The ID computer debate

[Dave Birch] Over the past couple of years, I’ve become convinced that one reason for the sterility of the debate about identity cards in the UK — which is, of course, one of the most important digital identity initiatives there’s likely to be here — is that "cards" is fundamentally the wrong name.  By calling the identity computers of tomorrow "cards", we stunt the thinking and set in place a group of metaphors that lead less technical persons (eg, politicians) to create the wrong infrastructure, an infrastructure that looks backward to centralised databases, closed networks and pieces of cardboard.  So what can the ID computers of tomorrow do that the ID cards of the past could not?  And why does a privacy-sensitive person such as myself think that ID computers are a good idea?

Technorati Tags: ID cards, privacy, security

Well, for one thing, ID computers can selectively disclose information about their holder.  For another, they can validate their interrogator.  This gets around a big problem with cardboard identity cards: anyone can read them, and when they do read them, they read everything on them.
In my opinion, a 21st century ID card should exploit three key technologies—microcomputers, biometrics and digital signatures—to provide a service that citizens want, that makes life easier for them, that they will voluntarily choose to use.  It would be even better if the card could provide a special service for citizens that they can’t get without it. Somewhat counter-intuitively, that special service may well be privacy.
The singular advantage of using computers, biometrics and digital signatures is that they can work together to disclose facts about someone without disclosing their full identity.  Your ID card could, for example, send a message to a machine confirming that you are over 18 without disclosing who you are or what your citizen number is.  The recipient of that message—a bar, say—would know that the digital signature from the ID card is real and that the message had not been forged and let you come in and buy a drink: but who you are could remain confidential.