Report - Guardian

98 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005that it is not him. He receives threatening letters and court summonsesfrom train companies on whose trains he has never travelled;Thameslink says that there is nothing that it can do. How can my righthon. Friend help my constituent and his desperate parents?”“The Prime Minister: We will be introducing some measure of helplater today. It is important to emphasise that the abuse of identity coststhis country billions of pounds a year.” 249The public is naturally concerned about this increasingly prevalent crime, and theGovernment is proposing a solution.This debate over identity theft is not without controversy. The definition of the term isunclear. It may be an assortment of various forms of fraud that are unrelated toproblems of identity. In cases where there is a theft of personal information, othersolutions do exist that do not require identity cards. While there are cases where identitytheft does involve the fraudulent use of another’s identity, as was the focus of theCabinet Office study that predicted £1.3bn in costs per year, it is questionable howmuch of this cost would be prevented by an identity card.The greatest challenge in solving the identity theft problem is to ensure that solutions donot make matters worse. In some cases, the use of unique identifiers for citizens hasbecome the key enabler of identity theft. In others, the use of identification documentshas presented a key opportunity for forgery. According to Interpol, one country hasreported the theft of more than 50,000 blank passports; 250 and it was reported in the USCongress that thousands of French passports were stolen in 2004. 251 Centralised identitysystems often give rise to fraud through the abuse of centralised data either by insiders(staff) or outsiders (malicious hackers). Australia lost 2042 passports from 1997 to2002, and investigators believe that some of this was due to insider fraud. 252 In the USthere have been mounting thefts and abuses of personal data from banks, drivinglicensing authorities, and data-aggregating companies such as credit bureaux.Nature of the ProblemThe best studies on the phenomenon of identity theft are emerging from the US,compared to relatively limited studies in the UK. Reporting from the US indicates thatin 2004 there were 9.3 million victims of identity theft, costing over $50 billion. 253Another survey found that in the period from 1990 to 2003, over 33.4 millionAmericans were victims of identity theft, leaving consumers with out-of-pocketexpenses amounting to $1.5 billion since 2001. 254 According to the Federal Trade249 House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 May 2005 (pt 4), available athttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm050525/debtext/50525-04.htm#50525-04_spmin8250 ‘Interpol plans anti-terrorism database’, Daniel Woolls, Associated Press, September 29, 2003.251 Statement of Chairman Sensenbrenner, House Judiciary Committee, Oversight Hearing on Whether CongressShould Extend the October 2004 Statutory Deadline for Requiring Certain Foreign Visitors to Present BiometricPassports, April 21, 2004.252 ‘Missing passports hinder terror fight’, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 29, 2005.253 Privacy Rights Clearing House overview of ID Theft surveys, referring to the Javelin/Better Business Bureau fromJanuary 2005.254 Ibid, referring this time to the Privacy and American Business survey from July 30, 2003, with further informationavailable at http://www.pandab.org/id_theftpr.html.