WRITTEN ON June 6th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, Save Time and Money, Transformational Government, We told you so..., What do we want?
I’ll blockquote two lines from Polly Toynbee’s article today to spare you having to wade through the rest
Alan Johnson is said to be against ID cards. So will he scrap them before the final expensive contracts have to be signed? If so, what loss of face for Brown to admit the enormous waste of money already spent.
Fair point. But it’s more than the money I resent – it’s the arrogant fibbing, the blatant disregard of science and complete lack of empathy with which they went down this stupid path.
5 Responses to “Alan Johnson and the Benighted ID Scheme”
Plot WIBBIs – 2
We were further informed by Newsnight that, having spotted the problem with email, the Labour backbench plotters switched to texting.
Generally, texts are sent from mobile phones and received by mobile phones. Why is that better than email?
(“Better” in the sense that if you receive a text from Mr Heath you can be pretty sure that it was sent by Mr Heath.)
(And “better” in the sense that if Mr Heath sends me a text, he can be pretty sure that it will only be received by the intended recipient.)
Part of the answer is that we tend to keep our mobile phones with us at all times. Part of the answer is that the mobile phone network operators use public key cryptography from end-to-end, globally to authenticate every single device on the network.
Which tends to imply that mobile phones are ID cards.
WIBBI MPs checked to see if we already have ID cards, or whatever, before voting to create new ones?
Plot WIBBIs – 3
Is it the case that mobile phones are ID cards?
No, say many people, because you can’t be sure that a text purporting to come from Mr Heath actually came from Mr Heath. You can be pretty sure that it came from his mobile. But you have no idea whether it was Mr Heath using the phone, it might have been his cleaner. You can’t be certain that the text really came from Mr Heath.
That is undeniably true.
But is it an objection to the contention that mobile phones are ID cards?
Yes it is, if you first assume that an ID card must identify people with certainty. What is this certainty? And where did it come from?
In the old days, we used to do O-level maths. In the case of any O-level maths question, there was an answer. There was only one answer. It was the right answer. There was no point arguing about the answer. If you did so, you only revealed that you didn’t understand the maths. You couldn’t stop the answer from being right, you couldn’t take that property away from it.
That’s certainty.
You get lots of certainty in maths, and in logic. It provides a childish comfort, a defence against all the rest of life, most of life, which is a frightening stranger to certainty.
Frightening? Well yes, if you’re that sort of drippy person who hankers after certainty. The rest of us rather enjoy the grown-up business of juggling probabilities.
Which brings us back to ID cards. How could you know that the text came from William? (I have mentioned Mr Heath so often now that I feel I know him well enough to call him by his Christian name.) Answer: biometrics.
The experts are careful to pont out that the ascription to someone of an identity on the basis of biometrics can only ever be probabilistic. Here, for example, are Tony Mansfield and Marek Rejman-Greene writing to the Home Office in February 2003 (para.4):
Biometric methods do not offer 100% certainty of authentication of individuals.
So this notion of certainty does not come from the experts.
It comes from the politicians and the civil servants. Here is the Prime Minister saying in January 2008 that biometrics:
will make it possible to securely link an individual to a unique identity.
He didn’t get that from the experts. The dossier passed to him was sexed up first.
WIBBI our MPs listened to scientific advice?
Plot WIBBIs – 4
The Labour backbench plotters have used both email and texting to run their conspiracy.
And what do we know about conspiracies?
That’s right, they’re meant to be secret. The conspirators do not want to reveal their identity or their tactics.
Which makes it a bit strange to use email and mobile phones. Because these conspirators are the people who voted in favour of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and who have done nothing to stop the Interception Modernisation Plan.
RIPA allows Mrs Scroggins in the purchase ledger department at the London Borough of Merton to check all the conspirators’ mobile phone records. And IMP will allow someone – probably everyone – to check all their email records.
Chances of keeping the identity of the conspirators secret? Nil.
WIBBI MPs thought a bit before voting and, if they want to conspire, after voting, too?
Oh man. That’s an orgy of commenting. This must have touched something.
You’ll be pleased that we intrduced the new category “I told you so” and that this item is so tagged…
Plot WIBBIs – 1
Mr Heath, Sir, with your eternal generosity, you offer us the choice of arrogance, fibbing, disregard of science, lack of empathy and stupidity. Hard to choose, but that’s what commitment is all about. I’ll have the stupidity, please, with a side order of ignorance.
We were informed on Newsnight on 5 June 2009 that the Labour backbenchers plotting to oust Mr Brown, had been running their conspiracy by email but then found a problem. They could never be sure that the emails they received really came from the purported sender.
Oh God.
These are the people who voted for ID cards. And they can’t even identify themselves.
Do these plotters know anything about public key cryptography? Apparently not. And yet they all felt qualified to vote for ID cards for 60 million people.
There is no way of knowing the level of Mr Johnson’s knowledge of the arts and mysteries of ID cards. But let us at least hope that this timely demonstration of other people’s ignorance will make him wonder anew what it is they have voted for and, perhaps, reverse that vote.
WIBBI MPs informed themselves first, before voting?