Existing proposals are "too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence", says the report – the work of more than 100 academics and outside experts in the fields of law, technology, information systems, government policy, business, economics and security.
While the report supports the concept of a national identity system for the UK, it recommends that the current legislation should be replaced with a different model. The consequences of the current proposals might include "failure of systems, unforeseen financial costs, increased security threats and unacceptable imposition on citizens."
According to the report's authors:
"The success of a national identity system depends on a sensitive, cautious and cooperative approach involving all key stakeholder groups including an independent and rolling risk assessment and a regular review of management practices.
"We are not confident that these conditions have been satisfied in the development of the Identity Cards Bill. The risk of failure in the current proposals is therefore magnified to the point where the scheme should be regarded as a potential danger to the public interest and to the legal rights of individuals."
The report goes on to warn that, rather than increasing UK security, the bill may create greater security dangers than before by creating new levels of bureaucratic and technological infrastructure.
"A fully integrated national system of this complexity and importance will be technologically precarious and could itself become a target for attacks by terrorists or others," says the report.
The technology itself, the authors explain, is largely "untested and unreliable", and the problems already encountered by the Government in implementing smaller IT projects are likely to be amplified in such a large-scale scheme.
Private sector costs relating to the verification of individuals, the cost of biometric readers, and the cost of registration will all cost substantially more than currently anticipated – with registration alone "costing more than the projected overall cost of the identity system".
In addition, say the report's authors, the proposed oversight measures envisaged for the scheme are inadequate, while the legislation may arguably contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, the right of free movement for EU citizens, the Disability Discrimination Act and the Data Protection Act.
Of particular concern is the audit trail that, under Government proposals, will be created every time an individual's identity is checked – when he visits an out-patient's clinic for the first time or applies for a new job, for example. This permanent record raises serious privacy questions, says the report:
"The Home Office has even attributed their decision to create such extensive data trails to 'representations from the information commissioner'. If true, this amounts to an own-goal for the national regulator of information privacy, because the consequence of creating a dense and perhaps ubiquitous audit trail are a much worse outcome for privacy than the potential abuses against which it is purported to act as a safeguard."
Finally, the report criticises the Government's assertion that it needs to use biometric identifiers for the scheme in order to be consistent with international obligations in connection with the new biometric passport.
"There is no evidence to support this assertion," it says.
"We conclude that the Government is unnecessarily binding the identity card scheme to internationally recognised requirements on passport documents. By doing so, the Government has failed to correctly interpret international standards, generating unnecessary costs, using untested technologies and going well beyond the measures adopted in any other country that seeks to meet international obligations," it adds.
The report's authors suggest that the planned new French system may be a preferable alternative.
This is much more user-friendly than the UK proposals, allowing individuals to use multiple identifiers, and specifically rejecting the centralisation of data into one single database.
This means that the French government cannot make the link between, say, the driving license identifier and the health system identifier belonging to any one individual. Accordingly there is greater privacy and data protection built into the system, and more control given to the citizen.
The Government should seriously consider such a scheme, says the report.
Background
The Government published its proposals for the national ID card scheme in April 2004, including draft legislation that would allow for a database to be kept containing detailed personal information on cardholders, and which could potentially create an electronic fingerprint of everyone who uses a service, such as the NHS, that requires an ID card check.
Experts and civil liberties groups are outraged by the proposals, which they see as rushed, over-reaching and damaging to human rights.
Nevertheless, legislation to create the scheme was passed at second reading by the House of Commons in December. The bill receives its second reading in the House of Lords today.
Commentators suggest however, that the bill may shortly be dropped from the Government's legislative agenda.
With an election date looming – possibly as early as 5th May – the Government is running out of time in which to push the controversial legislation through. The Tories have vowed to reject any attempt to speed the process.
Speaking to Times Online, the Shadow Leader of the Commons, Oliver Heald, said: "If the Prime Minister decides to have a general election a third of the way into the parliamentary year he cannot expect to get many bills through. We cannot pass bad laws just because he decides to go to the country."