Badges? We don’ need no steenkin’ badges!
I realized this morning that I had not written my diatribe about a National ID system. So let me take this opportunity to do so.
First of all, I am a control freak, as has been earlier noted. And I’m lazy. National IDs, in theory, benefit both sides of my nature by providing (again, in theory) a way to positively identify myself to any sort of human, financial, or computerized system. I love the One-Click and other personalized settings of Amazon. I’ll probably end up selling my soul to Microsoft’s Passport system. Imagine if all PCs had smart-card readers, so that your National ID card (plus a PIN) would positively log you in anywhere.
That all having been said … I worry.
First of all, a lot of the vague security-based proposals for a National ID card have failed the most basic business test I’ve seen, which is — what’s the case? What are the security goals you are trying to accomplish? What, specifically, will a National ID do for you that current ID and other systems do not? How would this have averted 9-11 (the current root of the National ID debate)? How would it avert future terrorist or hostile attacks?
Once the terms of the debate have been laid out, then we can discuss those particulars. It’s tough to debate against a vague, arm-waving, “We need this for security!” sort of statement.
After we settle that point, we can get into the other areas:
Once this djinn is out of the bottle, it’s out. And it’s fine to think that we wouldn’t have any problems in the near future. What about a decade from now? Two decades? What about for our children, or theirs?
De facto, it may make no difference. Social Security Numbers are used everywhere, despite all the original stated intent that they should not be. Credit card purchases allow you to be tracked. And systems like Amazon’s One-Click and, even more, Microsoft’s Passport promise to tie all our financial information into one neat package that can be used (or abused) with maximum efficiency. Privacy advocates (who sometimes get more than a little shrill and fringe in their views) are fighting a losing battle, to some degree.
Because, really, this information we’re talking about is both worth money, and it represents convenience. And, ultimately, those forces tend to win out, even without throwing security and safety into the pot.
I just hope that, as we do march down that path, we do it with our eyes open, for sound reasons, and with at least a tacit recognition as to the costs as well as the benefits.
(Carlton Vogt, who write the “Ethics Matters” column for InfoWorld, has his own perspective on this. Worth reading, as are most of his writings.)