Papers Please

Are ID Cards really necessary? Rupert George says no, while acknowledging identity management is necessary and asks whether it can be done without resorting to French style "Papers Please".

The ID card is predicted by everybody concerned to be costly and problematic. Even the Conservative Party, is taking a stand against it based on it’s impracticality, based upon the opinion of Microsoft and so other major ICT companies. Whilst those worthy LSE Professors made a the case against it in 2005, the objections of the UK’s leading computer scientists where drowned out. They predicted that proposed scheme might not work. No commentators would dare to state their belief that the project will come in on time and on budget. The size of the Governments budgets are still huge, as the Liberal Democrats have repeatedly pointed out £2 billion could go a long way to putting more police on our streets.

The problem we have if we abandon the ID card however is that establishing identity is crucial to delivering public services, fighting fraud, terrorism and many other forms of crime. The explosion of crime based upon stolen identity constitutes a huge threat to the fabric of the twenty first century economy. We need to address this issue. A Government addressing a difficult task is an easy target for critics. I fear that knowing the risks and opportunities that identity management offers the public sector, the Government and senior civil service has closed its ears too much of the criticism and stifled any real debate.

Addressing the issue of establishing identity needs to be looked in terms of low cost and harnessing the technology to protect the civil liberties and privacy of the citizen as much as possible. The criticisms of the UK Computer Research Committee are technical. The scheme must be technically possible, it is of great concerns that so many of those in a position to have an informed opinion of the technical problems posed by the existing scheme are not convinced of it’s practicality. There have been proposals concerning identity management from those working in the area of the ICT required for public service delivery. Leonard Anderson’s proposed scheme, involves harnessing the power of existing databases. Without an open debate none of this is really being discussed.

It is strange that whilst the untested technology of the ID card is being pushed along many of the opportunities that new technologies are presenting the public sector are currently either being ignored or stifled, something I will explore in next week’s newsletter.

The issue is to establish identity using the best opportunities that new technology offers. I don’t understand why it is about a card at all. This seems a very old fashion view of establishing identity. Creating a physical object that can be lost, stolen or faked misses the opportunity that the technology presents and creates a whole series of other costs and problems.

There is more to getting it wrong runs more risks than just wasting money. The sociology thrown around by the LSE’s finest lost us the clarity of our Professors of computer science, however they did worthly raise some important issues. A physical ID card as a means to establish identity only empowers an illiberal state to harass citizens in the street, an excuse for some unnecessary stop and search. Obviously those citizens who look like they might be illegal immigrants will be stopped more often, just as a hugely disproportionate number of black men have found themselves on to the DNA database.

The LSE Professors are right, it will be a counter-productive measure in getting communities to trust the police and potential suicide bombers to take the civil society more seriously than the rhetoric of those trying to engage them to throw murderously throw their lives away. A “card” doesn’t bring any net benefit at all. We will just be in the most un-British position of having our “papers” demanded, whilst being told that is for the protection of the “British way of life.”

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/14070

Laughable! I think we all know by now who the real terrorists are.
Just more excuses burried under more excuses to implement total surviellance....
Oh wow I cant wait for my microchip! Doh!