Charlie Sorrel
Gear

UK National ID Card: Too Expensive

Gadget Lab readers know just how effective things like ID cards are in fighting crime and terrorism (about as effective as DRM has been in stopping music and movie piracy), and if the UK's history of public tech projects is any indicator, the National ID Card would have been a particularly poor exampleHowever, despite the secrecy in testing the scheme (two newspapers are currently using the courts to try and force the government to release the data), it seems that Brown's reasons are more prudent, and fitting for the man who used to control England's budget: The scheme is just too expensive.

The current English Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is nothing if not sensible, and he might just be putting an end to controversial ID card scheme in the country.

Gadget Lab readers know just how effective things like ID cards are in fighting crime and terrorism (about as effective as DRM has been in stopping music and movie piracy), and if the UK's history of public tech projects is any indicator, the National ID Card would have been a particularly poor example

However, despite the secrecy in testing the scheme (two newspapers are currently using the courts to try and force the government to release the data), it seems that Brown's reasons are more prudent, and fitting for the man who used to control England's budget: The scheme is just too expensive. According to the Guardian:

[A] number of ministerial sources did confirm that the PM was concerned enough about introducing such a huge multi-billion pound scheme to insist that the technology must work before it is introduced.

Maybe the government was going the Web 2.0 route and planning to keep the scheme in an endless beta?

ID cards could be delayed as PM calls for review into technology [Guardian]

Picture credit [Artesea]