Examination of Witnesses (Questions 414
- 419)
TUESDAY 20 APRIL 2004
MR JOHN
HARRISON, MR
ANDY JEBSON,
MR RICHARD
HADDOCK AND
MR NEIL
FISHER
Q414 Chairman: Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Thank you very much indeed for coming to give evidence to the
Committee this afternoon, which is, as you know, one of a series
of hearings that we are having into the issue of identity and
entitlement cards, and we expect, in due course, to give draft
scrutiny to the Bill that the Government finally publish on ID
cards. I wonder before we start if each of you could briefly introduce
yourself and the organisation that you represent. Mr Haddock,
I think you have come further than anyone else. Can we start with
you, please?
Mr Haddock: Thank you. My name
is Richard Haddock. I am the President of LaserCard Systems Corporation—that
is a subsidiary of Drexler Technology Corporation, Mountain View,
California. Our company is the world's leading supplier of multi-biometric
ID cards. Our cards are used throughout five countries in the
world. We have sold approximately 20 million cards throughout
the United States; they are used in Mexico; by the Canadian Government;
by the Italian Government and the Saudi Arabian Government is
now beginning to use our products. We are in the process of assisting
the US Government in the fielding of 1,000 biometric verification
systems across the US border entry points and the Canadian Government
simultaneously so they will be able to biometrically verify their
card base. We feel our card is the most secure and cost-effective
means of providing national identification documentation and we
are pleased to be here today to share the information with you.
Q415 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Mr Jebson.
Mr Jebson: Andy Jebson. I am a
director of Cubic Transportation Systems Ltd, which in turn is
part of the Cubic Corporation based out of the US. Our other division
is Defence Systems. In the transportation side, we are with the
world leaders in the provision of transportation systems, ticketing
solutions. We operate over five Continents and perhaps in the
UK we are best known as being the technology partner that has
delivered the London Transport system, the Oystercard, which I
am sure we are all familiar with today. As my colleague has said,
we are delighted to be here to offer our experience and expertise.
Q416 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Fisher.
Mr Fisher: Neil Fisher, I am the
Director of Security Solutions at QinetiQ, which is Europe's largest
research and development company, with emphasis on security and
defence. Our work covers a very broad canvas from land, sea, air,
space, cyber-space and underwater, and our drive really is to
create solutions that integrate people process and technology.
Q417 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Harrison.
Mr Harrison: My name is John Harrison.
I am a Director of a small company by the name of Edentity that
has spent the last four years or so advocating the need for the
design of a federated digital identity infrastructure that can
be used to facilitate a wide range of identity-related transactions
across society, both government and the private sector.
Q418 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Obviously in today's session we are particularly going
to be interested in improving our understanding of some of the
major choices that have to be made over the design and structure
of any ID card or entitlement card system. So we hope that between
you your expertise will at least elucidate the issues that we
need to be thinking about. Perhaps I could start off by asking
you some questions about the database that is proposed for an
entitlement or ID system: questions of whether to create a new
database or build on an existing database, some of the issues
about advantages and disadvantages of a single database. Perhaps
I could ask this to Mr Jebson. You, I think, have come down in
favour of the Home Office's proposal to create from scratch a
new national identity register. Some of our earlier witnesses
have argued against this approach of putting all the eggs in one
basket, saying it makes the system more vulnerable. What is your
assessment of that argument?
Mr Jebson: I think it is a very
valid argument that all technologies can be viewed in a number
of different ways. From our perspective, if I use, for example,
the London Transport situation, the Prestige databases are contained
in a very secure facility in one single site so that there are
limits on the access to the data over things like communications
links. Significantly, we are able to deliver high levels of security
of access by the individual because we maintain those databases,
and there are multiple ones, not just the one database, in one
place. I think the other observation I would make is that we are
not necessarily talking about a single database. Our system is
completely backed up in a separate site but, again, highly secure
because it is all in one place.
Q419 Chairman: Could I ask you to
separate the two issues. You have responded largely on the issue
of whether one has a single database. The other issue that is
covered by this is whether we start from something we have got
at the moment or whether we start a new database from scratch.
What is your view there?
Mr Jebson: I would suggest that
it is better to start from scratch because you then can ensure
integrity of the data from the outset. Whenever you have a situation
where you are bringing together multiple databases, in our experience
that involves the risk of corrupting the data because you may
have different people making different entries.
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