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| Jonathan Vos Post
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06-19-2006 01:28 PM ET (US)
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Oren Beck is right. Charles Stross' near-future Edinburgh novel may take Keith Laumer's vision deeper.
"In the Queue" shows us a planet-wide waiting list. People wait their entire lives to move up, holding their places not only for themselves, but also for their children. A nice twist at the end makes this one memorable.
Four of Keith Laumer's [9 June 1925 – 23 January 1993] shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations (one, "In the Queue", received nominations for both).
See:
The Best of Keith Laumer (collection) (1976)
Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side (posthumous omnibus, ed. Eric Flint, Baen Books) (2001/2002)
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| Oren Beck
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06-18-2006 07:50 PM ET (US)
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There is a SF story most appropriate to this ID card proposal's impact.
"IN THE QUEUE" Written by Keith Laumer,it may be prophetic in some details.
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| Jonathan Vos Post
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New NHS e-system 'behind'The Scotsman Sat 17 Jun 2006 ANOTHER government IT system has come under fire for its poor performance by the National Audit Office. The Westminster watchdog has warned that the NHS's 12.5 billion IT programme - which aims to link 30,000 surgeries in England, allowing doctors online access to patient records - is years behind schedule. Tony Blair insisted the system was on budget and well-managed....
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| Anton Sherwood
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What's that about middle-aged Pinay fingerprints?
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| Liam N
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06-15-2006 10:29 AM ET (US)
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Charlie,
A few things to put forward to this discussion,
First, I have been involved in government 'secure' IT systems for some time. As has already been pointed out these are a fantastic gravy train for large service providers. Services provided for 'secure' systems are frequently 5-10 times the cost of a commercial service due to the 'security overhead', also there are very few people in the civil service or government with the skills or experience to know when their provider is fleecing them or covering up operational mistakes.
It is common practice during the bid process to produce a price that is either (a) just below the other bidders or (b) just below the budget provided. The means of obtaining these values are fairly obvious, an organisation looking for a billion pound contract will spend significant money to obtain it.
Second, ID cards are a red herring and there is already a backup plan at the passport office to produce the same database below the radar of public scrutiny. The ID card legislation simply makes it a little easier for Tony to sneak it past the judges.
Third, the cost of implementing the database state, central systems, registration facilities, access points etc will be horrific. The only way that future home secretaries will be able to cover this cost will be to sell the data, access to the data or processed reports of the data to private companies. The credit check agencies must be drooling in anticipation.
This has already been demonstrated by the unrestricted sale of census and electoral roll data to websites where you key in the name and town of your 'target' and get to see their house on a map or satellite photo.
If you doubt this ask American Express which of their credit business or customer database is the more valuable asset.
Coupled with the (De)Regulation of Investigatory Powers legislation there will be effectively no limit on which state and private agencies the government can sell the data to, starting with local parking enforcement and rapidly spreading.
Fourth, as the cards and data systems will have to remain in place for a significant time due to cost and the time sensitive nature of encryption and electronic security the cards and data will inevitably become very leaky, fairly quickly.
This will enable organised crime to remove the remaining difference between themselves and Ian Blair's death squads, sorry upstanding Police officers.
Not only will identity theft become trivial but it will also be almost impossible for the individual to correct or a law abiding employer to detect. Criminals wishing to continue undetected will have an endless resource of photos, fingerprints and security questions with which to divert attempts to identify them.
Fifth, as has already been seen in France and other countries with ID card systems good fake cards are usually cheaper than the real thing and a significant portion of their population carry a fake in place of or in addition to their real card.
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| S.M. Stirling
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06-12-2006 04:10 AM ET (US)
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A good deal of the problem in the UK (the Children's database thing, frex) seems to be the product of a compulsive busy-ness on the part of the government.
I mean, trying to identify when children aren't "reaching their potential"... give me a break! Some project run from Whitehall is going to do anything positive about _that_!?
A little more systematic modesty about what it's possible or desirable to do would help a lot. It isn't as if everything the government tries to do already represents a solved problem.
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| S.M. Stirling
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06-12-2006 04:06 AM ET (US)
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Charlie Stross: ID and surveillance aren't the problem. The problem is the uses to which ID and surveillace are put. (For example: the Weimar Republic's tax register listed "religion" because a lot of German states had a church tax. When Hitler came to power, what use do you think that was put to?)
-- well, yeah, but it wasn't as if there weren't other ways of finding Jewish people in Germany... first and foremost, their neighbors finking them out.
The problem was the Nazis winning, not the files they had available when they did. We can scarcely go around examining every development in the light of "but what if the Nazis come to power"?
In any case, I think we're going to have to live with universal biometric-based ID of some sort. The way the tech is tending just makes it easier and easier, so eventually it'll happen one way or another.
Frex: "Here's a really rather creepy project for you to look at; the comprehensive database of all children in the UK that the government's trying to set up."
-- this would have been impossible in the paper-dossier era; just too expensive and complex to contemplate.
"The Stasi would have loved it!"
-- probably they would have. OTOH, when the revolution came, they were three months behind on reading their field reports.
The big change is not in the amount of data, but in the speed with which it can be handled.
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| Oren Beck
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06-11-2006 05:05 PM ET (US)
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Re:Charlie Stross's comment on the root concern-
"ID and surveillance aren't the problem. The problem is the uses to which ID and surveillance are put."
MY question to this forum is direct.
"Can we codify a concise ruleset to prevent evil use of personal data?"
