FutureWire - futurism and emerging technology

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Proposed UK ID Cards Have Security Holes

As the UK considers implementing national electronic identification cards, Microsoft's top UK security person, Jerry Fishenden, says that the proposed system could lead to "huge potential breaches" and compromising of personal information.

"I have concerns with the current architecture and the way it looks at aggregating so much personal information and biometrics in a single place. There are better ways of doing this. Even the biometrics industry says it is better to have biometrics stored locally."

Fishenden also accuses many of the vendors working on the project of keeping quiet about security flaws as they have a potentially huge stake in it.

Security of a national ID system is a major concern, as many countries (for better or for worse) may move to such a system someday... possibly placing many of their citizens at risk of identity theft.

Source: Silicon.com