NO2ID

This* is a horrible example of the general point that the government are using the wrong technology.

If material passports were replaced or supplemented with immaterial digital certificates stored on mobile phones, then this cannabis-grower could continue to collect his post and use his bank account while still being prevented from travelling abroad.

The digital certificate allowing him to travel could be revoked while the digital certificate allowing him to use his bank account could remain in place.

You get a lot of digital certificates in this system -- "dematerialised ID", as I call it -- and you need a lot of space to store them and a powerful computer to run the associated software. Mobile phones have lots of space. Smart cards don't. Mobile phones are powerful computers. Smart cards aren't. Digital certificates are quick and cheap to create. Storing them on mobile phones makes it quick and cheap to distribute them and revoke them.

That is the technology an intelligent Big Brother would adopt. The Crosby forum may have looked at it. IPS may look at it. So may IDABC:

The banks and mobile phone companies are already deploying this technology. See for example 'The end of the cash era'. I wonder sometimes if No2ID shouldn't be worrying a bit more about that.

And a bit less about the Identity Cards Act. It seems odd to say it, of course, in this forum but the one thing we seem to be able to rely on is the incompetence of IPS and BIA. Running an identity management system is simply beyond them. They are saddled with the 65 year-old paradigm of cardboard ID cards and air raid wardens in tin hats. They are unable to see the evolution of society in front of their nose -- everyone already voluntarily goes everywhere with a mobile phone. They will unintelligently waste billions of pounds on useless technology.

Long may that last, you may say. The government's lack of imagination, their blindness and the incompetence of the technology they have adopted constitute our greatest defence.

* Please http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?t=16975

No they don't. I carry one because it's an emergency contact number and there are plenty of other people in this position. Some for work, some not - so "just change jobs" is not an appropriate response. Neither is "just change family". If the need was not there I would not carry one.

Not everybody has a mobile phone! What about those who have a work mobile and not a personal mobile? Are we all to be required to carry a mobile on which to store our certifcates? Effectively-compulsory carrying of a uniquely-identified device doesn't sound like much of an advance on ID cards.

When your mobile is stolen or falls into the blender, how long until you can get a replacement, how long until your certificates are replaced, and how do you go about your business until then, or are you frozen out of everything?

I don't have a mobile phone and neither does John Humphries. I don't have a mobile phone because they decrease quality of life and I should add I intend never to have a mobile phone.

A slight exageration to say the least. I neither have a mobile phone anymore and when I once did I did not always take it with me.

The notion that we should somehow require some kind of tracking device or proof of identity is offensive to me. The government are keeping the locations of mobile phone masts secret (1). Mobile phone masts have now been proven to cause cancer (2).

1. Phone mast locations kept from public
http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2586675.ece
2. Cancer Risks from Microwaves Confirmed
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/CRFMC.php

If this isn't a conspiracy I do not know what is.

From the top of the (non-peer reviewed and self-published) article:


Note also that the references are self-citations and not available to non-members. Hardly proof.

If you want proof microwave some water and try growing some grass seeds using it. Why you would defend wireless when anyone with any sensitivety can feel the effects I do not know. Perhaps you like the idea of 'dematerialised Id' and tracking devices that "everyone already voluntarily" carry?

How about we steer clear of the microwave discussion since that is not specifically ID-related?

Why doesn't NO2id just delete the offending links like they normally do?

Well if they just had squashed the commercial touting that diverted the discussion in the first place...

This dematerialised ID is potentially a lot worse than the governments revealed plan. Let's hope that the government aren't plotting to use a wireless ID card. It could be used to track us and to replace cash and the data could be sent in real time and logged on the NIR. It won't be long before such devices are minaturised sufficiently to be injected at birth. The panopticon singularity could become a reality.

I will do my duty and attempt to answer all the good questions which have come up but I must ask for a few hours patience before I can devote the time needed -- back on the case this evening.

Its no evidence whatsoever, what it is though is an excellent opportunity for those who dont know how to properly assess scientific writings to make fools of themselves in drawing ludicrous conclusions.

