What's the problem with a single identity?
There's an interesting thread running on William's Ideal Government blog. The question that kicked it off was, on the face of it, very simple:
"Why should I be worried about Govt forcing me to have a single identity, if I am not a terrorist/benefit scam artist etc?"
The answer to this is not as simple as might first be thought, since the 'man on the Clapham omnibus' will claim that since he has nothing to hide, he therefore has nothing to fear. Not true. Everyone has many things to hide, and we use a multitude of identifiers to separate our personae in day to day lives: the Toby that the bank knows is pseudonymous with the Toby that owns an Oyster card or the Toby that has a logon to an Internet discussion board. I wouldn't dream of using the same credentials for these identities, since they serve very different purposes, and if a 'low-value' identifier is compromised - say, I lose my Oyster card - then that could give a thief access to my bank account. Not clever.
That's all very well, you may say, but why should the Government have to deal with a plethora of identifiers when interacting with me? I hold different identifiers with DWP, HMRC, NHS, the Police, Immigration, Education etc, and as a law-abiding citizen I probably should have nothing to fear. The problem is that the traditional State approach to resolving a problem like this is centralisation - say, hypothetically of course, building a huge database of personal information and credentials so that I can be easily identified. Hypothetically of course. But why should my GP's receptionist be able to see identifying information that will track back to my tax returns? Does a benefits clerk need to know about my driving penalties?
More worryingly, once we carry such a strong centralised identifier, it of course becomes the 'gold standard' that commerce will use to identify us all, and at that point we're vulnerable to commercial aggregation of data, or leaking of data between providers so that my insurers know about my health records, or shops can see my credit rating before I even make a purchase.
This is why I'm opposed to a single identifier. What I want is strong identity through a federated system. If we could federate a National ID Scheme, with the government handling enrolment and underwriting indemnity in the event of fraudulent enrolment, then I'd be at the front of the queue demanding my ID Card...
9:38:33 AM 
|
|