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| archrights
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06-11-2006 12:56 PM ET (US)
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"Here's a really rather creepy project for you to look at; the comprehensive database of all children in the UK that the government's trying to set up." Thing is, this 'Computing' report is at best misleading. There are already *several* children's databases in existence: they've been piloted in various areas since the late 90s. Nobody has objected very much because the guinea-pigs are chiefly young people or 'potential' young offenders - the two categories of people whose civil rights few will defend. The new 'Children's Index'- what computing laughably refers to as *the* 'children's database' - is merely a hub for a series of radially-spaced databases. It's an identity-management system combined with a directory that facilitates the sharing of information that is already held on other systems. A 'switching station' if you like. It is slightly complex to understand, which means that the media - and most of the general public here in the UK - are grasping at little straws of information rather than taking a bit more time to understand what's really happening. Consequently much of the opposition consists of nonsense and half-truth that the government can easily laugh to scorn. Some of us have been working on this stuff for several years and, by way of a testimonial, I have recently finished a project with FIPR for the UK Information Commissioner on this whole area. We are **desperate** to get accurate information out now: there is to be a consultation over the Summer, after which the government will introduce final regulations for the Children's Index into parliament. It's vital that as many people as possible have accurate information if they are to put anything meaningful into the consultation. If anyone wants to find out what's really happening, we have a 'building-brick' blog project to explain the interlocking systems + the personal profiling tools used at www.databasemasterclass.blogspot.com we are also putting on a half-day conference at the London School of Economics at the end of this month - see http://childrenoversurveilled.lse.ac.ukSorry if I sound exasperated - it's a measure of my desperation, having been banging my head on the wall and shouting into outer space for rather too long! |
| Charlie Stross
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06-11-2006 11:44 AM ET (US)
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ID and surveillance aren't the problem. The problem is the uses to which ID and surveillace are put. (For example: the Weimar Republic's tax register listed "religion" because a lot of German states had a church tax. When Hitler came to power, what use do you think that was put to?) Here's a really rather creepy project for you to look at; the comprehensive database of all children in the UK that the government's trying to set up. Complete with reports on parents, documentation on all health and social interactions, schooling ... the lot. The Stasi would have loved it! |
| S.M. Stirling
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06-09-2006 03:09 PM ET (US)
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But what if it works? 8-).
Eventually, there will be technology in place that _will_ work, even if the first couple of tries don't. There will be (nearly) foolproof ID, and universal surveillance.
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| 1001001001
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06-01-2006 10:40 PM ET (US)
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An award I wish were earned instead of being born from night sweating terrors that some of YOUR writings have made seem less paranoid.
WE have a moral imperative bordering on admonition to never surrender Freedom so lightly.
The Moral admonition to think of our Future Children.
Will they be born free or slaves?
Those seeking to dispute my moral admonition against allowing Freedom itself to die- be mindful of how short in history personal Freedom is compared to it's non-existence.
Dismiss me as paranoid? Or mayhaps some of us with YOUR wider "mindshare"
can do better at making history dismiss me as paranoid instead of prophet.
And the reports of many historical events were initially so greeted.
Scant comfort for me that in time history vindicated so-called paranoids.The concept Heinlein introduced of a jury populated by EXTINCT jurors.
ADD our uncountable dead witnesses. All as dead as Freedom could soon be.
Who presumes power will NOT be evil is risking a grave fate.
I most sincerely would hope that dystopian futures remain safely between the covers of your wonderful books. The most depressing elements of any of YOUR dystopian scenarios may prove enviable compared to thinkable near future events in our mundane world. Hell of a note when Skiffy horrors are LESS scary than what present in power leaders are DOING in Reality.
Sadly the reality we desire and the reality desired by those who do not wish others to be free are at ultimate opposition. The Grim and terrible charge our children may curse us *ALL* with is our allowing the death of Freedom in any form. Unslavery anyone? IS it possible to end Freedom?
I place a PERSONAL hope to Mr Stross.
May your works and their readers never let my paranoia be considered understated.
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| Charlie Stross
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06-01-2006 06:02 PM ET (US)
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1001001001: sir, you win this year's tinfoil hat (with oak leaves) award for paranoia beyond the call of duty.
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| 1001001001
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05-31-2006 06:28 PM ET (US)
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It's not even *ANY* of the other pretenses used.
It's about the binary true or false query- are we free citizens or are we slaves?
And if the Label of "Slave" be even partial truth?
Then to which master/s?
To oligarchies cloaked in the sheep's wool of so-called society?
Or the more mindless hordes that vote themselves Bread&Circuses needing such "ID" to regulate the greed so fueled.
The de facto result is universal registry of humans as though they were mere chattel property. Possibily with nefarious schemes to turn the "as though" into actually making humans again chattel property. Not just the instrumentality of dossiers existing and key/card interlocked. Their being activated to deny a free private life is ALREADY here.
Consider the *FACT* that power from above can at a keystroke literally seize your every possible form of action.
And take up to and including your life.
See the USA "Eminent Domain" AkA "Takings" ruling if you're not scared yet.
DO ask the residents of Gitmo, or soon the residents of Birmingham what life becomes when what you are allowed is controled by others?
Bluntly put ID is a direct first step to universal enslavement.
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| Terri
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05-31-2006 04:00 AM ET (US)
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I'm sorry, I've just realised that the first sentence didn't appear on my email below. I meant to say: the problems aren't just confined to the actual ID Card system because there's a parallel (and far more comprehensive) system developing from birth-18 that provides a reserve parachute for the National Identity Register, but because this has been marketed as if it were an entirely separate initiative, it's not generally being borne in mind when ID Cards are considered.
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| Terri
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05-30-2006 10:46 PM ET (US)
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Despite the chaos, the government knew it only had to wait it out. Sure, the attempt to foist ID cards on the adult population had turned into a disaster, but at least it had kept them all distracted: Plan B was going better than the government had dared hope.
