Passports to Anyone Who Wants Them

The BBC is reporting about 10,000 passports that have been issued to fraudlent applicants. Blogdial is predictably all over it almost immediately.

Blogdial's take is that the BBC (and indeed the IPS) is building support for the 69 interrogation centres to be set up around the UK. These centres will ask up to 200 questions to verify the identity of applicants. Given that new applicants may have to travel for two hours round trip to be literally raped of all personal and identifying information is indeed very worrying (remember, they don't just ask - they record your response too!). Especially as there are simpler solutions.

As Blogdial points out, the 10,000 passports are detected, depite what the IPS says. Surely it's relatively trivial to simply blacklist the passport numbers so that anyone using any of them at any time is easily identified and handled appropriately. Since the government has routinely shown itself incapable of operating any system, no matter how simple (or complex!), the IPS could write to all 10,000 applicants and ask them for clarification to avoid any mistakes.

But no: somehow, the solution to this problem is the expense and danger of 69 interrogation centres around Britain. Besides the dehumanising effect of them, they're yet more process and procedure that the government will perform incorrectly. Yet more cracks in the system, yet more ways to defraud, but this time around if you slip through the net you'll be that much harder to convict because of the seemingly irrefutable (and heavily spun up) evidence of your virtue.

We of course can see that the interrogation centres are required for the forthcoming ID card and NIR system. It completely escapes me how anyone can think this is a good idea, given the inability of the government to run simpler services. Does anyone honestly think that the ID/NIR system is somehow going to be miraculosly secure against fraud? If you do, you are a fool.

Remember kids: No2ID

Submitted by coofercat on Tue, 2007-03-20 14:16