Bullshit. State issued identity cards are valid travel documents between any EU countries, including the UK. I frequently travel to the UK with my Austrian ID card.

The technique being applied is that of RNA interference (RNAi) which was awarded the Nobel prize in 2006. There's a good layman's introduction to it over at PBS.

For a more in-depth introduction, Craig Mello, who was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize gave a Google tech-talk.

Interestingly there appears to be a hidden message within the key itself, the start obviously encodes: fidelIty bravERy InTEgRITY, but not sure what the rest works out to (chkopsuwm).

I noticed there was a similar pattern in the 2007 challenge, with the key (fedralbuoinvstgchrkmpvwxyz) starting off with letters encoding 'federal buro of investigation'.