Thank God nobody really noticed kids. Since 2007, the Index had been ramping up until there was now a comprehensive record of everyone under 27 (it used to be called the Children’s Index, but the ‘children’ bit had been dropped when the first cohort reached 20). Best thing about it was that it kept everything in one place. The Index connected up to someone’s Lifelong Learner Record, their Electronic Social Care Record and their health records. The results of their regular CAF profiling sessions meant that you could see at a glance whether someone was thought to have shown criminal tendencies as a kid, used drugs, or gone off the rails completely. Employers were thankful that nobody could lie on their CVs any more, or even hide the fact that they had bunked school! At the click of a button, all the information was there.
True, the hassle in 2010 over taking DNA samples from babies had been ugly – it had even looked like it might derail the whole thing for a while – but once everyone was told the samples were necessary to spot who was at risk of developing illnesses and mental disorders so that the authorities could intervene early, things soon settled down. It could only get easier from now on: another 20 years or so and most of the population would be on the Index. This new generation was much more accepting of the whole thing. Well, why wouldn’t they be? After all, they’d never known anything else.
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| Darryl
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| Jonathan Vos Post
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05-24-2006 04:52 PM ET (US)
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"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis Brandeis [USA], 1928
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| Connie
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05-22-2006 08:03 AM ET (US)
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Dear Charlie -
I called the Easton Press to order my copy of Glasshouse, delighted to pay the outrageous 73 U.S. dollars for the privilege of reading my favorite sci-fi author while caressing lovely leather and breathing in its wonderful smell. I was excited to go without lunch for the week. I was happy to forego my traditional weekend film and my overpriced coffee. Alas, Easton told me that they wouldn't sell the book as a stand-alone -- that I'd have to subscribe to the entire, signed sci-fi series, where I'd get one book or another each month and, eventually, would receive yours (no promises on when).
I love you, Charlie, I do. But my love's just not strong enough to make a $73/month commitment. I'm weak, I know...you're probably much better off without me. But I'm going to wait for a copy to show up on eBay and hope the price doesn't go too high. How's that for adding insult to injury, since you make nothing off secondary market sales? To make it up to you, though, I'm off to Amazon right now to buy the hardcover. And I promise to buy The Jennifer Morgue the moment it's available.
- Connie
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| Dave Bell
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05-22-2006 03:14 AM ET (US)
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Just don't let anyone suggest pervasive personalised information/phone/music download-earpieces.
I mean, think of the chaos on the M25 when they send the traffic reports.
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| Tarl Neustaedter
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05-20-2006 05:49 PM ET (US)
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Bar codes are obtrusive. But the pet tagging technology that involves injecting pets with an RFID chip is already proven and safe on mammals -- I suspect they'll start chipping us any day now.
My comment on bar-codes was satirical, based on certain christian fundamentalists who claim bar codes are the mark of the beast, and that the devil will bar-code us after the rapture.
Chipping humans is already in place; there is a company in the U.S. which RFID-tags its confidential employees, as a means of tracking who goes where in which buildings at what times. But RFID tags are fragile and it's easy to burn them out if you want to anonymize yourself until it's replaced.
I'm just pointing this out as means where the technology could work, hoping to keep clear the distinction between something you don't want to happen as opposed to something that can't happen.
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| Charlie Stross
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05-20-2006 05:21 AM ET (US)
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Bar codes are obtrusive. But the pet tagging technology that involves injecting pets with an RFID chip is already proven and safe on mammals -- I suspect they'll start chipping us any day now.
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| Tarl Neustaedter
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05-19-2006 07:33 PM ET (US)
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Note that there is an trivial way to deal with identity fraud and failure to register. Just make the procedure include tatooing your universal id number on your forehead, preferably in a bar code.
Joking aside, the idea of a permanent mark to indicate registration isn't out of question - many countries today use indelible ink to mark voters who have gone through the polls. A minor extension of such marks into containing actual data and lasting longer than the few days indelible ink lasts isn't impossible.
Someone might submit such a bill as a joke, and be surprised if it passes.
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| Serraphin
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05-19-2006 07:18 AM ET (US)
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Like Charlie pointed out - like the ill fated poll tax (which I was only just old enough to remember), compulsory ID cards will probably come in screaming and go out wimpering.
If we're lucky.
I can indeed see large scale civil unrest being brought to bear on local council offices, registration centres, etc.
Like has been pointed out - if everything runs smoothly, then the chances of the cards being registered ontime are slim. Put a picket line and a few angry mobs into the equation and it'll be a joke.
Unfortunately I can see that the poor lawy abiding shmucks like myself, who are just a little too fearful, will loose out most by paying their dues and registering their DNA on the database.
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05-18-2006 10:03 AM ET (US)
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Deleted by topic administrator 05-18-2006 06:56 PM
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| Jose
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05-18-2006 09:25 AM ET (US)
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Agreed on police and email. I can't see them trusting it. It seems like a highly plausible timeline.
I want to believe that Labour will back down on ID cards but I'm far from certain.
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| Martin McCallion
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05-18-2006 07:45 AM ET (US)
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The only fanciful bit in that piece is the idea that the police, by 2009, will be switched on enough to notify us of anything by email.
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| Mike Richards
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05-18-2006 07:08 AM ET (US)
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Edited by author 05-18-2006 07:14 AM
Ferag NicBhrde wrote:
In addition, it should be remembered that an attempt to foist an ID card on football fans was what cost Colin Moynihan his job, and helped get rid of the tories.
