If Microsoft start shipping Brands’ technology to a mass market, those users will leave what I would see as the ideal audit trail: anonymous unless and until you try to break the system.

Benefits for national security
5 .12 Provided that a universal ID assurance system infrastructure embraces public services, banking, transportation and e-commerce, it will enhance security by making it more difficult for anyone to operate outside the system. It will ensure that suspect individuals leave trails of
transactions that are ultimately traceable back to unique identity records, albeit only for the purposes of national security.

5 .13 A universal ID assurance system would have the broadest coverage and widest application and produce rich data for national security agencies. A system that is genuinely consumer led because it meets consumer needs and inspires their trust would therefore deliver a better national security outcome than one with its origins in security and data sharing.

In other other almost every transaction and interaction will be recorded and stored for future reference.

Remember Meg Hilliers “passport in country”, IPS example of creating an entry on the audit trail to collect a parcel, and (going back a bit) some dopy MP’s claim that ID cards would help Norman Lamont prove he wasn’t in Threshers.

Crosby is basically saying to the govt, “What you really want is the audit trail. Keep your nose out of ID architecture and let us (the banks) do it. We know what we’re doing and you can have access to all the data you want.”?

(sorry, I have just woken up 😉 )

Well, look on the bright side: at least next time I come to live in the UK, I’ll have something with which to identify myself! Should make setting up bank accounts, getting mobile phones, and the utilities turned on a doddle.

Hang on a moment. I seem to recall the process for getting a NI number back in 1998 was so tortuous, I didn’t bother — and it didn’t seem to matter. It was much easier getting a work permit and all the other paraphernalia from offshore, so hopefully I’ll be able to do that with the ID card…(giggle!)

Here’s a slogan for the Home Office: The UK ID card — safely identifying former convict colonials since 2008!

The use of the term “consumer” shows just how much we, as registrants, are expected to “suck up” whatever services we’re deemed to be worthy of. The idea that we, as registrants, could actually be a *producer* is so out the window that it’s not even worth running to the front door in our dressing gown to chase after it down the cold street.

“Consumer” is a modern way of saying “subservient ass”. The idea that we must consume something – *anything!* – just points out what a ridiculous and authoritarian attitude towards ID the whole cock-a-doodle affair is.