FTR I dont have a mobile phone either, and I have no plans to acquire one.

Good questions all.

Dematerialised ID is a counter-proposal to the government's ID card scheme. The ideas are set out at length in the DematerialisedID.comwebsite.

There you will see that it is a voluntary alternative to the government scheme. It has to be voluntary. It can only be voluntary. As hatless and several others have pointed out, not everyone has a mobile phone, those who don't can't be forced to have one and even those who do can't be forced to switch them on.

Dematerialised ID gets started from one basic observation. Some people, children especially, identify with their mobile phone. It says something about them and they use it to project the desired image of themselves. Some people feel restless, as though something important is missing, if they go out by mistake without their mobile or the wretched battery runs out.

Now give the idea a little twist, and change "people identify with their mobile phone" to "their mobile phone identifies people". With some heavy qualification, it is arguable that the mobile phone alone -- no digital certificates added -- is the most powerful ID card any Big Brother could ever have conceived.

Ring xxx and you get David Moss. xxx identifies me.

The phone locates me as long as it is switched on and in range of a radio mast. Orange, if they wanted to, could consult their records to find out where I am now and where I have been for the past n months or years, however long they keep records for, I don't know. And it doesn't matter where in the world I roam. The mobile phone network is global.

What's more, they know who I ring and they and the other telephone companies know who rings me. So not only does the phone identify me and locate me, it also identifies my "associates", for want of a better word.

In a good-humoured way, you berate me or mock me, hatless, when you say: "Effectively-compulsory carrying of a uniquely-identified device doesn't sound like much of an advance on ID cards". Take away "compulsory". I do not advocate compulsory mobile phones. But we're still left with:"carrying ... a uniquely-identified device doesn't sound like much of an advance on ID cards". And that is my point precisely.

I'm not advocating it. People just do it. Today. Now. Something like 80% of us in the UK already walk around with an ID card we have paid for voluntarily, for which we, like hatless, have some need, if the need was not there we would not do so, an ID card which identifies us and locates us at all times pretty well anywhere on the planet and identifies our associates.

What more could Big Brother possibly want? There we all are, busily upgrading our handset every 12-18 months, we read stories in the paper every day about people being located using mobile phone records, that doesn't deter us, no civil liberties organisation that I have noticed ever campaigns about it and every 20 years the telephone companies bung the government £20bn or so in licence fees to carry on using the airwaves.

It's an open goal. And with their mystical, or at least incomprehensible, talent, what do the government do? They ignore mobile phones and the huge infrastructure that already exists -- the phone masts, the databases, the trained engineering workforce, the well worked out marketing strategies, the high street shops and the mail order companies. They ignore all this and decide to kick for another goal entirely, smart cards.

A smart card will locate you if and when you use it. No-one will carry one willingly wherever they go. Smart cards whip up a hornet's nest of civil liberties issues that have already been neutralised in the case of mobile phones. Smart cards will require a new national network of card readers to be installed. That will take years. If they are to be inter-operable (i.e. support international surveillance) complicated roaming agreements with other countries will need to be negotiated and implemented. That will take more years. And yet they are supposed to be the solution to an urgent problem we have now.

The National Identity Scheme (NIS) as proposed by the government isn't a conspiracy. It's a Grade E in GCSE Big Brotherhood. It's just dim. IPS collectively wouldn't stand a chance of getting into grammar school. The NIS is a hopeless, ridiculous waste of your money and mine.

We have some trouble believing that the authorities are thick. They can't be. Surely. Can they? Tony Blair went to Oxford. David Blunkett overcame blindness to reach high office. Charles Clarke went to Cambridge. John Reid has a PhD. They can't be stupid. And as we flail around trying to find an alternative explanation for their bizarre creation, the NIS, we think maybe it's a conspiracy. But that doesn't explain it. What conspiracy? What is the objective of this conspiracy? And how does a non-functioning NIS help to achieve it?