Sadly, now this incipient disaster has become law, the contracting phase has begun. You can be assured that the suppliers will insist that cancellation clauses are included in the (commercially confidental) contracts. If this thing IS cancelled then the government - that is you and I - will pay massive penalties.
I imagine that if the next election results in a change of government that the incoming Home Secretary will find it cheaper to let the whole thing roll along untouched than to pull the plug. The scale of the disaster will be hidden from the public - just the way that the NHS computer system upgrade is quietly going belly-up out of view.
If there is one entity even more unpleasant than the Home Office, then it's the sight of the IT industry clamped on the teat of public funding.
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| Mike Richards
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05-18-2006 06:30 AM ET (US)
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It's all too depressingly true, if not nearly as awful as the future is going to be; but the bit about the French being partially responsible for this fiasco is incorrect.
At the time of the closure of Sangatte, the French Interior Ministry put around some briefings that Britain was attractive to migrants because it did not have identity cards. This was an attempt to deflect attention from France's own leaky borders and ignored the fact that the UK is attractive because of its 'flexible' employment laws and that we speak English.
Blunkett and co. latched on to this as another justification for their own proposals - we were being forced to have ID cards because the French told us so. If things went badly wrong, there was a scapegoat - and New Labour, like any government, likes to have its scapegoats lined up well in advance.
That was a lie.
Since then the Home Office claimed that we have to have biometric ID cards because of US visa restrictions, or the new passport standard or because of the Schengen Acquis inside the EU.
In short, the US biometric visa proposal is still that - a proposal, the passport standard requires only that your passport contains a memory chip holding an electronic copy of the digital photo inside the passport, and finally, Britain isn't even a signatory to the Schengen Acquis!
In reality the Home Office has been pushing for ID cards since the middle of the 1970s, occasionally it has found a Home Secretary gullible or mendacious enough to go along with them. When well seasoned with the snake oil of biometrics they just needed someone sufficiently ignorant to ram the legislation through Parliament - and in Straw, Blunkett and then Clarke the Home Office found three of them.
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| Neal Asher
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05-18-2006 06:22 AM ET (US)
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It's interesting to see the google adverts you have down the side of this page...
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| Charlie Stross
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05-18-2006 05:23 AM ET (US)
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Serraphin, that's just one of the flaws in the system, and not the most serious one by far.
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| Serraphin
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05-18-2006 04:15 AM ET (US)
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Thing is - and obviously I'm not as technically advanced as the rest of ye - but I'm purdy sure I can already see the gorgeous flaw in this system.
Right now ID fraud becomes quite easy due to the relative ease of getting a bith certificate for someone else (I recall some tabloid getting a hold of Tony Blair's at some point). However, surely, at some point when registering your swanky biometric ID card - you have to present some good, old fashioned, paper ID.
If I can still get a birth certificate from the hospital (assuming it's still open by that time!), and can face the 'shame' of paying xx for not having registered my biometrics on time, then I can get myself a new card. All properly registered with the database.
Then go out and 'pop a cap' in my most hated, and the officially registered database will link my DNA with one "Anthony Blair - PM".
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| Dave Bell
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05-18-2006 02:24 AM ET (US)
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I find myself wondering about the logistics of getting people to the centres. OK, they'll have to be in major cities. But existing government offices aren't always in easy to get to places in those cities, and aren't well-provided with parking spaces.
I base this on my experience of the paperwork for agricultural subsidies. There's a complex of Government Buildings in Nottingham, out on the ring road. The last time I took a load of stuff down there, you couldn't drive onto the site for "security reasons", which meant using a very small car-park outside the perimeter fence.
My brother used to work opposite the Passport Office in Peterborough; it's on the edge of the pedestrianised city centre, on the opposite side to the bus station, the railway station, and all the main car parks.
How many registration offices did they plan to build? In this age of email I'm running out of envelopes, and may have to resort to the tablecloth for my calculations, but 70 offices need about 22 processing stations each, and that's making some pretty optimistic assumptions about work rates--that the staff don't lose time to no-shows and equipment reliability and non-customer duties, just for a start.
And has anyone ever thought about what a neat symbolic target it would be for a suicide bomber? Not to mention the advantages of muddying the waters of that particular sea.
Another reason I may have been optimistic about the effective working hours: what of the non-locals trying to get in to the centre during the rush hour?
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| Alex Harrowell
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05-17-2006 05:51 PM ET (US)
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Great post, Charles.
Back to my earlier point - let's think about how to help them fuck it up. I reckon a considerable number of extra people queueing up at centres, thus flooding the queueing space, sounds both effective and legal.
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| Bruce Cohen
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05-17-2006 05:16 PM ET (US)
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One of the areas of civil liberties in the States where people are getting aggravated is the use of airline terrorist watch lists. This is one that hits people in the convenience part of the brain, because everyone hates anything that makes flying by commercial carrier (more) difficult. It's become obvious that the lists are grossly inaccurate. It's also obvious that keeping an incorrect listing, when it would be easy to establish that incorrectness (he's standing in front of you, and he's ready to answer questions) is very wasteful of scarce security resources.
But using your aggravation to get rid this particular procedure may be a mistake. I suspect that one of the reasons (again, at some level of government) for the aggravations of the lists is to create another argument for national IDs: "Well, if we all had a biometric card, we wouldn't mistake you for a terrorist." And to think I didn't used to be a paranoid.
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| Charlie Stross
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05-17-2006 04:48 PM ET (US)
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Bruce: that's it, exactly. It represents an asymmetric increase in the power of the state with relation to the individual, and the excuses they're using to justify it are being rotated on a 48-hour basis. ("It's about terrorists", "it's about benefit fraud", "it's about stopping illegal immgiration" ... and repeat.)
