PIN: The tail on the donkey
Thursday, March 16, 2006

24dash.com: National identity card to come with PIN number

The controversial new national identity card may come with a PIN number like existing bank cards.

The Home Office Minister, Andy Burnham, said a "chip and pin" style code number could be used to verify cardholders' identities in some cases, rather than fingerprints, face and iris scans which will be encoded in the card.

So what does this mean? The biometric data readers have too high a failure rate? That they're too expensive? Whatever the reason, this sounds like an "Oh shit, think of something quick" moment. It looks like the belt isn't going to be enough to keep these trousers up - we need braces as well.

We're told ID cards are going to be handy in that they'll do away with having to carry bank cards and cheque books and drivers licences - you know, all those heavy, unwieldy items - in order to identify ourselves. They'll also be handy in that as well as your bank card pin and your credit card pin and your work door lock pin and your bank account security pin you'll now have to remember your ID card pin as well. No great shakes for most, I'll agree, but then I'm not an 84 year-old woman with no grasp of technology and fading faculties, or a young man with learning difficulties, or a woman escaping domestic violence, fleeing to a refuge in the middle of the night and leaving the scrap of paper with my pin on it at home.

So you go to the doctor and if he's affluent enough to be able to afford an iris scanner, you're asked to present your iris. Ah, he can't get a match. Never mind, let's try the fingerprint reader. No? Tell you what, can you enter your pin number please? Cashback, sir? Are you collecting the schools tokens? You can't remember your pin? Then I'm sorry sir, your baby daughter's antibiotics will have to wait.

Aren't ID cards supposed to be making our lives easier? It depends who you are and what you do with your life. If you're a government bureaucrat then yes, ID cards are going to make your life easier. That's if they work. At this rate, expect Andy Burnham to announce that ID cards will have to be accompanied by a utilities bill or a Blockbuster video card in order to prove your identity.

Biometric ID cards. Their time has come you know.


2 Comments:

On March 16, 2006 10:46 AM, Anonymous pip said...

Didn't some fraud expert (sorry, can't remember his name) say when Chip and Pin was introduced that he would never use it as it was far too insecure? Looks like this latest move will create an identity thieve's dream come true.

As Peter Sellers said in one of his Pink Panther movies to the organ grinder beggar "Are you blind?" (with cod Frog accent). WTF next?  


On March 21, 2006 2:30 PM, Blogger Chris Lightfoot said...

Ross Anderson. Basically the issue is that what's secure for the bank isn't necessarily secure for the customer; Chip-and-PIN is one of those cases.  


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