Examination of Witnesses (Question 520-539)
DR TONY
MANSFIELD, DR
JOHN DAUGMAN,
DR EDGAR
WHITLEY AND
PROFESSOR ANGELA
SASSE
3 MAY 2006
Q520 Chairman: I said that.
Dr Daugman: In fact, there are
no worldwide rights to iris scanning. Anybody who could come up
with an algorithm is free to deploy it. I am the inventor of the
technology and the author of the algorithms that are currently
used in all public deployments and I have acquired a number of
patents in that, but in the year 2004 I irrevocably assigned all
of my interests in those patents to a charitable trust, so I currently
have no commercial, financial interest in either iris recognition
or any biometric company.
Q521 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Thank you for putting that on the record, and if I misquoted you
I apologise.
Professor Sasse: I am in the same
position as Dr Mansfield. I have no attachment to any particular
technology but I work on evaluation of the technology so I work
as a consultant.
Dr Whitley: No connections whatsoever.
Q522 Chairman: Thank you. It was
important for me to put that on the record so that the Committee
is seen to be fair in this issue. The ID cards programme team
said they consulted quite widely. Do you agree, and what more
could they have done?
Dr Mansfield: Well, there seems
to have been a process of continual consultation and I think they
have been listening since 2002, when the consultation exercise
on entitlement cards was conducted. There may be one or two things
that could have been done additionally. When you asked the previous
panel the question one of the things which I think could have
happened is better engagement between the original consultation
and procurement, and there were perhaps a few opportunities that
were missed for engagement with industry and academia to investigate
certain solutions or certain problems prior to the procurement
starting.
Q523 Chairman: But generally you
are happy with the consultation. John?
Dr Daugman: Behind the scenes
there has been a fair amount of scientific consultation, at least
in my experience, from Home Office scientists. People have asked
me specific technical questions based on the scientific literature,
for example, could I point them to references. I would make a
distinction between that and the public debate about ID cards
which has been woefully lacking in scientific understanding. The
press have picked up on all kinds of false assertions which then
go on to be repeated, for example in the LSE report as fact so,
as you have seen, the thrust of my written evidence to this Committee
concerns the very poor quality of the public discussion of scientific
issues around ID cards, but the quality of Home Office consultation
in my experience has been rather high.
Q524 Chairman: We will return to
some of those issues later. Professor Sasse, the general consultation?
Professor Sasse: I would agree
there is a lot of consultation that has taken place and certainly
I have been particularly involved in the process since 2004 when
the Home Affairs Select Committee looked into the proposed legislation,
and it is quite visible that they have taken on board some advice
and outcomes of those consultations in the way that the proposals
have been developed. However, I think it is also fair to say that
possibly one of the reasons that the process went in the way that
Dr Daugman just described is because right at the beginning the
Home Office sought to influence the public debate in a way which
has turned out not to be very helpful by basically putting out
a no-holds barred, positive assertion of a whole range of benefits
that could be derived from the programme, without having made
a—
Q525 Chairman: A proper assessment?
Professor Sasse: Yes.
Q526 Chairman: Do you basically agree
with that?
Dr Whitley: Yes. On Dr Daugman's
point I know the Committee does not want to go into detail on
this but we have responded to the specific allegations we have
made—
Q527 Chairman: You can fight outside!
Dr Whitley: I understand, but
just to say we have responded in detail to his allegations.[1]
Q528 Chairman: Tony, how reliant do you
think is the Home Office upon your advice on biometrics, and what
is your role in the Biometrics Expert Group? Do you have too much
influence in that area?
Dr Mansfield: The Home Office
draws on expertise from more than just myself. Originally there
was a feasibility study for Passport Service and DVLA and Home
Office about using biometrics to strengthen identity documents
such as entitlement cards. The study was quite narrowly focused,
and focused entirely on the biometrics component. Of course that
study is four years old; the work was conducted in 2002; things
have moved on since then. To my mind the Home Office has not been
over-reliant on the advice that was given back in 2002-03, but
it probably has not come across that way in terms of things which
have been said or things which have been put out in the public
arena. There is more evidence that they have considered and taken
on board that has not been put on the website.
Q529 Adam Afriyie: For Professor
Sasse and Dr Daugman, to what extent has the Biometrics Assurance
Group been involved in the ID cards programme?
Dr Daugman: It has just begun.
It had an organisational meeting in November and a subsequent
meeting in February, both of which were mainly briefing opportunities
for us to be briefed by Home Office officials and affiliated scientists.
Things are accelerating a bit more now. We have a set of sub-committees
who are investigating particular challenges looking into, for
example, security and spoofing and stability in biometrics and
the NIR (National Identity Register) issues, so that is just beginning
now.
Q530 Adam Afriyie: So the answer
is just two meetings?
Dr Daugman: So far, yes.
Q531 Adam Afriyie: And roughly how
long were those meetings?
Dr Daugman: Full day meetings,
or three quarters of a day, and the next is next week.
Q532 Adam Afriyie: Is your advice
during those meetings given proactively, or are you reacting to
probing from the Home Office?
Dr Daugman: So far we have not
formally given any advice at all. We have been getting briefs.
Q533 Chairman: Angela, could you
comment on that?
Professor Sasse: This is correct.
Also, I raised some questions in the briefing and they were followed
up by the relevant members of the ID cards team who asked my advice
on the trial they are planning starting towards the end of the
year, so they did actually consult me subsequently on some of
the points I raised.