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| Bruce Cohen
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05-17-2006 04:11 PM ET (US)
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I got a little carried away with the technological question; I do have something to say about the civil liberties questions. It's clear (at least to me) that the security problems an ID card tries to address are addressable (but probably not completely soluble) by less intrusive methods. The reason that government agencies keep pushing these sorts of solutions is rather sinister: at some level of management, the goal is not to solve the security problem at all, but to enhance the power of the government (meaning the people in the government, not the institutions) by removing oversight and increasing control over the citizens. That's why criticism of the planning or implementation of a solution is ignored; the cost and side-effects aren't an issue to those who want to use the system to gain power.
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| Bruce Cohen
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05-17-2006 04:02 PM ET (US)
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The truly sad part of how much of a cluster-fuck most big IT (especially govt. IT) projects turn out to be is that the problem is not usually either technological or lack of competence in the average developer. The problems usually result from bad requirements, bad management, bad oversight, and bad planning, for sufficiently egregious values of "bad".
For instance, take the distributed database. This problem has been solved, although not with relational databases. Three of the ten largest shipping companies in the world track and control every individual shipment in every one of their containers on every ship, using (per-company) world-wide distributed (and federated) object database systems. The original system was built in the late '90s (at the time, I worked for the company that supplied the infrastructure and helped with the design). The largest of the current systems can track 40 billion (yes, that's 4E10) objects without falling over. Thus the existence proof. The reason that more people aren't using this sort of system is that it's built with what everyone thinks of as legacy technology, not the shiny new stuff that the managers are reading about in the latest issue of "Enterprise Software for Dumm***, er, IT Managers".
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| Ferag NicBhrde
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05-17-2006 03:59 PM ET (US)
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In addition, it should be remembered that an attempt to foist an ID card on football fans was what cost Colin Moynihan his job, and helped get rid of the tories.
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| Charlie Stross
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05-17-2006 02:35 PM ET (US)
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I think your estimates of non-compliance are off by a couple of orders of magnitude. I can believe a few goats per thousand, but not 1 out of 5. Not when things like driver's license, booze purchases, welfare/dole, passports and football game attendance are all tied into compliance.
Were you in the UK during the Poll Tax protests?
Non-compliance hit 45% in Scotland. And non-compliance was an imprisonable offense.
I think you underestimate how restive the British population get when the politicians do something to piss them off -- and something that forces them to personally show up to be fingerprinted and then pay a walletfull of cash for something they're not too keen on is going to generate goats fast.
Precisely because the government has adopted a softly-softly approach and not made it compulsory from the outset, there's plenty of time for a protest movement to grow. My actual best guess on the NIR is that the compulsory card is going to end up being scrapped; this is my best guess on the consequences if they press ahead.
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| Tarl Neustaedter
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05-17-2006 12:57 PM ET (US)
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I think your estimates of non-compliance are off by a couple of orders of magnitude. I can believe a few goats per thousand, but not 1 out of 5. Not when things like driver's license, booze purchases, welfare/dole, passports and football game attendance are all tied into compliance.
The problem of multiple identities for a single person can be addressed by background data-mining. Have a task looking for matches in biometrics between individuals. As long as you are taking multiple biometrics (iris, fingerprint, dna), a close match in one biometric isn't a problem unless the other biometrics are also close - in which case law enforcement might want to have a chat with the individual(s) in question.
Corruption is indeed the major problem you'll have - whatever algorithm is being used to find bogus identities, corruption among the very people who carry out the searches can lead to loopholes. Some of these loopholes will be deliberately created for lawful purposes - e.g., witness protection.
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05-17-2006 11:45 AM ET (US)
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Deleted by topic administrator 05-17-2006 12:29 PM
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| Trey
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05-17-2006 11:10 AM ET (US)
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Bravo. Nice piece there.
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Messages 31-30 deleted by topic administrator between 05-09-2006 05:05 PM and 05-04-2006 12:47 PM |
| Haeuptling Aberja
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04-29-2006 12:28 AM ET (US)
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I'm assuming you lot have all read John Pilger's piece on these ID cards ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12719.htm). It's sinister stuff alright, and I think Charlie's onto the reasons behind the end of privacy--look at what they're doing here in the States with the Total Information Awareness program. In the past, such a panopticon wasn't really feasible because of data storage and retrieval. They've adjusted. Jeremy Bentham could only dream (sick bastard) of what they're up to in the modern world. Let's just hope that the Singularity turns out as benign as Charlie paints it in Singularity Sky (thanks for the optimism, mate, it was brilliant!) |
| Robert
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04-07-2006 11:58 PM ET (US)
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One other objection nobody has mentioned about biometrics - I don't want my fingers or eyeballs to be worth more in someone else's pocket than firmly attached to me.From the BBC: Police in Malaysia are hunting for members of a violent gang who chopped off a car owner's finger to get round the vehicle's hi-tech security system. The car, a Mercedes S-class, was protected by a fingerprint recognition system. Accountant K Kumaran's ordeal began when he was run down by four men in a small car as he was about to get into his Mercedes in a Kuala Lumpur suburb. The gang, armed with long machetes, demanded the keys to his car. ... The attackers forced Mr Kumaran to put his finger on the security panel to start the vehicle, bundled him into the back seat and drove off. But having stripped the car, the thieves became frustrated when they wanted to restart it. They found they again could not bypass the immobiliser, which needs the owner's fingerprint to disarm it. They stripped Mr Kumaran naked and left him by the side of the road - but not before cutting off the end of his index finger with a machete.
