Jon Udell mentions that it would be interesting to compare the usage of national ID cards around the world. This reminded me that this month's Wired Magazine has a map of national ID card usage around the world. Unfortunately, the map is not online. So I've scanned it and put it below. But, by all means, read the magazine, it's in the current issue with "The Thin Pill" on the cover. I've been reading Wired since the mid 90s, picking up copies in Dublin and during travels in Vancouver and California, and I still have a stack of all the early Wireds in an attic in Dublin. So I dont feel guilty about scanning this page and putting it online! By the way, I am still astonished by how cheap it is to subscribe to magazines in the US, versus what I used to pay for IT magazines in Ireland. Wired is an absolute steal, even for those who argue that it's not anything like the same magazine it used to be [I think the issue where it changed was the issue with Jacques Villeneuve on the cover].
So on this map, it is interesting to note that Ireland is one of the few places that does not have a national ID and has no plans for one. I'd count the fact that Ireland has no plans for a National ID as another advantage of a Irish citizenship [it already offers the best visa-free-travel in the world for a second passport at least]. Irish people, given our colonial background, are dubious about government in general. This is slightly different, I think, than the US inclination towards "small government", because in Ireland there is also the sense that "getting one over on the government" is something that is honorable and to be applauded, plus the Irish Government is not particularly "small". But the Irish government's "light touch" regulation is one of the reasons why many organizations like to do business in Ireland (well, the low taxes help too). The lack of a national ID is another "light touch".
Jon gives an example of how a national ID in Belgium could be used for children to assert their age and their citizenship to Websites. But these are examples of "attributes" not identity [although I do take the point, as well articulated by the CEO of Sxip, that all of these attributes together constitute a kind of identity]. The national government here is being trusted to vouch for certain attributes of the child - age and citizenship. I don't think this necessarily requires a national ID though. That argument for a national ID says to me "thin edge of the wedge". I prefer solutions that allow attributes to be passed to relying parties, without requiring identity to be involved at all. And i'd prefer to see not only governments as the asserting parties, but private sectors institutions like banks also.
In the Web Services world, SAML and WS-Trust allow attribute information to flow with data, without identity information also flowing. The technology is a lot better than previous solutions like attribute certificates [the phrase "attribute certificates" is sure to send a shiver down the spine of anyone involved in PKI in the 1990s]. But there still has to be an initial authentication step. I'm just not convinced that the authenticating party has to be a government.
11:10:04 AM 
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