Q534 Chairman: Could I ask John and
Edgar briefly, John in particular, given your involvement with
iris scanning and the history you have with that, how can you
be independent?
Dr Daugman: I am an academic;
I have been at Cambridge University for about 15 years since 1991;
can intellectual work which has practical applications be deemed
independent? I think so. Overall there are broad mathematical
issues in decision-making under uncertainty, pattern recognition,
fusion of evidence—all kinds of abstract questions about
how you make decisions about someone's identity perhaps by searching
a database the size of the entire country based on some biological
data. Those are fundamental scientific and mathematical questions
about which I have a lot to say, but having no financial interest
in the technology I think I can claim independence. I will admit
to an intellectual and scientific interest in the technology but
no financial interest.
Q535 Chairman: Would you agree? In
terms of the independence of the advice of governments, that is
the questions I am trying to get at.
Dr Whitley: I think the raw scientific
evidence such as, for example, was given in the supplementary
evidence from the Home Office, we are not actually on that great
a disagreement with. We both said that the number of real trials—the
figures are here—for fingerprint trials the database sizes
were in the millions, face recognitions in the tens of thousands
and iris performance statistics from independent tests were limited
to the hundreds. If that is the scientific evidence we have no
disagreement with it. It is a question of, on the basis of that
can you roll out biometric identification in the time scales and
at the cost levels that the Home Office is intending. That is
where much of the disagreement arises.
Chairman: We will return to that. Margaret?
Q536 Margaret Moran: We heard in
the last session and, indeed, elsewhere that there seems to be
a lack of clarity about aims and uses of the scheme. Would you
agree with that?
Dr Whitley: Yes.
Professor Sasse: Yes.
Dr Daugman: No.
Dr Mansfield: Partly! There are
some uses that I think are quite well specified. To the use of
biometrics, for example, at the time of enrolment for an identity
card to ensure that someone has not previously registered for
an ID card using completely different identity details, that is
reasonably well established so there is a fair bit of clarity
there. Some of the other potential uses are less clear, but when
we are talking about an identity management system for the future
it is difficult to predict exactly everything which could be done
in the future. That is why part of the uses are well-defined and
some are not so well-defined.
Dr Whitley: To give two quick
illustrations, the first came out in the press a couple of weeks
ago where Mr Burnham was saying it would be a good idea to have
health information stored on the central database;[2]
Mr Clark, responding to Simon Carr[3]
said, and repeating what had been said in Parliament, health information
will not be part of the database and will require primary legislation
to introduce it. Now, if you are thinking of introducing that
you had better get that down in the specifications for your system
quickly, rather than five years down the line introducing a voluntary
database that requires storage, processing, et cetera, et cetera.
It is those kinds of things that certainly give me concern about
the clarity within the system. Similarly on biometrics v PIN numbers.
Mr Burnham said biometrics is great for assessing identity; other
forms of authentication, such as PIN numbers and passwords, can
be stolen along with a card so are much weaker at linking a person
to an identity.[4]
Again, the Government's scheme seems to be for large parts using
PIN numbers to verify that this is your card, a point that was
made earlier.
Q537 Margaret Moran: We have been told
in evidence that the technological architecture of the scheme
is dependent on the business requirement. Do you agree with that,
and you can give short answers.
Dr Whitley: Again, it is not clear
exactly what the business requirements are. There are Home Office
business requirements but all the other government departments
who are expected to link in have not yet got round to doing in
detail what kinds of services, and whether it is cost beneficial
for them to link into the system, et cetera.
Professor Sasse: One of the benefits
that the Government keeps returning to is that it would reduce
benefit fraud. Now, if you look at the Department of Work and
Pensions' statistics about how benefit fraud is committed you
will find that well over 90% is committed by people who do not
lie about their identity. They are perfectly honest about who
they are; they lie about their circumstances. So, that said, you
would need a much more detailed proposal. Now, a strong identity
might allow you to pick up more easily if somebody has several
jobs or claims they cannot work, but you would need a much more
detailed proposal to see how establishing a strong identity would
help you to realise that promise.
Dr Daugman: Certainly the technology
architecture depends on the goals which are set. I am not sure
I understand what is meant by the business architecture. If it
means, for example, federated versus centralised databases then
clearly that is an architectural issue.
Q538 Margaret Moran: Has the Home
Office communicated clearly throughout all the phases of this
project?
Dr Daugman: You mean publicly
or privately?
Q539 Margaret Moran: Both.
Dr Daugman: Obviously privately
we would not, in general, know the answer to that. In my personal
experience, yes. Publicly I would say it has been less successful.
Dr Mansfield: I would agree. Given
that there can be so many misconceptions about how the scheme
should work, would work, there are some problems with communication.
Dr Turner: There seems to be a magical
assumption that somehow the use of three biometrics will produce
the result that no one has ever achieved before. Do you think
three biometrics are necessary? Do you think that maybe in hitching
the wagon to three biometrics we are setting up such complications
for ourselves that the scheme may fall under the weight of its
own over ambition?
1 The LSE Identity Project Response to Dr Daugman's
submission is available at http://is2.lse.ac.uk/IDcard/default.htm Back
2
The Sunday Times, April 23, 2006 "Labour U-turn over
ID card medical details" available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2147744.html Back
3
Available at http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/Speeches/hs-letter-simon-carr?version=1 Back
4
Answer to Parliamentary question 4167 19 July 2005. Back
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