"£155,000 per instance of fraud"
Bruce Schneier writes:
The UK government tried, and failed, to get a national ID. Now they’re adding biometrics to their passports.
Financing for the Passport Office is planned to rise from £182 million a year to £415 million a year by 2008 to cope with the introduction of biometric information such as fingerprints.
A Home Office spokesman said the aim was to cut out the 1,500 fraudulent applications found through the postal system last year alone.
Okay, let’s do the math. Eliminating 1,500 instances of fraud will cost £233 million a year. That comes to £155,000 per instance of fraud.
… assuming that the new measure prevents all 1,500 instances, of course.