ID cards are here - but police can't read them
Found on Silicon on Wednesday, 04 February 2009
Currently no police stations, border entry points or job centres have readers for the card's biometric chip, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) revealed in response to an FoI (Freedom of Information) request by silicon.com about the £4.7bn identity cards scheme.
With no readers in place, police and immigration officers are currently still relying on traditional methods of checking ID cardholders' identity, running a fresh set of prints against existing identity databases.
Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton told silicon.com: "If this capability is not there then the biometrics are, in short, a waste of time."
I'm waiting for the day a terrorist with such a secure passport blows up something in the UK. Until then, it's just political talk; the problems and shortcomings of this type of "security" are played down. These passports do not make anything safer; it's quite the opposite. Black hats demonstrated that it's possible to clone a "secure" US passport just by driving past you.