Category Archives: ID Cards and Identification

Wendy Grossman summarizes the UK's lurch towards national ID cards in A national database or 60,000 more policemen:

the expectation is that legislation to create the national database whose physical manifestation will be a national identify card will be upon us in a matter of weeks, and it’s a good idea to be ready in case they don’t give us much time to comment. Though there may not be much to comment on.

If the Children Bill is any guide (see particularly Part II, Section 8), national identity card legislation will follow the trend to be completely vague and put off all the important nuts and bolts into regulations – secondary legislation that can be passed with minimal debate. The Childrens Bill, by the way, creates a national database of all children under 18. In other words, we can vote down the national database/identity card now, but in 20 years being numbered and tracked will seem normal to emergent adults.

There's lots more, too.

I'm going to be writing in detail about this case, so I will put off blogging about it until I have my ideas sorted, but let me just say for now that Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, Humboldt County looks to be a major, major privacy/civil liberties case.

Larry Lessig, a member of the Dean Net Advisory Net, responds to the news article that inspired my item Howard Dean on ID Cards: Bad. Bad. Bad. with what declan doesn’t get (how to read). In it Larry points to the full text of Dean's talk (starts at page 10).

Larry, like the first commentator on the earlier item, also points to the Register's timely reminder that the source of this report has a very bad track record for carelessly sliming Democrats on tech issues. Fair enough.

Indeed, the full text of Dean's speech isn't as bad as the news account made it sound. It does contain many nods towards privacy rights. And it actually makes a point I agree with — the current privacy baseline is low, as we've ceded a lot of privacy already. Having said that, though, it does seem to me that this speech is fairly described as a strong endorsement of ubiquitious smart card readers (not mandatory, just standards-driven) for PCs in order to create a world in which communications are better authenticated, and access to information can be more properly rationed (e.g. age restrictions). Would that be a better world? I have my doubts. Is it a likely world? Alas, yes. Could it be implemented in ways that are more or less evil? Absolutely, and I'll have lots to say about that in coming months.

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Howard Dean's (19 month old) 'smart ID' plan is not very smart at all.

Maybe someone could ask one of these Dean Net Advisory Net guys about it if one should happen to see them.

Actually, when I first heard about it I was very enthusiastic about the idea of the “Net Advisory Net,” a sort of open source advisory group. But has it actually done anything? Or is it window dressing?

Update: Having now been directed to the text of Dean's speech, I think this was a little harsh. I should have said Howard Dean on ID Cards: Not So Bad, but Not So Good.