Latest News

The government’s unpopular National Identity Card scheme has faced fresh criticism from the Tories as Labour unveiled their proposals for the first phase of the rollout plan.

The first trial starts in November when the government issues ID cards to all foreign nationals, and then next year airport workers will have to carry the cards as well.

The scheme has already faced opposition from the British Air Transport Association, who claim that aviation workers are being treated like pawns.

Roger Wiltshire is the secretary general of BATA, he claims that airport workers are being used in a game of politics.

We do feel we’re being used politically. We see no security benefits from the proposals and wrote to the government to demand a rethink.

The scheme has also faced stern opposition from students, who the government may have been relying on for support. Students have by and large branded the ID card scheme as creepy and illegal. One student stated:

How do we protect our British freedoms and put a stop to this totalitarian scheme to control our identities?

The Conservative Party have claimed that the rollout scheme is nothing more than a blatant attempt to stealthily sneak the scheme into Britain.

Labour meanwhile insist that the UK is firmly behind the national identity card scheme:

Our polls have found levels of support for the national identity scheme have remained consistently high at around 60%.

ID cards will make it much harder to use false or multiple identities by securely linking a person’s unique identity to the national identity register using biometrics such as fingerprints.

Ambulance drivers are among the heroes of Britain, the people that do a thankless job working long hours saving people’s lives day in and day out. Therefore you don’t often see negative stories about ambulance drivers, but one ambulance driver from County Londonderry has very much become the exception to the rule.

Identified as Patrick Donaghey, who lives on Oughtagh Road, Killaloo, has been charged with offences against the Identity Cards Act. Allegedly he had two computers and hard drives in his home that he used to create false ID documents.

He has been released from court on bail, putting up the £1,000 bail himself. The alleged offences occurred on August 11th 2006 at his home in County Londonderry

Patrick Donaghey is scheduled to appear in court again on September 1st, where he will be tried for offences against the Identity Cards Act.

It was revealed yesterday that 3,000 UK passports and visas were stolen to order by a criminal gang while they were being transported between Manchester and London. The passports and visas are all blank, ready to be filled in with details.

The IPS, Identity and Passport Service, claim that both the visas and the passports are unusable, so are no good to the thieves, but the fact remains that the cargo was targeted and executed to perfection, giving the organised gang 3,000 identity documents that could, if the chips could be cracked, provide them with a valuable haul and method for faking identities, or stealing other people’s.

The question has to be asked, if as the Identity and Passport Service claim and the passports and visas cannot be used, why would an organised criminal gang steal them in the first place?

According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the haul of passports and visas were not set for overseas, for the use of UK embassies abroad.

All of the passports were the new ID chip style passports, which are supposed to be secure, but as the Oyster cards were recently cracked and cloned, what could an organised gang do with 3,000 blank passports?

The United Kingdom isn’t the only European country to be introducing an ID card shortly; Germany will be introducing a new identity card to replace the one they currently use, by 2010.

Plus, according to the Interior Ministry, the new identity card will help to boost Internet trade.

Websites will be able to accept the car as proof of identity. In order to do that they need to apply for a certificate of entitlement from the German government, allowing them to retrieve personal data from those using the cards, such as their name, age and address.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said about the new German identity cards:

The new identity card makes electronic commerce safer and easier for citizens, businesses and administration. It helps cut red tape and yields enormous scope for savings.

It is thought that the new identity cards will help to boost online sales through websites such as Amazon and eBay, who have been targets in the past of identity theft fraudsters using ‘phishing’ websites.

Scottish newspaper the Sunday Herald has found that many Scotsmen’s identities are for sale on websites for as little as 10p each. This of course applies to many people within the United Kingdom.

The websites selling the identities, including everything from people’s bank details, to names and addresses, are run by Russian mafia.

Jacques Erasmus is a former Internet hacker, but now works legitimately as a security expert.

This is big business. Every day criminal traders are using this network to sell in excess of £10,000 worth of private data that can be used as a tool kit to steal the subjects’ identities.

Nobody knows exactly who runs the operation, but its reputation for security, reliability and quality merchandise has seen it become known in underworld circles as the organised criminal’s answer to eBay.

The Sunday Herald went undercover to locate a network of websites that are trading data of European citizens, including their home addresses and credit card numbers, in batches of 1,000 for as little as a £100.

Of the data procured by the Sunday Herald, details of two particular Scots were purchased, and when the people were contacted they confirmed that the data, including their address and phone number, was accurate.

