Given Sir Bonar’s famous “ring of soup” formulation for government identity management services, I was keen to ask him how he sees the evolving balance between privacy and surveillance. In particular, I was curious about his views on Umair Haque succinct note that
The internet itself isn’t disempowering government by giving voices to the traditionally voiceless; it’s empowering authoritarian states to limit and circumscribe freedom by radically lowering the costs of surveillance and enforcement.
[From The Social Media Bubble – Umair Haque – Harvard Business Review]
Unless we take steps to build an identity infrastructure that embodies certain protections, encodes certain balances, then I think it is perfectly reasonable to anticipate a path whereby governments become authoritarian by default, simply becuase they can and not because of any directed or debated policy. I don’t think that you have to be some kind of privacy nutter to find this a concern: unfortunately, I was not able to put this point to Sir Bonar because he had to leave for a pressing bottle of claret, but I perhaps I will be able to catch up with him again in the not-too-distant future.