Circle back. Not everyone has a mobile phone. But everyone could have an ID card. True, they could, but they won't. No-one under the age of 16 will have an ID card. Lots of under 16 year-olds have mobile phones. No-one staying in the country for less than three months, or possibly six months, will have to have an ID card. Most of them will have mobile phones, though. No, the ID card scheme is not universal and there is some chance that dematerialised ID already includes more people than the NIS ever could.

Circle back again. The telephone companies can tell where the phone is, not where you are. You need some way to "bind" the phone to the person. Enter biometrics.

Good point. Biometrics would be very useful if they worked. But the biometrics being considered for the NIS are unreliable. They are a waste of taxpayers' money, an expensive case of wishful thinking. Somehow we're going to have to rub along without biometrics for the moment, just as we always have done. And if they ever do start to work with adequate reliability and speed, what nincompoop would think of storing them on a smart card? They would be better stored on a mobile phone.

The lack of reliable, fast biometrics technology is a problem that will naturally restrict the uptake of dematerialised ID. So will the inadvisability of trusting all your digital certificates to a single device which may be lost, stolen, dropped in the blender, as hatless warns, or just stop working. So will the difficulty of deploying digital certificatesin the mass consumer quantities envisaged for dematerialised ID.

Some of our more paranoid guests should therefore take heart. It will be some time before we all have miniaturised cancer injected into us at birth. Until then carry on trying to grow grass in microwaved water. But not in Malta -- you may find it difficult to collect your post.

And the resentful guests who think that I stand to make a fortune out of my commercial touting of dematerialised ID may also take heart -- the government have shown not the slightest interest in dematerialised for four years so far and my repeated offers to run IPS properly have fallen on deaf ears. There are some much more successful commercial touts out there than me.

Those of you who are afraid of Big Brother, afraid of his invincible competence and his ability minutely to control every aspect of your life, just remember that when you look at him carefully, when you try to think how you would do the job properly, he actually looks a couple of cards short of the full deck.

My advice... go on Dragon's Den. I'm not being glib.

I am sure there were also those who labelled persons warning of the dangers of the Nazi party in 1937 paranoid but to be fair this war has already been going on for 6 years and many sincerely believe these devils are psycopaths. Perhaps we should acknowledge that there are vested interests that seem to be protecting the wireless business as well as the cancer business and that the dangers are real and present. In reality, the government have access to mobile phone records and can log these on the NIR with their current sceme in which the little plastic card is a distraction from the true danger and issue; the NIR. The "incompetent" (read highly competent) government scheme would likely evolve (as planned) later once people have accepted the little plastic cards that get lost and are easy to counterfeit to be replaced with the more secure injected wireless device saving our kids from being kidnapped by anyone other than the government and it's machine. No, they are not incompetent and no they are not stupid. It would be naiive to think so. First people must accept 'Id cards' before they can proceed to the next step.

Thank you for your advice. The suggestion is well taken.

I hope that you will take it in good part if I say why I think you are mistaken. It is a useful mistake to make.

Dematerialised ID is already here. People are already walking around with their mobile phones switched on all the time, actively projecting their location onto the record. There is nothing there for me to sell the dragons.

I approached the mobile phone companies several years ago. The chairman of one of them kindly put me on to his head of research. He, in turn, took a look at the dematerialised ID proposal and, not unreasonably, told me "we already know all this".

Forget trying to make money out of dematerialised ID. It's too late. The main elements are already in place -- the handsets, the networking equipment, the location-detection facilities and the digital certificates.

The elements are already in place and already being used. For example, in calendar 2002, the police and HMRC made 500,000 requests to the telephone companies for mobile phone timing and location data. Do the arithmetic and you will find that, on average, once a minute, every minute of the year, the police and HMRC found it useful to have mobile phone data to support their investigations.

That was five years ago. But the game was given away, so to speak, a lot longer ago than that. There was a report in the newspapers which I can now no longer find to give you the reference about a criminal in Switzerland being tracked all across the country and finally arrested by the police thanks to the records of his mobile phone usage. There is nothing new about dematerialised ID. The location-detection and identification facilities of mobile phones are well known.

