Some splendid person, writing pseudonymously in the obscurity of an open thread on the Guardian’s Comment is Free semiblog, has provided a parallel text translation of the Report of the Independent Scheme Assurance Panel. His discussion begins here. It deserves a wider audience. Excerpt:
DAMN, I really must get back to work, but this is just so wonderful…
3.3 Identity management within Government
Early on, the Panel challenged the assumption that existing sources of identity data should be ignored in favour of a new set.
Like a lot of people, we couldn’t understand why the NI number and its related data wouldn’t do.
However, safe and reliable maintenance and use of a shared asset across multiple parties is a challenge for any organisation, not least Government with its many departments, each with its own priorities, objectives and challenges.
Then somebody showed us the figures that with a total population of 60M people in this country, maybe a sixth of them under 16, there are over 75M currently-issued NI numbers, and we finally started to understand that the entire current system is a complete balls-up.
People say to me, “Don’t worry, it won’t work.” I would like to remind them that grand government schemes that are not working tend to be adopted anyway, and all the suffering they cause is declared a good thing, necessary for the progress of the nation. Lysenko’s ‘winterizeation’ of wheat, did not work. Protectionism does not work. Most of the world’s ‘development’ projects do not work. It did not stop governments implementing them at the expense of humanity. It does not stop massive numbers of politically influential people still believing in the grand reconstruction of deep natural systems and human institutions by government power, and devoting their working lives to promoting it. The National Identity Scheme still has every prospect of being Britain’s ‘Great Leap Forward’.
(Hat-tip: Wendy M. Grossman)
For the U.S. equivalents to this mess, one could reference:
1. Ethanol Mandates
2. Social Security
3. The current Farm Bill
At various times, all of the above were vigorously opposed by economists who referenced supply/demand, perverse incentives, and finally, common sense.
We have #1 and #2 firmly in place. #3 won’t be long.
it begins with soft tyranny, swallowed a bit at a time–fight it!!
It is critical that govworkers create more problems, otherwise they’d be out of jobs. Starting up and laying the foundations for future, massive F’ups is very, very important. This way, when the schemes come to full flower, the govworker can put himself forward as the best to, at least, ‘manage’ the problem.
Rinse, lather, repete.
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IdM is a legitimate area of business and academic concern, at least. Companies do need to keep track of employee movement and access requirements. Academics, especially those involved in the grid computing projects as well as those with institutio9nla access to online journals and whatnot, also use IdM (Shibboleth being the current in-thing in open-source FIdM).
If government departments want to offer public services online via e-gov, they would most likely need some form of FIdM as well, and at that point, well, the idea of a national ID becomes much more attractive.
Hey, I’m producing a conference on this matter, so I’ve got a bias, OK? 🙂 There are ways and means of providing for and protecting user data/privacy.
If you have 44M bodies, and 75M ID Cards, then Britain has a lot of schizophrenic people! If we optimistically assume that sufferers ‘have’ only two identities, then 31M people vote twice at each election!
Someone should declare Britain the most mentally sick nation on Earth! Get out whilst you still can! If you’re in two minds about whether to go or stay, it’s already too late!
Except, Gregory, that is not what UK gov and some other powerful governments are doing. (Or attempting to do). They are trying to monopolise identification, and nationalise (or even internationalise) personal identity, in effect.
Privacy for the user/individual citizen and secure access to discrete online services is precisely the opposite of what’s intended. They are seeking to consolidate all personal data held by all of Whitehall and Westminster and to share it whenever it is “necessary in the public interest”, expressly defined as:
That is, for anything any conceivable government might want to do. The scheme is conceived round the state’s convenience, not the citizen’s security.
Maybe there are actually 75 million people living here.
75 million with NI numbers? I wouldn’t care if there were, but its somewhat less plausible that the population figures are out by, say, 25% than that the NI system is hopelessly defective in that respect as in every other.
(To the extent that everyone who visits on a temporary working visa is supposed to get an NI number, it is to be expected that numbers do exceed the adult population, but only by two or three million.)
” it is to be expected that numbers do exceed the adult population, but only by two or three million.)”
Churn. Standard problem in any moving population. Especially temp workers. Worker shows up, gets an NI number. Leaves 3 months later. Comes back a year later, gets a new NI number (can you expect him to have kept the old one?)
So where your 2-3 million is the current snapshot, the NI register records the throughput over, say, a decade at least. I’ll bet you they don’t clear it out.
The ‘consultation’ document that came out with the report read like someone was just starting the project. It would be nice to think that there was a fresh start and we had only wasted all the money, but I fear that we will be living with the mistakes made to date.
First time on the blog guys, I’ve gone through some of the posts and great info but I read the side bar note about Global Illuminati and I’m wondering is this pro illuminati or no, the articles seem to dicate the later?
Great stuff keep it up!
guy herbert: Indeed, which is why the Malaysian government’s ID scheme (the MyKad, for those who are interested) is also bollocked up.
See, I have an inkling that when you try to do something that is NOT designed to do what you want it to, it all falls apart.
In this case, IdM is a transactional mechanism (basically, you check only when you need to check). Using IdM as a Big Brother tool? Not so effective.
Plus, of course, government ‘service’ in general is an oxymoron. Which is why I’m never too bothered about their schemes. Civil servants are rarely paragons of duty at best, after all.
Donovan,
Yeah; we rule the world. We just complain about the governments we control on our days off.