§ Mr. GibbTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether an identity card card reader will be available for purchase by the general public under proposals in the draft Identity Cards Bill and consultation document (Cm 6178). [173128]
§ Mr. BrowneThere are a number of potential options for card readers, ranging from biometric readers which might be used to verify identity securely, to card readers on personal computers which might be able to verify the authenticity of the card. At present no firm decisions have been made on card reader specification. The Identity Cards Programme is investigating these options and evaluating them, looking particularly at how they might be used by potential user organisations and the privacy and security issues which arise from these options.
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§ Mr. GibbTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the(a) availability and (b) reliability of technology designed to identify duplicate identities based on identical biometric information. [173131]
§ Mr. BrowneWhere an individual attempts to enrol twice into the identity cards scheme using separate identities, it is essential that the second enrolment is detected by making a successful match against the biometric already enrolled by that individual. This form of negative matching is a common feature of existing biometric systems, including the police National Automated Fingerprint Identification Service (NAFIS) system and the on-going United Kingdom Passport Service (UKPS) biometric trial.
The identity cards programme is at an early stage in investigating the details of the requirement for matching within a large database, the design of feasibility work to test it and the technical solutions to deliver it.