British ID card scheme to cost billions

The U.K.'s identity card project will cost 5.4 billion pounds ($10.2 billion) to set up and run over the next 10 years, according to the British government. Home Office minister Liam Byrne announced the figure on Monday, establishing for the first time a governmental estimate for what will be one of the world's largest IT schemes.

The cards will store biometric data, a feature which will be introduced in passports from 2008, Byrne said. These data include fingerprint, iris and facial-recognition information. From 2010, anyone applying for or replacing a passport must also receive an ID card, although the government will have to pass another law to make them compulsory for all citizens. Click here for the full story at ZDNet UK.

David Meyer reported for ZDNet UK in London.

[ajbright]

There's a simple answer to this

and that is to vote out anyone that supports this scheme.

This is possibly the most stupid idea that any politician has ever conceived. It will achieve nothing but the exact opposite of the claims made by Blair and his cronies, and anyone who votes for a politician of any party that supports this is a complete and utter moron.

Simply write to your MP and tell them if they don't support scrapping giving easy access to everyone's personal data through a centralised database system to data thieves and terrorists you will vote for whoever runs against them, regardless of party affiliation. You will accept no argument in favour of this scheme.

Of course people are basically stupid. They think that somehow storing the identities of millions of law abiding citizens in a highly hackable and probably impossible to correct database of badly entered misinformation is going to protect them from terrorists and data thieves.

Yes, I believe in an infallible system based on some mythical computer technology that never goes wrong and is impossible to deceive. After all we've been using systems that are impossible to hack and software that never makes a mistake for so long we should just take it for granted that everything will be fine.

No doubt all id theft, credit card fraud, terrorism, in fact all crime as we know it, we suddenly cease to exist once every law abiding citizen of the UK is forced to carry a stupid bit of plastic with a photo and set of fingerprints on it.

Best of all we can rest assured that the low paid softare developers the contract winners will hire from third world countries will have nothing but our best interests at heart.

What amazes me is why no one thought of this before, that carrying a plastic card with a magnetic strip and giving all our personal data to the government will stop foreign terrorists from killing us and foreign mafia from stealing our financial data.

[ayteebee]

£5.4G / 60M people = £90/person

Now why would I want that, just so I can be kept on a leash?

Does our government really not have anything better to do with billions of taxpayer's pounds? There are a hell of a lot of people around the world - hold on, even just in Britain! - who would do anything to see that money put into basic healthcare or education to serve their fundamental needs.

Dammit, I wish our country would get a grip.

[wbenton]

Somebody didn't do their math

Per the CIA World Factbook (located at: www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uk.html), the population of the United Kingom is 60,609,153 (as of July 2006).

Investing $10 Billion over 10 years averages out $1 Billion per year or approximately $16.50/person/year or $165.00 per person over the 10 year period.

And this technology will become outdated in the next 2-3 years!!!

(* ROFLOL *)

FWIW