Paul Meldrew was one of the people whose data was sold online:

This is a bit of a shock. It’s not every day you find out you’re being sold by the Russian Mafia, but what is really frightening is the fact that I had no idea my details had been compromised.

With the national identity card scheme scheduled to launch very soon in the UK, will people’s data become more or less secure?

While some people are protesting against the introduction of a national identity card scheme in the UK, students throughout the world already have an ID card system that is Internationally recognised, and affords them discounts and access to various institutions worldwide.

The ID card is called the International Student Identity Card, ISIC, and has its own website where the card is described as:

Increasing international understanding through the promotion of travel and exchange opportunities among students, young people and the academic community.

The card is currently held throughout the world by over 4.5 million students. The card launched in 1968 and since then has been used by over 40 million students who have benefited from discounts and easier access to travel across the world.

According to the website, the card offers over 32,000 different discounts in 106 different countries. The benefits it offers are worth $500 million worldwide.

Some of the things the student identity card offers are discounts of travel, such as trains, buses and flights, plus it offers entry into may entertainment and cultural places such as museums.

Radovan Karadzic, an ex-Bosnian Serb leader, facing deportation to the Netherlands on crimes of genocide. He has been hiding within the UK until recently, posing as ‘Dragan Dabic’, an expert in Quantum Energy.

Dragan Dabic meanwhile insists that he did not lose his identity card, which Radovan Karadzic has been using, which means that Karadzic or his supporters have had access to the country’s database and that it has been copied by a high ranking official from with Serbia.

Karadzic was captured on Monday after spending 12 years hiding. He has appealed his extradition, but that appeal is believed to fail and he will be extradited to the Netherlands within the next few days.

According to reports, Karadzic’s supporters said they would find the most remote post box they could before posting his appeal, in order to delay his extradition as long as possible.

Karadzic is accused of crimes against humanity, and genocide, during the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina during the early Nineties.

The real Mr Dabic meanwhile lives in Serbia with his family. He says that he didn’t lose his ID card at all, and that it must have been copied.

It’s always been with me. Only the police have access to my ID.

How did he find my name and my surname among 10 million Serbs?

According to the ID check website192business.com and the anti fraud service 3rd Man, eight unreported frauds occur for every one that is actually reported. The biggest area for identity theft and credit card fraud with the UK is London, according to a survey.

Out of 30 million transactions in the first six months of 2008, London emerged as a fraud hotspot, heading up other UK locations such as Manchester and Nottingham.

Most of the identity fraud seems to happen in England, as only Cardiff and Belfast showed any noticeable levels from Wales and Northern Ireland.

Liverpool has successfully reduced its level of card fraud since last year. Andrew Goodwill, of 3rd man, explains:

This is because local policing activity has targeted these criminals and it’s having a clear effect.

Currently acts of ID fraud and credit card fraud have to be reported to your bank, rather than the police, which leaves many crimes unreported. Goodwill wants customers to be able to go direct to the police to report such crimes.

According to 3rd Man, credit card fraud topped £500 million in the UK last year. 192business.com reports that identity thieves are becoming much smarter in finding new ways to steal people’s identity and credit card data. They’re using the Internet and chat rooms to cultivate their marks, and they’re even using underpaid bar staff to harvest card details from customers.

The spate of job losses and cuts at the passport office has been thrown firmly at the door of the national identity card scheme, according to the worker’s union representing the passport service.

It claims that the planned implementation of automated card processing for ID cards and passports is the reason so many jobs are being lost.

With the planned introduction of the national identity card scheme, the government plans to close a passport office in Glasgow and is offering passport office staff a pay rise that is below inflation.

With Identity and Passport Service looking at IT suppliers for the new scheme, and according to reports has already spent £50 million on consultancy, the worker’s union is angered that staff are being short changed.

Action is being taken in passport offices across the country, including Liverpool, Newport, London and Glasgow. 3,000 staff are showing their annoyance at the job cuts and the low pay rise.

According to Paul McGoay of the IPS, people are losing their jobs because of the new automated processes making them unnecessary.

The IPS is building and procuring IT kits for passport applications. They only want examination by exception. Simple cases will be processed automatically, more complex cases by people.

One of our concerns is that the systems need to be up and running before the IPS can judge staff cuts. We accept change but the concern is that it is managed effectively. There have been many IT problems in the public sector and in the IPS.