Update on ID Cards

The Register had a great article on ID Cards last week.

I particularly think the last paragraph of the second section is relevant:-

"Now, the Government is clearly proposing to use the public's very real concerns about what it thinks of as 'identity theft' as a major justification for ID cards. The public thinks ID cards will help deal with 'identity theft', so very well, the Government will use that in support of the ID Cards Bill. It's listening after a fashion, we suppose, besides being something of an ID fraud in its own right."

The article goes on to blow the £1.3Billion figure, often trotted out as the value of ID Theft in the UK each year, out of the water. Most of what the £1.3Billion represents would not be affected by ID Cards, with The Register estimating that roughly £35Million of it could be linked to ID Theft which would be combated by ID Cards. The figure is probably somewhere in between, but if the London School of Econimics is right (see a couple of posts below...) then the annual cost is likely to be between £1.2Billion and £1.8Billion.