Which is why my response to the head of research was not "oh, go on, give me a few million anyway, I'm a bit of a commercial tout, me" but "OK, I know it, you know it, but the government don't seem to. They are wasting their time and our money trying to build a new identity management system while ignoring the fact that we've already got one, and a very powerful one at that -- the global mobile phone network. Let's do something about it". I haven't heard from him since.

That is the point which I obviously failed to communicate in my over-long post of 02 Jun 2007 01:38:35. We already have the most powerful identity management system conceivable. Why are the government behaving as though it isn't there? Why are they wasting resources on what could only ever be an inferior alternative? I have never discovered the answer.

That's why you won't be seeing me in the Dragon's Den any time soon. I haven't got anything to sell. I've got an observation to make. And the government refuse to consider it. Even though dematerialised ID could save a fortune and make a material contribution to crime prevention, crime detection and counter-terrorism without raising a blizzard of civil liberties issues, they won't talk about it. It can't be because they don't know. I've told them.

I have also approached my local police station to talk to detectives there. I have written to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and I wrote to NCIS, twice, before they became SOCA. They won't talk about dematerialised ID either. And yet they and HMRC are already the main users. Once a minute, every minute, etc ...

Which leaves me baffled. What is going on? Can anyone tell me?

Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

David

I think that the problem you're having is that at base the government's ID cards project is not actually about implementing ID cards. And it's also not about defeating the problems of terrorism, illegal immigration, benefit fraud, serious crime, identity theft, etc.

The heart of the government's project is transformational ('joined-up') government. And they have judged that the best mechanism for achieving this would be to implement a compulsory registration procedure and the allocation of a unique number to every citizen. That unique number would then over a period of time be used to provide the linkage of all the state databases containing personal information. Job done.

The above project was obviously going to be extremely costly, and so my assumption is that to justify this expenditure without drawing attention to transformational government the Home Office has rolled in the ID card and the biometric passport, with all their supposed benefits, as the actual tangible pretext for the registration. But they're not really very interested in the ID card itself as such. And they don't really believe that it will help to defeat the problems of terrorism, identity theft, etc.

Some time ago I wrote three times to Andy Burnham at the Home Office through my MP, asking why they weren't thinking of implementing the German ID card system, given that it is a relatively cheap solution and also that it scores high on data security and personal privacy. Each of the three replies that I received did not contain a single use of the word "German" - the Home Office was just not prepared to debate the issue and present me with the correct answer. And the correct answer would, of course, have been: "We are not interested in the German ID card system. It does not involve the unique numbering of citizens or a central database, and so it would not facilitate transformational government."

I suspect that your failure to get a proper response from the government is for precisely the same reason. Your scheme does not set out to implement compulsory registration and transformational government.

Hello David,

I have to agree with John here. The problem that you face is that your scheme, in common with many other existing schemes, does not meet the identification requirements that the government has decided are necessary for its purposes.

I could spend a long time explaining the potential technical flaws you will face in converting your outline scheme into a fully detailed technical proposal. But this would take a lot of effort on my part so I will avoid doing so until you actually have a published technical design showing how mobile phones could be used for high assurance identification (I have no idea how this could be done at the moment).

Almost all existing identification/authorisation schemes are based on the assumption that the person being identified will either co-operate in the process or, at least, not actively seek to undermine it. In consequence the bank's schemes fall down when customers give their security details to others and crooks steal mobile phones and use them only once or twice precisely because they will then avoid possible identification.

Providing for identification when those who are to be identified are (a) technically expert, and (b) actively hostile to the identification process, is several orders of magnitude harder than designing for co-operative identification. You are far from alone in suggesting that this is not going to prove possible and that the government should hence settle for less.

But you should not feel bad about this since most, if not all, informed commentators who have dared to suggest that the government has got this wrong have either been ignored or dismissed as incompetent. Welcome to this (far from exclusive) club.

