Lies, Damned Lies and Forgeries

Via the NO2ID blog, this comment by Matthew Parris.

But back to the Pyrenees, where I’ve just been talking to another English climber, a student aged 19.

“Seen this,” he asked, and pulled his driving licence from his pocket. “Spot anything wrong?”

I couldn’t. It looked like the real thing: one of those pinkish laminated cards, with photograph and details. The details included an age, of 21. “You can get them on the internet. A British cop or barman could spot the forgery — no hologram — but who’s going to know in West Virginia, where I’m off next month? You have to be 21 to get a drink there.”

“How much did you pay?”

“£20”.

And our Home Secretary seriously thinks that for £20,000, someone, somewhere isn’t going to learn how to forge an ID card?

People forge official documents, who’d a thunk it, eh? Well, our terminally naïve ministers seem to think that their gold plated (oh, sorry, gold standard) identity documents are somehow uniquely forge-proof and reliably secure. Despite all of the technology they quote as if it is some sort of magick, such as biometrics and RFID tags, they are repeatedly demonstrated to be wrong. Still, why indulge in inconsistency now?

Never mind the risk to our personal information, just so long as ministers are not seen to be weak and doing a U turn. Must get our priorities right, after all.