Charlie's Diary

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Fri, 31 Mar 2006 On the unworkability of the National Identity Register Over at www.blairwatch.co.uk ("Chronicling the demise of the New Labour Project") Tom has an interesting post in which he estimates the workload the NIR registration centres will have to handle, just 32 months from now. So adding it all up, from NIR Day 1 for ten years you've got to keep processing people at the rate of 50 per hour at every centre, or one every 72 seconds, each of whom requires a scan of the whole central NIR to avoid multiple registrations, so the database has to be up and accessible every minute of the day to avoid delay. In the early days it's a nailed on certainty that we'll get failures, resulting in potentially hundreds of people making pointless journeys ... Assuming 99% reliability (which is pretty hysterically funny for a large distributed government program lashed together in 32 months, as it exceeds the MTBF of the client desktop PCs the staff will be accessing the register through) he figures the NIR will be processing 700,000 people a year and roughly 71,000 people are going to be making trips to the office in vain. "I'd suggest that anything much below 99.9% reliability is going to be seriously political in terms of people claiming loss of earnings, loss of holidays etc.," he remarks. I think Tom is an optimist (in favour of the NIR being unrealistically efficient). The devil is in the details of what the NIR is trying to track. This isn't just a passport system, folks, they want to know where you live, they want to know where your dog goes to school. Unfortunately the Blairwatch comment system seems to have swallowed my reply, so here it is. (I can't be bothered re-writing it, as I've got an annoying cold and it's time to go get some dinner. Go read his figures first, then come back here ... There is a reason we need to renew our passports every decade; the photograph ages. The same is going to be true of the biometrics on the ID card. There are also all those status changes to take into account. The average marriage lasts just 12 years, for example, and getting married or divorced is obviously an ID Register update. Right? On top of the on-going 700,000 teens per year I think you need to add the following ongoing overhead updates: Marriages: (90% of folks get married, so that's another 650,000 p/y) Divorces: (40% of marriages end in divorce, so about 300,000 p/y) Deaths: (100% of us die, cumulative death rate is roughly equal to birth rate, so 7,000,000 p/y leaving the register) 10 year biometric updates: 7,000,000 per year. (Do you look the same at 39 as you did at 29? I think not ...) Mutilations: people who lose eyeballs or fingers or otherwise experience changes to their body that would interfere with the biometrics are obviously going to need their records updating. (I'd say this is probably cumulative to somewhere between 5 and 10% of the population, so another 350,000-700,000.) Change of Address: people who move are required to provide proof of change of address. Say we live in a given house for an average of roughly 10 years. Yippee! We've just doubled that 7M figure again! Loss or damage to ID Card: that's going to be a report-to-processing-center job too, isn't it? In 25 years I've damaged one passport and lost another. But these ID cards are going to be riding around in wallets, an environment more like that in which credit cards are used. Personally, I'd be surprised if the half-life of an ID card was much over 2 years in practice, so that'd actually multiply the replacement processing rate by a factor of 5. But that's ridiculous so I'm going to leave it out of the calculation below. In upshot, I reckon the mature system will have to handle more like 15M to 25M updates per year on an ongoing basis, rather than Tom's 7M updates at first and 700K after 10 years. If we include a card life more like a credit card than a passport, make that 50-100M updates per year. And this is in addition to the initial registration rate during the first decade as they try to shovel us all into the database! Bluntly, they're not going to be processing people at the rate of one per 72 seconds -- it's going to be an order of magnitude worse, minimum. And that's before we look at other updates. Maybe 500,000 people come into contact with the criminal justice system every year -- their records are going to be updated. (If resistance to the ID Card reaches levels associated with the Poll Tax in Scotland in 1989-90, you can ramp that number to more than 10 million a year -- believe it or not, the Councils in Scotland are still trying to clear up the Poll Tax backlog.) As we integrate further with the EU, I'd be unsurprised to see immigration/emigration figures close to 500K per year, too. Bluntly, the figures don't add up. They're not going to be able to process people properly without an order of magnitude expansion of the processing offices. Nor have we factored in the half-million or so folks a year taking days off work (with a vaunted 99% efficient system), or a whole load of other special cases. Build a distributed high-security database that's got to add a complex record every second, add three-nines or better availability, will be checked probably an order of magnitude more frequently as well, and ensure that the data integrity is preserved? And do it in 32 months, using the usual New Labour contractors like Capita and EDS? Go pull the other one, Mr Clarke. [Link] [Discuss ID Cards] posted at: 21:26 | path: /politics | permanent link to this entry The UK National ID card You may have noticed the House of Lords resistance to the ID Card bill collapse earlier this week. You may have shrugged and wondered what it means to you. If you live in the UK, here's what it means: You Will: ATTEND an appointment to be photographed, have your fingerprints taken and iris scanned, or be fined up to £2500. Additional fines of up to £2500 may be levied each time you fail to comply until you submit to these procedures. PROMPTLY INFORM the police or Home Office if you lose your card or it becomes defective, or face a fine of up to £1000. If you find someone else's card and do not immediately hand it in, you may have committed a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for up to two years or a fine, or both. PROMPTLY INFORM the National Identity Register of any change of address or face a fine of up to £1000 (you will supply evidence of your previous addresses, not just your current address). PROMPTLY INFORM the National Identity Register of significant changes to your personal life or any errors they have made or face a fine of up to £1000. You may also be obliged to submit to being re-interviewed, re-photographed, re-fingerprinted and re-scanned, or face a fine. PAY between £30 and £93 (Home Office estimates — every other body involved says it will be substantially more) to be registered, with further charges possible to change your details and to replace a lost or stolen card. When ID cards were introduced in this country during World War II, they had three functions. By the time they were abolished in 1952 they had 39 administrative uses. So what won't we be able to do without an ID card, according to Government plans? If you don't have an ID card ... You will not (be able to): Rent or sell a home Stay in a hotel Buy or sell a car Buy a mobile phone Open or close a bank account Travel overseas Obtain medical care Attend an institute of education Work or run a business Be declared dead (or alive) Be registered to vote I have four words to sum this up: Tony Blair's Poll Tax. And if you don't like this and want to do something about it, you should start by supporting the No2ID campaign and/or The Open Rights Group. [Discuss ID Cards] posted at: 17:36 | path: /politics | permanent link to this entry

