The National ID & Government Gateway Paradox…
Back in 2006 there was an attempt to introduce ID cards (and with them a National Identity Register) for the population of the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
It was scrapped in one of its first actions by the new coalition government in 2010.
But ever since then you might well have noticed that much has become interlinked. Have you rented a car in the past few months? You need your National Insurance number to get the code that the rental company now uses to check your Driving Licence. Apply for a bank account or credit, and the electoral role is consulted, previous addresses are required, and all your details logged. Proof of current address via the ubiquitous utility bill, and proof of ID via Driving Licence or Passport are everywhere. Computers are storing all this data, and it’s mined by all and sundry for “information”. Private companies such as Experian make huge profits from our data. The news has carried several stories over the past couple of years about how other public and private sector organisations can now sell our identity for profit, for example…
HMRC: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/apr/22/how-much-is-personal-data-worth
NHS: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/19/nhs-patient-data-available-companies-buy
Private company: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uks-largest-online-pharmacy-fined-130000-selling-patients-personal-data-scammers-1524862
Another new development is the Government Gateway which purports to provide a single access point to a whole range of government services including VAT, PAYE, NI, tax returns (self-assessment etc.) and the DVLA. An individual requires a unique login. The director of a company requires another, different login. Filing for two companies? Well that’s three logins. One for you, and one each for the businesses. From this we might conclude that these “identities” are being kept segregated.
But this is not the case. HMRC join up the identities behind the scenes for sure, and I strongly suspect lots of other users of this data are doing the same. So a single national identity database is being built, despite the fact that in 2010 the stated intention was to dismantle the National Identity Register and not have a single ID card per UK citizen.
If we’re going to agree to not have a national ID card scheme then let’s not have one. But instead someone has managed to get this all done without any of that “due process” nonsense, and in so doing produced a fudge – pseudo ID cards by the back door. The only thing missing is the card itself, and a driving licence seems to be increasingly substituting for all this – which perhaps explains why the DVLA is at the heart of all this data integration.
The Stickler thinks this is dishonest politics, whether you’re for ID cards or personal freedom. Because, not for the first time, we’ve been told one thing and been provided with another.
Dodgy dossier anyone?
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