Security management Toolkit
Story: Home Office proclaims security of ID cards scheme
What is the purpose of the national identity database?
If, as the government say, fewer than 100 people will have access to the data in it, what is it going to be used for?
Is it simply gathering personal information for the sake of holding that information with no clear purpose in mind?
After all, if it cannot be accessed by the police, as the government have said, then it will be no use for verifying identity during spot checks.
They suggest it will need to be accessed to prove one's identity for buying a house. Pointless - everyone will simply buy houses through companies or trusts who do not require identity cards.
But this implies individuals will need to prove their identity by means of access to the national identity database. Which less than 100 people have access to. Does this suggest a bottleneck to anyone else?
Or is the plan to start with under 100 people having access, then once the data is collected, expand it so that pretty much anyone can access it.
The awful thing about data theft is that it only has to happen once. Once the data is stolen, the theft cannot be reversed. There is no point in acting after the event to beef up security - the data is now no longer secure, since it has been stolen and the stolen copy is no longer controlled by the authorities.
With this in mind, there needs to be a really good reason for putting all this personal identity data about UK residents in a central database.
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