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| Alex Harrowell
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04-05-2006 04:36 AM ET (US)
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One person every 72 seconds. I wonder how a succession of small, random, repeated demonstrations at the centres would affect the throughput?
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| Serraphin
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04-04-2006 08:22 AM ET (US)
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The thing that gets right up my nasal cavities is: "Why".
Why the hell is my little government (I use 'my' government there - don't think I put them there) planning to spend the GDP of some other nations on a biometric ID system that has absolutely no use?
Explain to me, exactly (I'd beg) how this system prevents or causes anything? The only people punished are the poor system monkeys stuck living here. Not even the 'immigrants' or 'terrorists' that you tell me about all the time, those two classes of (apparently) undesirables won't give a damn about an id system, because they manage everything without already.
By bypassing your current laws Mr Leader sir.
Not only another example of throwing technology/money at a problem until it goes away, but a great example of why the wrong people are in power :-/
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| Dave Bell
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04-04-2006 02:53 AM ET (US)
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The German ID system, pre-war and now, has its roots in keeping track of military reservists to allow efficient mobilisation. Which is why there is so much emphasis on where you live. And since some of those soldiers are going to end up dead, I can see why religion was recorded.
It's also why we have so much to document the Holocaust. Deportation to a camp was a change of address.
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| Dave O'Neill
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04-03-2006 05:53 PM ET (US)
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It's probably even worse than that. My father liked to point out to fingerprint fans that the prints on the system are only as good as the person who took them. Scanning prints is difficult, not to mention they're potentially an awful biometric if used in this way.
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| Andrew G
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04-03-2006 04:54 PM ET (US)
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Identity Theft and positively IDing a person isn't a new problem. Ever see "The Return of Martin Guerre"? :)
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| A.R.Yngve
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04-03-2006 10:12 AM ET (US)
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Haven't these people seen the film DEMOLITION MAN? Expect future headlines like "Crime Shock: ID-THEFT GANG GOUGES OUT VICTIMS' EYES, HACK OFF THUMBS" -A.R.Yngve http://yngve.bravehost.com |
| Tarl Neustaedter
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04-03-2006 07:57 AM ET (US)
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I'd earlier mentioned 99.999% reliability - my previous employer (Stratus) advertised and delivered these rates, my current employer (Sun) does so only under unusual circumstances (redundant servers, ect.).
But for this kind of database, you need tremendous reliability only on the read side (when checking identification), which is trivially handled by replicated databases and multiple servers. This data can afford to be out of date by a few hours, so you don't have to have real-time updates.
On the update side, the easy one is adding a record; if the database is down, you buffer the add. Worst case for changing a record would require find, lock, write, unlock operations. But most routine changes (adding data to a record) could again be a simple buffered operation. E.g., someone changing their address would be such an operation - you don't actually change the address, you add an entry with a new address to the record, so that you still have all the old addresses. This can be queued up even if the main database is down (assuming replicated read-only copies are up).
Sure, a government implementing this could foul it up if it tried hard enough. But the objections should really concentrate on the *why*, not the *how*, which is a mere implementation detail. If you concentrate on the implementation challenges, you may be unpleasantly surprised to find them in operation if they don't run into all the difficulties you fear.
One other objection nobody has mentioned about biometrics - I don't want my fingers or eyeballs to be worth more in someone else's pocket than firmly attached to me. If someone piggybacks verifying financial transactions on this database, and thinks an iris scan is sufficient to validate identity, that could lead to the situation of kidnappers doing gruesome things to empty out their victims' bank accounts.
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| C.E. Murphy
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04-01-2006 04:42 AM ET (US)
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I'd been thinking of national ID in terms of passport-like identification, yeah, which is a completely different creature. I don't even particularly like *that*, but so far as it goes it's high-level interference with very little intimate detail on your actual life. Birthdate, when you leave and enter countries...that's pretty inoffensive in comparison to what you've just described.
I honestly can't understand why people would support an ID system like that. I can understand why an Orwellian government would, but why would *any* individual be willing to hand over that kind of information, in that much detail, to a governing body? I don't even like registering for super-saver cards at grocery stores because that information is linked to your name and databases are kept. Gah.
I'm (inevitably, and I know someone brought this up on your comments on the LJ, but) reminded of pre-WW2 Germany. Not so much the easy round-up of Jews, in this case, but gun registration (which I also object to wholesale) allowing the SS to know who had the weapons so that when it came time, they could come take weapons away from all the civic-minded decent people who had, as requested, registered their weapons. Voila, an instant removal of a significant potential in-country threat. The people who were left who hadn't registered weapons are a much smaller and less dangerous (from a numbers point of view, anyway; certainly there's an argument to be made for "If they didn't register their weapons like good little civic-minded people in the first place, they're obviously an inherent threat to the system") group of people. My grandfather, who emigrated to the States in the 20s from Ireland, was a fierce proponent of the right to bear arms, and owned a number of guns, because of this. That's a rather eye-opening explanation to be given when you're eight years old, lemme tell you.
Ireland's nice. :) Move to Cork; sure, all the other skiffy writers are up in Wicklow, but we're a different generation anyway! :)
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| Tom
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04-01-2006 04:00 AM ET (US)
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Speaking as the original author, 72 seconds is the average interval at which each of the 70 centres has to submit a *new* application if the stated Home Office target of 7m entries *at the start* is to be reached. The maths is fairly noddy for that sort of thing. It's not the processing time, which I have no information on, although I suspect it'll be more than a second or so, particularly if they have to retrieve data from existing systems. The total end-to-end processing time impacts on the cost of the project in terms of how many readers and registrars you have to install at each centre to meet the required registration rate.
