* A thought from a British Dame
I spend a lot of time reading about identity management issues. Recently, I was drawn to a letter to the editor of The Times (of London). Now in British “humour,” letter writers to The Times are stereotyped as superannuated ex-colonial bureaucrats or very out-of-touch landed gentry who fulminate and lament about how the “old order” is changing.
This letter, as would seem typical, was written by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones. But Dame Pauline is no addlepated lady of the manor, and the letter isn’t about fox hunting or the loss of India. No, Dame Pauline is chairman of QinetiQ (https://www.qinetiq.com/), an organization at the forefront of security issues on an international scale.
Dame Pauline is a former chairman of the (U.K.) Joint Intelligence Committee, acting as adviser to the Prime Minister on all foreign, defense and intelligence issues. So when she writes to The Times about security, identity, privacy and biometrics we should all pay attention.
In her letter (https://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,59-1515731,00.html) discussing the U.K. government’s push for national identity cards, she says that “…four in five British people accept that biometric information on ID cards, such as fingerprints or facial scans, is the most secure and certain way of proving their identity.” But, as she also notes, “…half the population is worried about the security of the proposed ID card.”
It’s the privacy issue that worries most people. She believes we can overcome this objection: “A well-designed ID card system with the proper safeguards will authenticate identity without infringing people’s civil liberties. But in order to gain confidence and minimise confusion, we need to prove the underpinning technologies.”
This is in keeping with what we’ve said here and in discussions at trade shows and conferences – the technology is easy, convincing people that it’s safe (or beneficial) is the hard part.
I’ve yet to hear how to convince people, the average person that is – John Doe, Joe Sixpack, Sally Soccermom – that identity systems can be both safe and effective. Here’s your chance to take over this newsletter for a day (or more) and tell me how you’d accomplish this.