specials: Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab "Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex Quick links: RSS Feed (Moved!) Who am I? Contact me Buy my books: (FAQ) Missile Gap Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007) The Jennifer Morgue Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006) Glasshouse Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006) The Clan Corporate Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now) Accelerando Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Free download The Hidden Family Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) The Family Trade Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Iron Sunrise Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) The Atrocity Archives Via Amazon.com (Trade PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (Trade PB) Via Golden Gryphon (HC) Via Amazon.com (HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (HC) Singularity Sky Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.com (US ebook) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Toast Via Amazon.com Via Amazon.co.uk Some webby stuff I'm reading: [ Engadget ] [ Gizmodo ] [ The Memory Hole ] [ Boing!Boing! ] [ Futurismic ] [ Walter Jon Williams ] [ Making Light (TNH) ] [ Crooked Timber ] [ Junius (Chris Bertram) ] [ Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ] [ Bruce Sterling ] [ Ian McDonald ] [ Amygdala (Gary Farber) ] [ Cyborg Democracy ] [ Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc)  ] [ Atrios ] [ The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ] [ This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ] [ Jesus's General ] [ Mick Farren ] [ Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ] [ Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ] [ Tangent Online ] [ Grouse Today ] [ Hacktivismo ] [ Terra Nova ] [ Whatever (John Scalzi) ] [ GNXP ] [ Justine Larbalestier ] [ Yankee Fog ] [ The Law west of Ealing Broadway ] [ Cough the Lot ] [ The Yorkshire Ranter ] [ Newshog ] [ Kung Fu Monkey ] [ S1ngularity ] [ Pagan Prattle ] [ Gwyneth Jones ] [ Calpundit ] [ Lenin's Tomb ] [ Progressive Gold ] [ Kathryn Cramer ] [ Halfway down the Danube ] [ Fistful of Euros ] [ Orcinus ] [ Shrillblog ] [ Steve Gilliard ] [ Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ] [ The Panda's Thumb ] [ Martin Wisse ] [ Kuro5hin ] [ Advogato ] [ Talking Points Memo ] [ The Register ] [ Cryptome ] [ Juan Cole: Informed comment ] [ Global Guerillas (John Robb) ] [ Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ] [ Simon Bisson's Journal ] [ Max Sawicky's weblog ] [ Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ] [ Hitherby Dragons ] [ Counterspin Central ] [ MetaFilter ] [ NTKnow ] [ Encyclopaedia Astronautica ] [ Fafblog ] [ BBC News (Scotland) ] [ Pravda ] [ Meerkat open wire service ] [ Warren Ellis ] [ Brad DeLong ] [ Hullabaloo (Digby) ] [ Jeff Vail ] [ The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ] [ Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ] [ Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ] [ Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ] Older stuff: June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 (I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)

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