Report - Guardian

248 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005principle in the design of an alternative system, developing an infrastructure that couldbe built on existing trust relations and local identity requirements. The audit trail is thegreatest challenge in the proposed UK system, complicating the architectureunnecessarily, placing the bill and the ID system on legally problematic grounds, andignoring the existing identification structures in British society.The Challenges Arising from the Government’s ModelDespite claims of harmonisation and creating a system that is consistent withinternational obligations and practice, the Government goes much further by designing asystem of unprecedented complexity. As the Home Secretary stated in his first speechon the introduction of the Identity Card Bill, “(it) is a mistake in believing that what weare putting forward is a replica of anything else that actually exists across Europe andthe world”. 665 Technological and legal challenges emerge from these importantdifferences.Three salient features distinguish the Home Office scheme from other identity cardsystems planned or deployed elsewhere in the world.- the accumulation of a lifetime “audit trail” of the occasions when a person’sidentity has been verified and information from the database disclosed;- the construction of a central database containing biometrics for an entirepopulation, to be used for broad purposes, with the intention of eliminating thepossibility that each individual could be enrolled more than once;- the insistence on a single standard identity in order to generate trust, replacing orreframing British social and economic relationships.These novel aspects raise important questions of compliance with Article 8 of theEuropean Convention on Human Rights, which allows for state infringements ofprivacy only to an extent which is necessary in a democratic society and proportionateto permitted justifications which include a “pressing social need” and national security.The UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights recently published a report thatseriously questions the compatibility of the ID Cards Bill with the European Conventionon Human Rights. The Committee states that:“For interferences with Article 8 rights to be legitimate … it must beshown that they interfere with privacy rights to the minimum degreenecessary, and that their aim could not be achieved by less intrusivemeans …”The currently envisioned national ID card does not meet this test.If there are reasonable technological alternatives to the Home Office’s scheme whichcan accomplish the objectives permitted by ECHR Article 8 in a way which causes lessinfringement of the privacy rights of the individual, then compliance with ECHRrequires these technological alternatives to be adopted.665 Home Secretary Speech to the IPPR, November 17 2004,http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/identitycards_041118speech.htm.