Your Identity in their Hands

Slightly off the beaten track for me.

Kim Cameron picks up on a publication by a leading IBM Researcher Michael Osbourne regarding the proposed architecture of the UK ID Cards scheme.

Kim’s strongest words are these:

The resulting central database, where everything is connected and visible to everything else, is as vulnerable as a steel ship with no compartments – one perforation, and the whole thing goes down.

The starting point for a security thinker is that there will be perforations.

As a UK citizen this sounds like a problem to me. If mine and everyone else’s identity is lost (sunk) how do we ever get it back?

There are experienced Identity professionals out there – why doesn’t our government appear to be listening to them?

And don’t tell me that the ID Card is optional – because in practice it isn’t. If I have to have one to get a new passport then it isn’t optional for anyone with a job in any multi-national because travelling abroad comes with the territory.

Tags: ID Cards, Identity, Security