Report - Guardian

196 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005that the police, the intelligence agencies, and any criminal organisations who havemanaged to penetrate or infiltrate the National Identity Register, will be able toimpersonate not just subjects but also verifiers (assuming they are also identified usingthe National Identity Register mechanisms).These National Identity Register ‘insiders’ will be able to frame citizens – and also tocreate alibis for crooks – by making people appear to have undergone identity checks inlocations that they never in fact visited (verifiers may also be crooked, and try to createfalse identification records using rubber finger impressions or photographs of irises:current biometric equipment mostly assumes honest attendants, rather than operatorstrying to deceive it). It is perhaps fortunate, therefore, that what the Bill actuallyspecifies is inept in security terms, in that it needlessly exposes these items and therebyundermines their evidential value for authenticating the person identified by the NIRrecord in question. Ministers should recall the thinking behind the ElectronicCommunications Act of 2000, which rightly prohibited the mandatory escrow ofsignature keys, as this would have undermined the evidential value of signatures madewith them.Lack of Constraints on the Use of NIR derived Data OnceObtainedAlthough those operating the National Identity Register face criminal sanctions if theymisuse or reveal National Identity Register data without authorisation, the IdentityCards Bill imposes no such sanctions on those who obtain data from the NationalIdentity Register. Hence it seems that the police and intelligence agencies, and eventhose who do no more than use the National Identity Register for identity verification,do not face any meaningful penalties for data misuse.Although those who access and subsequently misuse National Identity Register dataface penalties under the Data Protection Act, in practice these sanctions are weak intheir impact as they are limited to a fine. A specific and serious criminal offence mightgenerate more confidence.The lack of constraints on the misuse of National Identity Register-derived data once ithas been obtained has serious implications. As long as the National Identity Registeroperates alongside the traditional means of identity verification, anyone who obtainsNational Identity Register data is in an ideal position to produce false documents thatcan then be used as a starting point for ‘identity theft’. Far from undermining identitybasedcrime, the National Identity Register could easily facilitate it.Weak National Identity Register access controls could also have a devastating impact onthose who have good reasons for avoiding the existence of easy means of identification.This would include, for example, those in senior government or military positions whomay be terrorist targets, those who might be subject to harassment or attack from‘animal rights’ activists or from other extremist groups. Those who wish to hide fromstalkers or from those who wish to harm them will also be at increased risk. Terroristgroups, in particular, would have an ideal starting point for identifying and locatingtheir targets if they are able to gain easy access to data held in the National IdentityRegister.