Remember, for most of the 7m people this will be a passport renewal (so you've got to check the existing passport database and invalidate the old passport number at the same time) and NIR registration. To avoid having to talk to the existing passport database you'd have to migrate that to the NIR, but that would dirty your data, so you've got to query an external database at some point.
Charlie has extended this to updates, which is a separate load, as is day-to-day checking, which has been quoted at 165m a year nationally - I concentrated solely on the new registrants as it's the first solid figure I've seen of what the Home Office expects the thing to do on Day 1, when reliability will be lowest, updates and checking rates will be low but registration will have to proceed hell for leather.
99.999% uptime on Day 1 isn't going to happen, whatever the system vendor thinks. This is a Government IT project with a politically driven timescale (get it running before the next election), not a private sector operation with realistic timescales (mind you, my experience of the latter is not five nines reliability either. Perhaps we should talk to Tarl's employer).
You can work out, from 72 seconds over 70 centres, how often the *central* computer has to receive a brand new registration, check it against all the existing ones with an acceptable degree of duplicate checking and reply with a positive/negative result so the centre can continue with the next customer. I make it about once a second. Now, given that you can presumably run multiple queries (you don't have to wait for one to finish before starting the next) that isn't really a problem until the database fails, at which point you inconvenience one person a second until it's fixed and have that many records to process subsequently before you can allow them home, in case they're fraudulent. Meanwhile, every 72 seconds a new registrant is joining the back of the centre queue.
If anything is certain in all this, it's that a database built by a collection of the kind of companies who usually get this work (since there's enough work for everyone to get a slice without too much effort), in 32 months (less if you want to ramp it up properly), under political pressure from a Home Office so arrogant and incompetent that they can't even make their own accounts add up is going to be full of bugs. Oh, and we won't know anything about it, because it'll be commercially confidential. That's why analysing the drips of data that come out is so important, as it's about all we're going to get unless someone leaves a laptop on a train.
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| Ed Davies
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04-01-2006 03:59 AM ET (US)
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99.9% uptime is just about adequate if it means the system is down for one minute every couple of days but a disaster if it means it takes a day off every three years.
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| Ed Davies
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04-01-2006 03:51 AM ET (US)
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I hope it's just a typo, but if not Charlie's being very pessimistic with respect to the death rate.
Probably Google could implement the database quite easily but whether EDS or the like could actually make it work properly is another question.
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| Dave Bell
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04-01-2006 02:16 AM ET (US)
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First thing is, it's the rate at which people have to be processed at every centre, so you have to mulitply by the number of processing centres to get the database update rate.
IIRC, Charlie has some professional knowledge of how a secure, reliable, database has to handle updates from a remote site. One of the problems is knowing which record is the authoritative one, the local record being made/amended or the central register entry. Think of what might happen with an ATM machine which has a mechanical failure in the middle of supplying you with banknotes.
And with all the reasons why an ID Card might be checked, there's going to have to be a huge system of remote (smart) terminals for checking IDs, including the biometrics. What's the logistics of building and installing the hardware in sufficient quantities, once you have a reliable design.
(Anyone for V for Vendetta tshirts?)
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| Tarl Neustaedter
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03-31-2006 07:17 PM ET (US)
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Ignoring the issues about whether you *should* have such a database...
I'm afraid the arithmetic on problems is missing me; why do we assume it takes 72 seconds to update the database? The original article seems to have arrived at that number based on number of offices and number of people, neither of which seems relevant to the database.
I can easily believe that you'll have 50-100 million updates per year, but that should be trivial to handle. I don't know how many biometric measurements are made, but they'll be indexed (e.g., fingerprints would be indexed by type and angle of various features), and relatively easy to find multiple close matches - or the people designing the system are doing a poor job.
Presumably when a record is updated, the record is fetched by the ID number, and is a trivial database transaction, no search needed. When a record is added or biometrics changed, you do need to search the full database to make sure the person being entered isn't already there - but that should be an indexed search on various biometrics to do a quick sanity check, not an exhaustive linear match. A duplicate entry wouldn't be catastrophic, merely criminal, to be dealt with either when the perpetrator makes a mistake or by background data-mining.
The downtime worries also seem misplaced; My employer sells systems on the promise of far better than 99% uptime. I believe we aim for 99.999%, and a properly managed system will usually achieve that with multiple overlapping backup servers.
If I were running such a system, I'd have the dataentry locations have a minimal time-out (two seconds?) on conflict searches, and simply queue up a later sanity check. When you have the force of law behind you, dealing with people trying to game the system is easy - you send people in a uniform to check the physical body in question at the address specified.
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| Charlie Stross
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03-31-2006 05:13 PM ET (US)
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Catie, Funnily enough that's how most people react when they find out what the real substance of the ID Card/National Identity Register is about.
I left out the Orwellian big-brother database that lets them track every interaction you make with banks, landlords, car hire companies, airlines, your GPs surgery, your kid's school, your employer, your phone company -- and probably your ISP in due course -- and so on, but that's the whole point. A laminated card that says who I am is relatively inoffensive -- after all, I've got a passport, right? But the NIR isn't a cut-price passport at all: rather, it's a systematic and inexcusible attempt to undermine or destroy the right to privacy.
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| C.E. Murphy
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13
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03-31-2006 05:05 PM ET (US)
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Ok, *now* I understand the problem. I mean, I inherently object to having to identify myself in any fashion (I was born in the wrong century, so far as that's concerned; I have this unreasonable expectation that I should be able to say, "I'm Catie Murphy," or, for that matter, "I'm Charlie Stross," and have it accepted (though I can't do the accent, more's the pity)), so I wasn't about to disagree with the concept of ID Cards Are Bad, but ... my. That ... is really ugly. It makes my lip curl just to think about it. *shudder*
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| Charlie Stross
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12
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03-31-2006 03:59 PM ET (US)
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Edited by author 03-31-2006 03:59 PM
Probably once someone decides they'd be a good way to crack down on illegal immigrants ... it's already happened.
