WRITTEN ON November 21st, 2008 BY Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?
Sir Bonar writes:
When my wife Euphorbia is angry she has the annoying habit of playing Chopin very loud and fast on our old Bosendorfer. And I must say that recently her feelings have been rather more heated than could truly be said to be consistent with domestic harmony on the subject of our national ID register and how it affects Evelyn, her former brother who is now her younger sister.
Euphorbia maintains that Evelyn is a single person, insofar as any of us is the same person as we ever were at any stage in the past.
Philosophers may muse about whether you are the same person at the end of reading this article as ou were at the beginning, but we public servants have no such luxury. Tom the drug dealer is Tom the drug dealer whether he is applying for a fishing licence or helping an old lady across the road. Dick the terrorist is Dick the terrorist, whether he’s driving the wrong way up a one-way street or applying for a TV licence. Harry the paedophile remains Harry the paedohile whether he’s taking unlicensed photographs on Waterloo station of chaining his bicycle to a lampost in Trafalgar Square. And Evelyn the bookish moustachioed Don remains Evelyn even if she now passes herself off as a bluestocking. In each case there can be only one entry on the National Identity Register. Otherwise chaos might ensue.
But my wife simply would not let the matter rest, and I can see her point. When Evelyn wants to buy a gin and tonic she will show her ID Card as a matter of course. But what sort of impression will it make if the Card shows a dashing young man, when she goes to such efforts to present herself as an elegant woman?
My solution is simple. Evelyn will be permitted to buy two Identity cards. Each one of them will bring her enormous benefits, allowing her to apply for jobs, open bank accounts and prevent terrorism in the most convenient manner imaginable. Each will cost her £30, but she will only have to update the Register once if her other details change.
I think this example goes to show the tremendous flexibility and convenience of the solution we have devised, and I’m hopeful Euphorbia’s strong views on the matter are now mollified.
OHMS PDQ SECRET CONFIDENTIAL PERSONAL No2Cannock
Sir Boanar’s views urgently sought
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Have IPS thought this through?
Never mind your ambiguous in-law, how will our senior diplomats* continue to travel safely under assumed identities?
And what about our poor spies? And policemen working under cover?
One of the facilities needed in the NIS is a facility to create people, i.e. new identities. The NIS also needs a facility to destroy people, i.e. to screen out or even delete previous identities. But that cannot be achieved if records of people’s biometrics — reliable biometrics — are spread all over the world.
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* “Ah, Sir Bonar, how pleasant to see you again,” says the Syrian immigration officer, “but wait, what is this, last time you came through you were biometrically a lowly oil engineer called Blake. What was the purpose of that visit, Sir Bonar, may I ask? And, this is most extraordinary, but my Yemeni colleagues think you were an accredited arms dealer before that, called Philby, en route to Mesopotamia. What can this mean? Perhaps you could step into the back room here and we could discuss the matter over a cup of Polonium”.
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