£30m gov ID scheme to be steered by dole office

Identity assurance remains a hot topic at the Cabinet Office. And, despite a false start late last year, Whitehall is pushing ahead with its plans to offload ID-handling onto the private sector. The department's digital boss Mike Bracken confirmed yesterday that, as expected, the Department for Work and Pensions had been …

[Anonymous Coward]

It is time to despair when

the government thinks of you as a customer. Sigh!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Only 30M ?

Don't see how you can check the ID of, store the details of and issue ID cards to everyone for 50p a person. Or does the 30M just cover thinking up a name for the scheme?

So the real cost will be passed onto the customer.

Lost your job? Well you can claim dole as soon as you have applied for your 90quid ID card, and one for each of your children.

[Anonymous Coward]

How long will it take before it starts randomly declaring people dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on track then.

Where to? Nobody knows. But it's gonna be great, the backers will assure you of that, certainly.

Good to see they're sticking to the buzzwords du jour and aren't seriously looking forward. It's a government IT project, meaning that if it isn't overpriced and outdated at the start people will wonder. Innovation, the government has heard of it.

Me, I can't wait for the outrageous overspending and some public enquiries to spice it up. Waiting for the inevitable is so booooring.

[rpjs]

"Identity revocation"

Orwell got there first, as always:

"Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not exist: he had never existed."

[dmck]

I'd rather see a European card.

Highest encryption practically available

Leave space on it for Nation states to add their bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather see none thanks very much if it's all the same to you.

[John Smith 19]

The vermin are once again sticking their noses out of their holes

They kept their heads down then the current government when they *stated* they were dumping the Nationa ID Register (keep in mind this is the *real* threat to people privacy).

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: The vermin are once again sticking their noses out of their holes

I was naive - I expected the issue of the ID Register to stay down for longer than this. What do we need to do before anyone in Whitehall realises that we don't want to be tagged like farm animals?

[Red Bren]

First they came for the immigrants and I did nothing as I wasn't an immigrant.

Then they came for the benefit claimants and I did nothing as I wasn't claiming benefits.

So who's next or is it me?

[J.G.Harston]

create a private sector market for the handling of taxpayers' ID

That's ok then, I'm too poor to pay tax, won't affect me.

[Arthur Dent]

Concern about privacy is fine, but maybe there is a more important point: this sort of identity service will be hacked, probably quite easily, and may be an even greater facilitator of identity theft that the National Identity Register would have been.