It’s not only safer but also more convenient. If you move, you only need to update your information in one place and that’s it. The next time you log into an iamdentity enabled web site your details are automatically updated. You can even control who receives what data.

Isn’t it time that there’s a proactive approach to these problems? Have a look at http://www.iamdentity.com and decide for yourself.

If I walk up to you and identify myself as ID #13714199862 in your scheme, how can i provide authentication?

In your proposal, while the Govt has a choice to not build up a surveillance dossier on all of us, we don’t have the choice to prevent the Govt from doing so.

Nor can we prevent MI5 etc from accessing our surveillance dossier, or even prove that they haven’t.

As far as alternative systems, the LSE offered one and look how they were attacked by the Govt.

If the Govt are so certain biometrics work, why don’t they simply take the biometrics of offenders and leave the rest of us alone?

If they want to save us time in registering with different departments, why don’t they provide open-source software that we own and control which contacts Govt departments with minimum data in an unpredicatable way?

I have been a campaigner for No2ID for 14 months.  At every point where we offered them less intrusive and cheaper alternatives, they denied us a voice where they could and persecuted us where they couldn’t.  This Govt have absolutely no intention of protecting our privacy, our freedom of speech or even our democracy.  They are dead set on creating the nightmare that Orwell predicted, thus making this debate pointless.

I guarantee you that you will not get the Govt to listen.

How would we each have an individual "account" without a unique ID Number? And since plod and all the other "regulatory" agencies would definately want to be able to use the system (including Social Security and NHS) how would it be implemented without some sort of card? How would we know that the data visble to us, and the access logs, were the whole truth? I’ll bet the security services and police will be given "covert" access. This would be reasonable, given the nature of their task, but on the grounds that government always tries to expand doubtless the "covert" access will gradually spread to other agencies? How long before your data is covertly accessible to the Inland Revenue or NHS on some sort of "security" or "anti fraud" excuse?

Secondly, banks and other commercial institutions have a vested interest in getting working systems at roughly the price budgetted. Government has no such qualms, simply by being able to squeeze more money from the electors, borrow more (and hence squeezing the electors in the future) or even, in the last resort, printing more money (yes, I know it’s inflationary, but it’s been done in the past and just because that was a disaster doesn’t mean some bunch of cretins won’t try it in the future).

Thirdly, banks, or rather their clients, do suffer from various types of fraud linked to the false use of identities etc. You, I and a lot of the people who use the internet are moderately computer savvy and probably know to hide our details, change passwords frequently, shred credit card receipts etc etc. But we are a relatively small subset of the general population.

Finally,  your acknowledgment that an ombudsman would be needed kind of presupposes that abuses will occur. And since the abuses will have to happen before anyone notices, that kind of presupposes that people will suffer hardship from this scheme. Maybe, after much investigation and many hearings, such hardships will be compensated for, but I wouldn’t trust the government, any government, to really make good in the true sense of the word.

I realise that I may sound unduly paranoid and negative, but I think that the whole idea of national databases, whether central or dispersed, provides far too many opportunities for ordinary people to suffer some for of hardship to balance the advantages, which could be acheived by other, less intrusive means. Quite frankly I’d rather not give the buggers (of any party) the opportunity to create the potential mayhem that this system will probably cause.

RM

Are there any plans to forward these ideas to the government? How can they be persuaded to consider this option?

Owen replies: Yes – the ombudsman is a bit of an afterthought and like you I don't have much faith in regulators as a guarantee of liberty.  The central problem is this: I think citizens should be able to see all the information about them in one place. But if the technology allows citizens to do this, then the government can too. You need something to stop them from building systems that enable them to do that.