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| Andrew G
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11
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03-31-2006 02:29 PM ET (US)
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I'll be keeping an eye on how this goes over in the UK, since I'm sure we'll get them in the US eventually. Probably once someone decides they'd be a good way to crack down on illegal immigrants or something.
Of course, the US government will just make it a mandate for the states to take care of or risk loosing some bit of federal funding so it will be full of holes and resented.
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| Charlie Stross
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05-29-2004 05:19 AM ET (US)
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I suspect it's nothing to do with Blunkett, and everything to do with pressure from the Home Office, which in turn is derived from pressures originating within the US law enforcement and intelligence community (to have the tools with which to build a planetary-scale database of malefactors) ... which in turn derive from budgetary pressures in successive US administrations since the 1970's which make it easier to justify intrusive wide-scale data mining exercises than actual employment of (gasp) spies and informers.
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| Dave Bell
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9
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05-28-2004 02:52 PM ET (US)
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With recent stories about how a passport photograph is considered, by some other countries, to be "biometric ID", I'm left with one rather uncomfortable thought, one which may even be offensive.
Is the fact that David Blunkett is blind a factor in the choices being made by the Home Office, which seem to be biased towards machine-solutions, rather than human senses.
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| David Stewart - Dublin
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8
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04-25-2004 02:07 PM ET (US)
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This may sound heretical but I'm actually in favour of government-issued ID cards, not from any security point of view, but from the sheer convenience of the things. At the moment, if I want to open a bank account, join a video club or something similar, I have to jump through hoops to prove who I am: typically this means having two pieces of ID one with a photo and one with an address. When I lived in Belgium, I didn't have that problem. I simply presented my ID card which said 'This guy is David Stewart and he lives at 1715 Chaussee De Wavre. Trust me."
A national ID card is also valid for cross border travel with the European Economic Area (EU + Norway and Switzerland) so no need for passports. I'd rather leave my expensive passport at home locked away safely and only risk losing a cheaply replaced ID card.
In the 20 years I lived in Belgium I was asked for my card exactly once and I have to admit I was acting suspiciously. However, once I showed my card to the cop he accepted my explanation and that was the end of the matter.
Disclaimer: I'm white and not poor. Your mileage may vary.
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| Peter Wong
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04-19-2004 02:13 PM ET (US)
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Charlie, the other day (Sunday) Bruce Schneier appeared live on one of Lou Dobbs' shows on CNN to argue why national ID cards are a really bad idea. Schneier was eloquent and straightforward, as you'd expect. Unfortunately, it was clear after a couple of minutes that Dobbs already disagreed with anything Schneier had to say. The highlight of this putdown came towards the end of the segment. While Schneier was going into an extended argument, a clearly bored Dobbs was shown looking downward and off-screen.
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| Dave Bell
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6
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04-19-2004 02:34 AM ET (US)
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Charlie, I'm not sure ID Cards is the right topic for this... It is to do about security. An account from a Norwegian, at http://torillsin.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_t...#108144378620684416 describe how the old "has anyone had access to your luggage" security question, the "bomb-check", is broken by the US Transport Security Administration's search policy. They don't want you to lock your luggage any more. |
| Harry Payne
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5
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04-16-2004 02:42 PM ET (US)
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| Dave Clements
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4
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04-16-2004 09:34 AM ET (US)
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Most benefit fraud in the UK comes from unreported earnings not from identity fraud. ID cards will do nothing to stop this. There is *no* clear justification for ID cards in the UK. Write to your MP now and complain about them!
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| Charlie Stross
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3
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04-16-2004 05:29 AM ET (US)
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I can think of only one problem that a national ID card in the UK would solve effectively -- clamping down on benefits fraud. Unfortunately the cure (mandatory biometric ID cards for everyone) is an order of magnitude more expensive than the disease.
I can think of longer-term uses, but they might sound a bit paranoid: biometric authentication on all passenger transport springs to mind. Car ownership is already being covered, creepingly: you can't rent without showing a licence, biometric ID is going to show up first on driving licences, licence plate camera coverage on roads is being worked on, and so on. The next step might be a mandatory requirement to present ID when purchasing rail or coach tickets as well as airline tickets. If we go really tinfoil-hat and look to the 2010-2020 time frame we have ID cards with RFID chips and sensors which only authenticate their authorised users and which can be polled from anywhere, thus ensuring that simply carrying no card or the wrong card is a suspicious act. (But we're still a long way away from that kind of scenario.)
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| GrandmaSatan
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2
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04-15-2004 09:53 PM ET (US)
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When did everyone forget that throwing money at a problem never solves it? All of the latest security fixes of any kind from anywhere have simply proposed spending more money to "fix" something. It's ridiculous. Stop spending money to add more crap and start cutting out the crap that just get's in the way... No one wants to reorganize for performance, they all just want to kludge up something that'll get 'em all raises and\or re-elected.
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| Dave Bell
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1
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04-15-2004 03:44 PM ET (US)
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Does anyone else remember The Odessa File, and the sneaky trick at the core of the whole business: get the key ID document, and everything else is easy.
For a lot of things here-and-now, it's a passport. Have they really blocked off the trick Frederick Forsyth described in The Day of the Jackal?
All the biometric psuedo-Bertillonism is worthless if it matches the document holder, and the identity is fake.
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