WRITTEN ON October 23rd, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Identity
Trusty KableNet reports the Home Office’s bizarre notion of how to dream up uses for an ID card for which there is no visible user benefit. The science & technology committee’s call for more detail on how the card might be used
is met by an assertion that, until the card is in widespread use, it will not be possible to say for which processes it will be used.
I find this is beyond parody.
The Wibbi: Wouldn’t it be better if we consulted users first before embarking on an expensive national ID card and register scheme, to understand what people need for the purposes of ID or authentication and how they might use different tokens or services in practice?
2 Responses to “Bizarre mystery-benefits approach by Home Office”
Ah yes, the media!
Last week I replied to [url=http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39163347,00.htm]an article on Silicon.com[/url] which stated that most UK people don’t understand “Biometrics,” but are increasingly in favour of their widespread use:
My comment was heavily truncated and I got an earful from the Editor to the effect that Silicon.com doesn’t want to clear the confusion!
I must have touched a raw nerve: Elsewhere, Silicon.com has extensive information on RFID, Biometrics and on ID topics; but only for people sufficiently motivated to study it.
If the technical press and media don’t explain the issues clearly, there’s little hope for the non-technical media.
I had an intense conversation last weekend about this with some friends of mine. They are “very non-technical people”, as they put it, and the point that kept being raised was “why should we pay for something that is not going to provide the exact benefits that we would like it to provide?”. They insist that this lack of clarity on what the card will provide only increases their sceptisism as to the real reasons the card is being introduced. They also worry about the message coming across in the media and no longer know who or what to believe, but the general consensus was that this confusion is only leading to more resistance. Several, in fact, still do not believe that the card will not expose their health, police, travel, etc records. And finally, one person said that if they are really to beleive what they are being told (implying by the government), then the card is going to provide little more than what the passport already does, so why not just expand on the passport?
(pls note: all of the above is from conversation and not necessarily my personal opinion, but I thought it very relevant to the above posting.)