“Various forms of coercion…”: Wikileaks meets the ID System

Did you like the sound of Wikileaks? And do you enjoy the regular attempts to open up discussion around HMG’s proposed ID System? If so, you’ll just love this marriage made in heaven: Wikileaks on the ID System

I have to say, what the leaked IPS document - heavily annotated by No2ID - describes is far from ideal. It is not about a participative, user-driven design process. It does not dig deeper to help build that essential foundation of trust. It’s not a quick win. It doesn’t use language or perceptions from the customer’s point of view. It proves they’re making this up as they go along, and happy to lie about their real aims. Dress it up how they will, this project is about immigration and increasingly big government which “does things” to “them” ie us. It’s an authoritarian document, mostly in the passive voice and thoroughly unpleasant in tone.

Gongs away for the author, I reckon, and Wibbi we didn’t have to cough up for their state pension.

Published by William Heath on 30/01/08 at 1:12am

Comments

Speaking as a designer I think the design of the ID Card itself should be very large, and also prickly, or spikey. And that the authors of this IPS paper should stick their Cards where the sun don’t shine.

Reply by William Shakespeare III on 01/30/08 at 2:32 am
Oi. Shakespeare. Keep it clean. People from IPS read IdealGov and we want them to feel welcome. And where’s yer Wibbi? No second warning.

Reply by on 01/30/08 at 2:34 am
PS: Nice plays, Shakespeare.

Reply by on 01/30/08 at 9:17 am
Having slept on this I find it very odd that three years after the law was passed some motley and unaccountable posse of IPS, Treasury, OGC, Cab-in-a -Toffice and other murky stakeholders have a brainstorm to decide what the objectives of the ID Scheme are to be. Surely that was a matter for Parliament?

I find the twisted use of the language of “customer” (eg options for the delivery of services to customers) fatally cynical. This paper reeks of coercion and deception. It’s odd that they’ll do anything to get the ID Scheme rolled out, even while they have to decide what it’s actually for.

I find it cynical and profoundly unenlightened.

The only charitable light I can see it in is that some people in government are gravely concerned about a far worse problem of migration than anyone is prepared to discuss publicly for fear of inciting racist violence. Well, wibbi the authors of this report emigrated to the Costa del Crime and were replaced by honest and hard-working plumbers. I very much doubt the authors of this document were Poles.

Reply by on 01/30/08 at 9:30 am
> very much doubt the authors of this document were Poles.

And neither were they proles.

Reply by Feargal Hogan on 01/30/08 at 10:28 am
This is fascinating on so many levels.

First, as it’s a leaked document, I suppose that the alleged source department will not comment on its authenticity. It will be no good submitting an FoI request for the original, of course, because an exemption claim would come winging back, citing Section 35(i)(a) and probably, given the tone of the document, Section 36(2)(b)(i).

Second, considering the possibility that it is not genuine… isn’t it worrying that one could so easily believe that it was?

Third, if it is indeed genuine (and reasonably current), how depressing that this far into the policy-making process, the thinking should be such an obnoxious mixture of muddle, authoritarianism, subjectivity and obfuscation.

Wibbi policy documents in this area were openly published, and reflected the excellent advice which has been given many times and in many forums over the last couple of years.

To give three specific examples:

1 - the Crosby review gave rise to the very clear suggestion that public trust in the system could be greatly enhanced if it were designed so that the citizen could verify the details of other card-holders (including, for instance, police officers and government officials). As the No2ID annotation makes clear, this document omits any idea of citizens being able to verify the machine-readable data of other card-holders. Nor does it make clear how citizens would, in practice, verify the ‘identity’ data of non-human counterparties such as enterprises or government departments.

2 - Established best practice in the realm of privacy includes the principle of data minimisation. Don’t hold data you don’t need, and don’t exchange more data than is necessary for the transaction in question. Nowhere does this document reflect this vital and basic principle - so how can we expect that principle to be reflected in the policy, implementation and governance of the scheme?

