Story: ID opponents have all the cards

Posted by: Arthur B. (Monday 27 June 2005, 9:54 PM)

Ultimate power....?

And what is power nowedays? Control over information and control over access to information.

If I can control what others can, could and will know about you how (certainly not excluding filtered or even edited information) then I can control you. And without build-in safe guards and unavoidable serious punishment for those that misuse or abuse (intended or not) such amounts of information ultimate corruption is the oh so humanly logical next step. All with the best of intentions I'm sure is what the front men will state. But what about the people hiding behind the screens and pulling the cords?

Some form of realistic risk assessment seems to be in order. What are the definitions of misuse and abuse? Who's at risk? What could go wrong? How to identify misuse and abuse? How to reverse wrong doing? How to prevent a mistake from happening again? Or are we to go along with this as with plane crashes? Only after the fact we're maybe going to find out how to prevent it from happening again. In other words: no prevention, cure later if there are no commercial or political objections.

Sure, there are benefits of having a national spanning electronic ID system in place but there are also risks. Do's and dont's. Practical and inpractical. Justifyable or not. At risk of wrong human interpretation or not. At risk of ending up in the wrong hands or not. That all needs to be realisticly inventoried and dealth with. Whatever the outcome, it won't be perfect but making it perfect and keeping it perfect should be the goal if the conclusion is to go ahead.