Downing Street is facing embarrassment after citing four other countries with ID card systems as proof it will work in Britain, but nearly all have been subject to major data concerns. The official No. 10 press release sent out this morning cited Australia, Estonia, Denmark and India as other countries were Britain would “take the best aspects” from in order to design the most optimal and secure system.
However three of the four countries have seen the data held on citizens by their government face major security concerns, and even mass leaks. In 2021, a hacker in Estonia succeeded in obtaining over 280,000 personal identity photos, names and ID codes from the country’s ID card system. The following year, 2022, IT experts in Denmark revealed they had discovered a hack of the country’s new online digital ID using an “unbelievably simple code”.
An Engineering journal reported that a coding trick could be used to enable hackers to easily identify the usernames of MitID users and lock them out of the system for several days at a time.
The investigation concluded that in some instances, hackers may even be able to log on using the victims’ ID number.
In 2018, Indian officials in charge of the country’s new biometric identity scheme filed a police complaint after reports that citizens’ personal details had been downloaded and were being sold online for less than £6.
While authorities insisted the biometric data remained safe, Indians’ names, addresses, photos, phone numbers and email addresses were being sold.
Downing Street said this morning that Britain’s new ID Card system would take “the best aspects of the digital identification systems that are already up and running around the world”.
It insisted that the scheme will be designed with “best-in-class security at its core.”
“The system uses state-of-the-art encryption and authentication technology that’s already protecting millions of digital transactions daily. If a phone is lost or stolen, the digital credentials can be immediately revoked and reissued, providing better security than traditional physical documents.”
