Lost Prisoners and the ID Card Database

Am I alone in wondering that as the Home Office can't be trusted to manage a database of about a hundred thousand prisoners, what hope will it have in managing one of over fifty million ID card holders?

As someone who has been writing computer database programs for more than thirty years, I am sure it will not work. Partly because any decent self-respecting programmer would not want to have such a millstone on their CV, but mainly because large numbers of individuals will not co-operate with it at all.

There will also be those like me, who will be a problem for the database. I have been known as James Miller for nearly forty years. It is a very common name and one that is in various security databases all over the world, because not all James Millers behave how states want them to. But my real name is Graham. I suspect that as my ID Card will have to be Graham Miller, then I will not co-operate, as everything I do will have to be in my old, unwanted and hated name. Many of my friends don't use their first name and would be horrified, if a faceless bureaucrat insisted they do. Letting us change our names would of course invalidate the system.

I also know that for matters of terrorism, security and crime, the Internet and all its related web sites and programs, offers a more responsive and reactive solution to the problems of identity. Provided of course we can get inter-government co-operation to cut the levels of spams, phishing scams and frauds.

I am a betting man and I've put money on the next Home Secretary scrapping the ID Card system and spending the money on something that will work.