ID card Criminal Record check trials
October 4th, 2007ID card-based criminal record checks get thumbs up
Gemma Simpson
Tuesday October 02, 2007
Plans for a new service using the government’s controversial ID cards scheme to speed up criminal record checks have met with approval from volunteers involved in a trial of the technology.
The volunteers piloted two potential online services developed by the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) and the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) which could be used to authenticate the identities of and information supplied by job applicants.
At the trials, all volunteers went through a simulated experience of applying for a position requiring a CRB check. The participants met a prospective employer, filled out the CRB disclosure application form and had their identity authenticated by a counter-signatory. Their criminal record information was then disclosed to the company requesting it.
Each volunteer completed two legs in the trial — one using a passport and one using an ID card.
The passport-based system would use an applicant’s UK passport with information from the IPS to make sure the data provided is correct — with this system likely to come into effect before the second system. The second online service would use ID cards issued to UK citizens and foreign nationals residing in the UK for more than three months with information from the IPS to check application data. This system could be introduced in the longer term.
Nearly all (96 percent) of the 160 volunteers said the passport-related service is an improvement on the current arrangement and 71 percent rated it as a “great improvement”.
Nearly nine out of 10 volunteers said the ID card-linked service is even more robust than the passport-linked process.
But Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the NO2ID anti-ID card campaign, criticised the trial because he said it tested the customer experience of the CRB check in isolation, while “glossing over the inconvenience and intrusiveness of the ID system as a whole”.
Booth said: “IPS is trying to sell a so-called benefit without any reference to actual cost or reality.”
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Well well well.
It looks like the contents of the ‘Frances Stonor-Saunders’ email are confirmed as correct yet again:
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There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.
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Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR Database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Oyster Card, or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license you will have to present your ID Card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account.
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http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1207
ID cards were sold to the public on the basis that they would only hold a small amount of information. Now we see that they are to be used for CRB checks.
You can now guarantee that they will indeed hold residence status, religion, criminal record and everything else that they can possibly store on you.
Once again, for the thousandth time, if you do not register for this card they cannot include you in the database.
Meanwhile, David Cameron has reiterated his promise to scrap ID cards. He will of course, have to scrap the NIR and biometric passports to really come through on this promise.