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ID cards

2:50pm, Tuesday 2 December 2003

I saw this on a mailing list. It summarises why ID cards are a Bad Thing.

For an ID card system to work, it needs a database. Ignore everything else that it needs. For a database to be used, it needs people with access to it. People like minimum-wage data entry clerks in some northern shit-hole. Some of whom might suspect their spouses of infidelity and abuse their data access to gain information about their suspected bit-on-the-side. Some of whom might be bribed by private investigators. Or they might have a grudge against a colleague, or against one of their childrens' teachers, or against the bastard traffic warden who gave them a parking ticket, or ...

RIGHT NOW there are regular stories in the press about police officers abusing their access to databases, and yet you and the other ID card seem happy to have an even bigger, all-encompassing database, giving even more people access to it. As much as I distrust the police, I trust the sorts of people who would have access to an ID card database one hell of a lot less.

I do not consider the potential benefits - which are pretty damned close to zero from what I can tell - worth the corresponding loss of privacy.

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