Ben Goldacre has an interesting take on the dangers of Brtain’s proposed ID card scheme. This comes in the wake of the Inland Revenue losing 25m records in the post. Goldacre challenges one of the massive assumptions our government seems to make about security.
…security systems which rely on secret methods are less secure than open systems because the greater the number of people who know about the system the more people there are to spot holes in it, and it is important that there are no holes.
He raises serious doubts about the government’s faith in biometric security, suggesting fingerprints are easy enough to fake.
every time you touch something, if your security systems rely on biometric ID, then you’re essentially leaving your pin number on a post-it note… And once your fingerprints are stolen, they are harder to replace than your pin number.
