I’m not a number!

Alex Kelleher, citizen #5948263917322

The US government is pitching that consumers online will benefit from having secure IDs, to “conduct business safely online”.

Cunningly calling it the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace”, the government is at pains to point out that it is a public-private partnership. Oh great, so that means it will be outsourced to Google…

The ACLU (the Civil Liberties Union) has this to say:

“Unless the Obama administration comes out with a detailed proposal for an identity scheme that does these things in ways that are hard-wired into the system, and can convince us that its protections won’t fall by the wayside at any point, this scheme appears to be a sweeping, utopian intervention in the Internet driven by anti-freedom security agendas that promises to do more harm than good“

Until very recently, the UK government was also jumping feet-first towards an identity card scheme, which was finally cancelled just last December, and in fact the cards become invalid 3 days from this post.  Many of the same arguments were made sweepingly across online and offline, that the US government makes for the pointfulness of the scheme:

“We are not talking about a national ID card,” he said. “We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.”

So, beyond memorising passwords (we have RoboForm et al for that, so thanks but it’s covered already.  And by the way, the government keeping my passwords safe? Right….), here’s some reasons that ID isn’t necessary:

• There is no such thing as a secure system.  So while this might reduce identity theft and related crimes, it won’t rid us of it.  And in some ways it will make it easier (in a similar way that well-counterfeited money is more quickly accepted, the more measures are put in place.  People either don’t know what to look for, or accept money more easily when they spot just one security measure)
• The recipients of my data won’t be visible to me.  I know who has dropped a cookie on my PC.  I have no idea who has access to a government database connected to my ID
• Privacy isn’t enhanced.  Those who want to invade my privacy for negative or nefarious reasons will still do so.  The others will continue to focus on upside which is typically win-win (more relevant content, discounts, etc etc)

#justsayin …

• Tweet
• Pin It