Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:08 AM GMT+00:00
01 Nov · Tue 2005
Could UK ID Cards be a panacea?
A good, detailed update from The Register on the biometrics aspects of UK ID Card proposals.
It's also useful to cross refer to Jerry Fishenden's recent article here on the risks inherent in a poor design of such an all-encompassing system.
I have also come up with my own suggestion for naming the proposed National Identity Register: the government clearly see it as a panacea, so that's exactly that they should call it: PANACEA.
The Panoptically Architected National Archive of Credentials, Entitlements and Attributes.
As Drew Wagar has already tellingly pointed out, there is more risk than benefit in insisting that the same register contain all three of thees types of data (credentials, entitlements and attributes), particularly if the 'attribute' layer includes the audit log of accesses to the register. In fact, there's also a good case to be made for leaving entitlement data out of the register as well: entitlements are likely to be agency-specific and more dynamic than credentials. On that basis, a federated architecture in which entitlements are held and managed by the agency in question, but queried when needed, is more likely to result in accurate assertions.
I have to admit, though, that I can't claim all the credit for the PANACEA idea. The Credentials, Entitlements and Attributes model simply reflects the SAML layers of identity-related assertions, and is therefore consistent with the Liberty ID-FF data model. However, that's where the similarity ends; Liberty was designed as a way of federating such a data model, rather than centralising it.
Of trust and DNA testing...
Minister for Work and Pensions David Blunkett finds himself in the headlines again after an interval of only a few months. Last time, he was having to quit his post as Home Secretary after a damaging series of revelations about his affair with a married woman and the paternity claims which followed in its wake. Subsequently, DNA testing was to that he did not enjoy the paternity which he claimed. What finally tipped the scale was the discovery that a visa application for that woman's nanny had been 'fast-tracked' – though Mr Blunkett denied having done anything untoward to influence its processing.
This time the fuss is about a non-executive company directorship which he took on earlier this year. The parliamentary rules say that a government minister taking a job within two years of being in office should discuss it beforehand with the Parliamentary Standards committee. It's in their interests to do so, of course, as this helps guard them against any accusations of impropriety. On this occasion, Mr Blunkett did not discuss his new job with the standards committee, and there are now calls for him to resign on grounds of inappropriate conduct.
It's very strange, then, to hear Mr Blunkett's party spokesman defending him on the grounds that "everyone who knows David thinks of him as someone with great honesty and integrity", when based on the last year or two, the dominant public impression of Mr Blunkett is that he's an adulterer who has had some very visible lapses of political judgement and stepped down from office as a result.
In his defence, Mr Blunkett is said to recognise that 'in retrospect it would have been better if he had approached the standards committee, but he believed he was acting within the guidelines'. In fact, it was his party which recently (while he was a cabinet minister) drafted and implemented these very standards - so this plea of innocence through ignorance does not ring very true. Just in case it does work, though: in retrospect, I agree that it would have been better if I had not broken the speed limit last year, but I believed I was driving within the limit. Please can I have a refund and the points taken off my licence?
For those who want that seasoning twist of irony; the company of which he became a director specialises in... DNA testing.
If irony is not enough and you crave conspiracy, bear this in mind: David Blunkett, from his spell as Home Secretary, can definitely claim paternity of the National ID Card Bill. Any far-sighted biometrics company might well want to be in on the ground floor of that. Hold on, though: isn't that exactly the sort of potential conflict of interest which ex-ministers ought to be seen to be avoiding? Well, it might be, but as the matter was not referred to the Standards Committee, we may never know.
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