Biometric ID cards and passports for SA

This is scary.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20040815115028445C654537 (tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/bu9kr). Basically, South Africa is going to introduce biometric ID cards and passports within 6 months, forcing *everyone* to reapply for a new ID card (we currently have compulsory ID books - large parts of the population don't have one, because they can't afford them (and the new one is about 10 time more expensive), and many still haven't converted from the previous format to the current one, which has now been compulsory for about 10 years).

This paragraph particularly scares me:
"Gilder said the implementation of a new identification and passport system would make it impossible to forge documents because each card would have a microchip with the carrier's biographical details and fingerprints."

Our government obviously hasn't been paying attention at all to the whole ID card issue in the UK, and this quote shows that they haven't a clue about the security aspects. Plus, the government system is so rife with corruption that I'm convinced it will still be very easy to get fake ID cards - another part of the problem is that many people don't have birth certificates or any way to prove their identity, so they just get issued ID books on the basis of two other people saying that they are who they say are.

I really wish that they would look at the problems the UK government is having and learn from that - the odds that we're going to somehow do it better and circumvent all those issues are less than 0.

I'll post more about this when I have more time (in fact, I'll probably just rewrite this post, so don't get attached to it :). I just wanted to get something up as soon as I could. I would say I'm shocked, but totally despondent about our government probably describes it better.