Who controls your identity?
Despite Home Office attempts to spin ID cards and the National Identity Register as being a benefit for the ordinary citizen, the message of government ID control shines through in this article in the FT:
Katherine Courtney, ID card programme director at the Home Office, said yesterday: “We don’t want a situation where people want for some frivolous reason to check everyone’s biometrics every time they show up.
“One of the safeguards we are building into the scheme to avoid the situation where people keep escalating the amount of verification they feel they need is to have a verification scheme that requires the user to justify to us the level of verification they want to use.”
In addition, she said, people would be able to ask for a record of when their identity had been checked and by whom as a further safeguard against “people attempting frivolously to use the system when there is not a business justification for that”.
The message from the Home Office is clear: they, not you, would control information about your identity. They, not you, would decide who can check up on you. They, not you, would determine which ID checks are important and which are “frivolous”. Companies with a “business justification” would be allowed to run a check on you. Your permission would not be sought. You wouldn’t even know it’s happened until after the fact.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:43
And of course, as has been pointed out elsewhere, once businesses have “checked up on you” they most likely have your NIR identifier, making your identity less secure.
Plus the audit trail of business use will mean the government (and selected business partners) will have a detailed picture of your everyday life.
Trust out the window – the government doesn’t trust anyone, and they give little reason for anyone to trust them. Don’t get me started on “respect”!
September 14th, 2005 at 13:23
“Companies with a “business justification” would be allowed to run a check on you” – This is the bit that really gets me… placing business needs higher than the individual’s right to privacy, choice and respect… on one hand it is kowtowing to corporations, and on the other, it displays a clear policy of (ab)use of the population to make money, as long as the price is right.
September 19th, 2005 at 18:45
The crux of the argument for me, is that with modern cryptography the Government can verify your identity once, give you a digitally signed certificate to load into your card and then forget about it. I see no reason bar ignorance for any central database at all. Mind you, thats not saying I’d trust the Government to forget anything.
Regardles, it follows that if you have no need for a database any debate on the secondary uses of it are entirely ludicrous.
September 21st, 2005 at 14:26
@Simon Gibbs
So how do you deal with someone who loses their card? Do you allow them the option of taking on a totally new identity, or even a slightly different one, at will?
Then extend that to someone who pretends to lose their card. What stops them from applying for multiple identities?
Also, how would you evaluate the possibility that your digital signature scheme has been cracked?
Best regards
September 21st, 2005 at 22:23
It’s probably been considered elsewhere, but …
Why are opponents tending to use the Governments’ language? Referring to the ID Card Bill as the “National Database Bill” might be more emotive and stop the standard first question of “Well, what’s wrong with carrying a card like your driver’s licence?”
September 22nd, 2005 at 08:38
nedski,
You misinterpret the newspeak a little. “Business justification” is public sector jargon for a formal requirement of process, as opposed to mere curiosity or discretion. It is not remotely the same sort of thing as the commercial reasons used by real businesses (reduction of cost, increasing sales, managing risks). Organisations, commercial or otherwise, will get access to data by filling in the application forms properly. What it is worth will be irrelevant to such a standard of “justification”.
Government has clothed itself in the (frequently barbarous) language of business management, and purports to use its tools, but has generally misunderstood and misapplied all it has appropriated.