Biometrics are key to UK ID cards

A poll of silicon.com readers has revealed strong support for including biometrics - such as fingerprint and iris scan data - on UK ID cards.

Of the 60 per cent of readers who are in favour of some form of compulsory ID card a massive 85.4 per cent are in favour of including biometric data, which is being heralded as a near foolproof layer of complementary security - though many still dispute that claim.

The news will prove popular with Home Secretary David Blunkett, who announced earlier this month his intention to press on with plans for biometric ID cards for UK citizens.

But despite an apparent groundswell of support, biometrics is not without a controversy all of its own. The financial sector is keeping pace with the government in researching consumer biometrics but the roadmap to a major rollout has not been without incident.

David Taylor, technology consultant at Barclaycard, who has worked closely on biometric ID verification systems, said trials with fingerprint biometrics had proved too unreliable, while the more accurate iris-scanning faces strong public opposition, born largely out of unfounded fears relating to the laser scanning of eyes.

There are also reports of Asian women in particular having skin so fine they were unable to reliably provide and reproduce fingerprints for scanning. Similarly those who had recently used hand cream foxed the readers, as did those at the other extreme with particularly hard or calloused skin, such as chefs, gardeners and labourers, according to Taylor.

But for Taylor the biggest problem for any rollout will be the enrolment process - simply getting people to turn up and register their details in the first place.

"I don't know how on earth the government is going to do this," he said. "The logistics are nightmarish."

Although Taylor believes government will roll out biometrics long before financial institutions, he said there is much the government could learn from the banks' earliest trials. He believes highly charged emotive concerns about a centrally controlled 'Big Brother' database could easily be avoided.

Taylor said: "If the data - such as a fingerprint - was stored only on the card and not on a central database then that would remove the Big Brother element. It would be a simple of case of asking 'am I who I say I am?' rather than 'who am I?'" The data would then be complementary to other identifiers such as photo, signature or PIN for example.

Taylor believes such one-to-one systems would be likely to meet with far more public approval than "one-to-many", as the data would remain in their hands.

Biometric data is also increasingly seen as a secure and efficient way of processing passengers through airport security and is being touted as an important tool in the crackdown on international terrorism. The US is bringing in regulations requiring visitors to the States to enter using biometric passports.

Biometric schemes are also being trialled in Germany and The Netherlands.