificates or any other ID documents. How is my having to own an ID card going to affect the black economy? Who's going to check all this? Currently, there's a big long list of things you MUST have to drive a car. A V5 registration document pointing to your current address. A full driving licence pointing to your current address. Third party insurance. Road Fund Licence. 5% of the vehicles on the road don't have these, and the best efforts of the traffic police don't seem to be working through those numbers very fast.