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Content type: Examples
NHS England is using Yoti's digital ID card solution to verify health care workers' identity; the cards are added to staff phones, enbaling them to use a contactless ID app to prove their identity both online and offline. Yoti is providing the system for free for three months to all public health organisations, emergency services, and community initiatives working to contain the pandemic.
Source: http://www.biometricupdate.com/202004/uk-national-health-service-rolls-out-yotis-biometric-…
Content type: Examples
To help the UK's Department for Work and Pensions handle the more than half a million applications the department received in the last two weeks of March, the identity verification company Nomidio, a subsidiary of Post-Quantum, is offering its service free of charge. The service would enable a simple, server-based three-step verification process through a smartphone to help first-time users prove their identity.
Source: http://www.biometricupdate.com/202003/free-palm-and-face-biometrics-…
Content type: Examples
British biometric start-ups are helping the UK government create digital passports.
VST Enterprises is providing a biometrics-backed digital health care passport, V-COVID, to help critical NHS and emergency services workers get back to work; the passport will incorporate test results and be included in an app that can be scanned from two meters away. In combination, Patchwork Health, which provides NHS trusts with a digital platform and Truu, which provides a digital staff passport,…
Content type: Examples
Biometrics companies are offering free services to essential businesses, remote workforces, and government agencies administering benefits claims during the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are Redrock Biometrics, which is waiving its licence fee for palm print recognition for essential businesses; Daon, which is offering free access to its multi-factor biometrics-based authentication platform, "IdentityX", to all new customers; PrivyID is offering a month of free digital signature service to…
Content type: News & Analysis
In July 2019, the UK House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee published a report on Digital Government. Lying not so subtlely amongst it's recommendations is this: "The Government should facilitate a national debate on single unique identifiers for citizens to use for accessing public services along with the right of the citizen to know exactly what the Government is doing with their data."
It's been pointed out that this is basically some of the worst features of an ID card…
Content type: Long Read
Image: Eric Jones
The UK government last week hosted hundreds of surveillance companies as it continues to try and identify “technology-based solutions” able to reconcile the need for controls at the Irish border with the need to avoid them.
The annual showcase conference of 'Security and Policing' brings together some of the most advanced security equipment with government agencies from around the world. It is off limits to the public and media.
This year’s event came as EU and UK…
Content type: News & Analysis
Big data consists mainly of data that is openly available, created and stored. It includes public sector data such as national health statistics, procurement and budgetary information, and transport and infrastructure data. While big data may carry benefits for development initiatives, it also carries serious risks, which are often ignored. In pursuit of the promised social benefits that big data may bring, it is critical that fundamental human rights and ethical values are not cast aside.…
Content type: News & Analysis
Large institutions tend to focus internally, with minimal regard to the external environment. Open Databecoming institutionalised is not different, and as a leading edge country in opening data, the UK is making the predictable mistakes first:
The UK’s Department for Education (DfE) is currently considering opening data from the National Pupil Database. At a preparation event for this initiative, at which some data was released for use in an ‘appathon’, one participant believed he…
Content type: News & Analysis
Imagine a secret government list of suspicions and allegations, fuelled by unsubstantiated rumours provided by anonymous citizens with undisclosed intentions. The information contained in the list would not be measured against any legal burden of proof or supported by any credible evidence, but would – simply by its existence – become “fact”. Imagine, then, if the government could rely upon such “facts” to identify and implicate individuals for illegal behaviour. Such a system would be…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International's recent complaint to the UK Information Commissioner has threatened to bring to a halt an imminent plan to fingerprint all domestic and international passengers departing from Heathrow's Terminal 1 and Terminal 5, due to begin on March 27th. The British media is reporting that in response to PI's complaint, the Information Commissioner has advised that passengers should only accept fingerprinting "under protest" until our complaint is resolved.
The prospect of…
Content type: Report
This report investigates the probable effect of the proposed UK national Identity Card system on people who are marginalised, who suffer social disadvantage or exclusion, and those who are disabled. The work focuses on the biometrics element of the government’s proposals (specifically facial recognition, fingerprinting and iris scanning).
Content type: News & Analysis
On July 3rd 2002, the UK Government published a consultation paper on a national identity card. Privacy International has investigated such proposals across the world for more than a decade. Here, we answer all the questions the government has failed to answer.
What sort of ID card does the government have in mind?
What is the difference between an "entitlement" card, and an identity card?
Will an identity card will help eliminate benefit fraud?
Will an identity card help prevent terrorism?
Is…