Brian Gladman

John, Brian,

Congratulations - your two posts are about the best summary I've seen of (my perception of) the motivations for the scheme, and why it isn't going to work.

People want driving licences and passports (the two most-used current identity documents) because they allow the holders to do things they otherwise couldn't (drive, travel abroad). For the same reason, it's in the holder's interests to prevent abuse - e.g. if I give you my passport, I can't travel.

Not so for ID cards. There's no incentive to get one in the first place, and no incentive to help the Home Office maintain their much-desired "clean database". This doesn't bode well for their scheme.

John

Thank you for answering my yelp for help. It is much appreciated.


A number of No2ID people have mentioned transformational government as you do and I have now finally taken the first step to learning about it and read the November 2005 Cabinet Office paper.

There is a lot to say about that ghastly document but, for our purposes, perhaps the crucial bit is para.39(7):

We all agree that ID cards won't help to counter terrorism nor to prevent/detect crime. They are more likely to have the opposite effect.

The question arises therefore why the government nevertheless proceed with the ID cards project. And we all agree that batty conspiracy theories are not the answer.

My answer is that I don't have an answer and thus the yelp for help. Your answer -- and that of several high-powered people -- is that they proceed with the ID cards scheme in order to implement transformational government.

Which requires quite some cynicism. It means that despite repeatedly saying that ID cards are a measure against crime and terrorism, the government don't mean it. And despite repeatedly saying that they want biometrics in order to identify people, the government don't mean that either. All they really want is to get people into registration centres and barcode them, so to speak -- then, somehow, transformational government, whatever it is, can begin.

I'm not sure that I agree. I need to think about it. All the questions that arise in the case of ID cards, arise in the case of transformational government, too. But I'll give you one thing. This is, at the very least, the thinking man's conspiracy.

Thanks again.

I am proud to be a member of the club, Brian, and thank you for your solicitous reply.

The government consists of many, many people. Consider the following hypothetical scenario.

An intelligent advocate for transformational government promotes the idea to others within government. In response to some naysayers, they counter certain arguments about infeasibility by suggesting that national registration (ID cards) could provide a solution to certain difficulties with the mechanics. The notion that transformational government (modern, hence automatically a Good Thing (tm) ) requires ID cards is thus embedded in some people's minds. The ends always justify the means: if transformational government is good, and transformational government requires ID cards, then ID cards are good (or at least necessary). These people promoting the scheme encounter innate resistance to the introduction of ID cards but, able to think on their feet at difficult presentations - perhaps prompted by ideas suggested by various consultants, manage to come up with lots of incidental benefits that seem reasonable at the time (terrorism, fraud etc.) even if they don't withstand detailed scrutiny. Those present at the meetings take home the message that ID cards are good and will bring lots of benefits. Or at least that is the government line that they should be promoting. So they do. Through the media, we see the end result of Chinese whispers with politicians promoting policy on the basis of ill-considered benefits. Once enough of the government have committed to the idea, ID cards come to be seen as a policy that must be defended at all costs.

No excessive cynism required. No conspiracy theory. Just the usual incompetence that arises from an excessively large organisation that is able to become slightly divorced from the real world through repeated applications of group think and the reluctance of some people to admit they might have made a mistake for fear of tainting their own careers or negatively impacting on their budget.

The biggest conspiracy of them all is how the government have managed (despite the overwhelming evidence) to make people believe that conspiracies do not occurr.

Call it what you will (transformational government) the plot is to tighten the noose to make sure everyone is subordinated and a fully fledged member of the system that destroyes lives, liberties and property on a gigantic scale.

Geraint, you give me a lot to think about there and I look forward to responding. In the meantime, I took advantage of this new-found knowledge of transformational government in my submissionto the Constitution Committee which I have now put up on the web.

You are right, Brian, dematerialised ID has never made it to the technical proposal stage. But there are a few more conceptual offerings hereand here -- putting up yesterday's submission on the web reminded me that I have made others in the past.