Access to ID card database to be limited

The FT says "Business and the public sector are to be given graded access to the national identity card database, depending on the need." They've been interviewing Katherine Courtney, ID card programme director at the Home Office.

Katherine Courtney, ID card programme director at the Home Office, said yesterday: "We don't want a situation where people want for some frivolous reason to check everyone's biometrics every time they show up.

"One of the safeguards we are building into the scheme to avoid the situation where people keep escalating the amount of verification they feel they need is to have a verification scheme that requires the user to justify to us the level of verification they want to use."

In addition, she said, people would be able to ask for a record of when their identity had been checked and by whom as a further safeguard against "people attempting frivolously to use the system when there is not a business justification for that".