A house of cards
The identity card scheme is today in tatters.
The project has been scaled back, trimmed, modified and reinvented so comprehensively it bears little relationship to the proposals that were first put forward. We are no longer being promised the all-singing, all-dancing identity card of David Blunkett's dreams.
The scheme will no longer include iris scans, and fingerprints will be long-delayed. The identity register will no longer be a clean database, but built from the hugely inaccurate national insurance number system.
The scheme won't cover all foreign nationals. It won't be compulsory for years - it won't even be widespread for years, if the latest plan to only enrol airport security guards and students is carried through.
But gone, along with all those bells and whistles, is every single meaningful argument in favour of identity cards.
Without compulsion, the ID card can't be used to enforce anything, be it access to benefits, the NHS or working rights. Without iris scans and a clean database, you can't stop people fraudulently registering twice on the database or misusing false identities. Without universality, you can't win public consent: bullying targeted groups into registering first will just fuel resentment.
I have always opposed identity cards and the national identity register, because I have always believed that the risks far outweigh the potential benefits. But this half-baked, watered down identity card doesn't even have any potential benefits. It is nothing more, or less, than a waste of money.
Sadly, it remains a risk to our privacy, and to our pockets. The government is pouring money into the plans like water into a leaky bucket, at a rate of about £100,000 a day. And though the national identity register - which will contain up to 50 different categories of information about each and every one of us - is being delayed, it remains in the long-term plan.
The government is obsessed with databases: with the idea that if only they can file us all into the correct boxes, all problems of public service delivery will magically disappear. There's the NHS Spine IT system, the ContactPoint database of every British child, the largest collection of DNA records in the world, and the plans of the Ministry of Justice to improve public sector "data sharing".
But the spate of data losses that has beset government over the last few months has destroyed public confidence that any of this information is properly protected, and should be entrusted to government care.
Instead of pressing ahead with the broken skeleton of their identity card plans, the government should admit they cannot deliver what they intended and start from scratch on data.
Technology can - and should - be used to improve public services, but it must be done in ways that enhance, instead of destroying, personal privacy.
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