NO2ID

[John Welford]

'ID card' review condemned

by Mark Howarth

A version of Mark Howarth's piece was published in yesterday's Sunday Herald, but has not been put online. Mark has therefore kindly given permission for the whole piece to be reproduced here.

MINISTERS have been accused of a “whitewash” after an independent review of its controversial ‘back-door ID card’ scheme was farmed out to a company pioneering the Home Office’s National Identity Register.

The study was demanded by a 2007 Scottish Parliament vote which expressed concern that the project may encroach on citizens’ rights. But the Government chose Atos Origin to investigate MSPs’ fears despite its key role in running biometric trials for Westminster’s ID cards . Now its report has concluded that Scotland’s own identity database – the Citizen’s Account Service (CAS) - should be accelerated and allocated even more funding.

Last night, critics condemned ministers’ decision to hire Atos. Dr Geraint Bevan of campaign group NO2ID said: "The involvement of this company is astonishing and means that the review is hopelessly compromised.

"Atos were entirely complicit in the design and creation of the UK National Identity Scheme.

"Asking them to conduct an independent assessment is like asking a double glazing salesman to evaluate the windows of your house.

"This is not what Parliament voted for. This review should have been asking pertinent and uncomfortable questions.

"But, instead, ministers have simply paid Atos to tell them what they want to hear.”

He added: "We have a Government and a Parliament which have stated unequivocally on numerous occasions that they are opposed to ID cards.

"Yet this insidious system will now come on-stream without a single serious question having been posed.

"Scotland is sleepwalking towards a national ID card and database. This was an opportunity for the Government to wake up but it has been wasted."

The CAS is the cornerstone database of Scotland’s National Entitlement Card (NEC) system which uses microchipped swipecards to record usage of services such as bus travel, libraries, leisure centres and cashless catering in schools.

Ministers want all Scots to eventually use them when dealing with local authorities which have already issued more than a million of them. Each person’s Account will contain a Unique Citizen’s Reference Number which may then be used to track an individual’s activity across scores of public sector databases.

Campaigners believe the system is an ID card by any other name and will allow unprecedented surveillance of people's activities as more and more databanks are fed into the central structure. Parliament overwhelmingly voted for an investigation of the CAS before it goes live later this year.

But the Scottish Government chose Atos to carry out the review even though the company is a vocal lobbyist for compulsory ID cards. Its website states that citizens without one should not be allowed to vote, adding: “It is important to develop a standardised and secure basic identifier, which is accessible to all as a foundation for continued social and economic development.

“The introduction of a UK national ID card scheme is ... an inclusive way to safeguard all citizens and organisations [from] crime and subversion.”

Atos has also won two Home Office contracts totalling more than £1.1 million to help develop the project, including the testing of biometric scans. Its review concluded that Scotland’s “CAS is in a healthy state in terms of its security capability and provision” but that “more resources should be made available to the project such that security and data protection procedures can be developed more rapidly”.

Green Party leader Patrick Harvie – whose Holyrood amendment won the review – called for the CAS to be scrapped. He said: “To commission a report from Atos, the ID card scheme's chief corporate cheerleaders, suggests a failure to live up to the spirit of Government commitments.

"What ministers clearly asked for was a whitewash, but even that cannot disguise the fact that the scheme is so full of loopholes and security failings that it is not fit to go ahead as planned."

The Government defended the Atos review. A spokesman said: “Its remit was entirely appropriate and we are addressing the recommendations made.

“There is no link between the CAS and Westminster’s ID Card Scheme, to which we are vehemently opposed and which presents an unacceptable threat to our citizens’ privacy and civil liberties.”

Reproduced with the permission of Mark Howarth.
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John
http://www.jwelford.demon.co.uk/

[Guest]