ID cards - what more do you need?

GNU LABOUR

I know you're probably all fed up with my banging on and on about ID cards (actually, regular readers probably aren't fed up because they'll share my beliefs), but Jarndyce's comment this morning prompted me to dredge the subject up again.

It seems iris scanning is only 90% accurate and fingerprints only 96% accurate. Those sound like pretty good figures but, as Jarndyce observes, that's a lot of people out of a population of 56 million. in fact, four percent of fifty-six million is 2.24 million. TWO AND A QUARTER MILLION PEOPLE MISIDENTIFIED. Who therefore may not be allowed to travel. Or get benefits. Or get medical treatment. Or who may just be taken into a side room for "further questioning". And, of course, this doesn't account for bureaucratic errors in the database.

Think this is an over-reaction? It's already happened to two thousand, seven hundred people. And I bet none of them comes from Nottingham, where it seems pretty much everyone can be regarded as a criminal.

And there's nothing we can do about it. Except maybe this (PDF).