UK Borders Bill
1:30 pm
Professor Ross Anderson: I suppose that from the point of view of the management of the programme it makes sense. A number of things proposed in the ID card scheme are open to technical criticism as well as the political arguments with which I am sure you are all familiar. It might make operational sense to test out the equipment and procedures on a sub-group of the population, most of whom are extremely unlikely to raise principled objections because they are not in a position realistically to refuse to be scanned. As far as the ID card scheme is concerned, I registered my scepticism when I gave evidence before the Home Affairs Committee in 2004 on the Identity Cards Act 2006. I took the view that, among other things, you are not going to get an awful lot for a large amount of money, that other problems should be tackled as a matter of priority and that many of the arguments that were advanced in favour of ID cards, namely the rhetoric around identity theft, missed many important points of policy and engineering.