3 - The word “anonymous” does not appear anywhere in the document. If properly designed, the identity card scheme could be the basis for privacy-respecting, trustworthy assertions of entitlement without the need to disclose identity unnecessarily. Again, this would have a massive effect on public confidence in the scheme - but the document is based entirely on the presumption that proof of identity is the ‘sine qua non’ of the scheme.

The Crosby review, the OECD workshop on identity and privacy, the EPG workshops and other meetings have all exposed UK policy-makers to the principle that the core function of a national ID card system is not “proof of identity” but “proof of uniqueness”. It’s hard to understand what, other than wilful blindness to informed advice, could result in a policy document which, at this stage in the process, makes no mention of this principle.

Reply by Robin Wilton on 01/30/08 at 11:46 am
I very much enjoyed your joke about a guided missile being customer-centric and I think this document proves your point.

Reply by ukliberty on 01/30/08 at 12:58 pm
D writes to say
What’s most troubling is that is should represent a week’s work undertaken four years ago. What on Earth have PA and Ernst & Young been doing?

If this represents the evolved state of thinking after fifty million quid, it’s a scandal.

Reply by on 01/30/08 at 1:13 pm
Respect to the Reg and Samizdata who were well on to this already; I failed to spot or acknowledge that. Shd have checked (well, I did try to Google but used terms that produced no results)

Reply by on 01/30/08 at 1:22 pm
Should someone be briefing Vince Cable on this ? Opportunities to debate ID seem few and far between, so perhaps it will have to be PM questions ?
Where is the fourth estate on this, and / or Panorama ?

Reply by on 01/30/08 at 2:16 pm
This is a government that believes that if only it had enough data it could make the perfect decision. That’s the thinking behind these mega database projects.

The migration problem is just a subset of the larger problem of the “undeserving” accessing public services. I’m sure that the long term vision involves using these systems to ration public services by excluding the undeserving. It’s just a question of having enough data to identify the target. The recent announcements of free health checks all round, and “we won’t treat the chronically ill if it’s their own fault”, are complementary rather than contradictory.
What else could be meant by the desirable objective of the scheme “improving vetting and barring more generally [than areas covered by CRB checks].(page7)

I was intrigued by the suggestion that hundreds of thousands of people would be given free international travel compliant ID cards to get the scheme up and running. Should make a dent in IPS income stream.

WIBBI ministers had the wit to open this project up to public scrutiny.
Also WIBBI those responsible for wasting millions of public funds could be surcharged a la Shirley Porter.

Apologies for going on…

Reply by on 01/31/08 at 12:59 pm
I’m reminded of Bernard Wooley’s famous irregular verb:
I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.

Reply by on 01/31/08 at 9:32 pm
I’m surprised that people are surprised that governments coerce (cajole, demand and force). That is one of the key levers governments have. Without it, funding unpopular programmes through taxation would be impossible. Mind you, virtually every government programme is unpopular to someone.

Even private sector firms will impose certain standards in order to coerce people to use a new service. Just look at how customer service has changed since the advent of the internet. (Poor) telephone services have been degraded to the point where a poor internet portal becomes an attractive option.

What is disconcerting about this ‘leak’ is not its existence but the lack of any document, note or leak that spells out how anyone, citizen or government agency, will actually benefit from an ID card.

This truly has become a beast with a will to survive contrary to any Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest.

Reply by on 02/01/08 at 12:52 pm
The govt have just responded to anyone who signed the e-petition on the subject of the Information Sharing Index aka the National Childrens Database.

Basically it says “stuff you, we’re going ahead anyway. And we are going to pay Deloitte to tell you we’re doing the right thing”

Reply by Feargal Hogan on 02/01/08 at 10:14 pm
I find the twisted use of the language of “customer” (eg options for the delivery of services to customers) fatally cynical. This paper reeks of coercion and deception. It’s odd that they’ll do anything to get the ID Scheme rolled out, even while they have to decide what it’s actually for.

Reply by on 04/30/08 at 9:46 pm

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