Pessimism over new technology must end
Pop quiz: answer the following questions, and from this, in true Cosmopolitan style, we will give you a startling insight into your personality.
On identity cards – are they a) an inevitable part of a 21st century society that help to improve security and reduce identity theft or b) Big Brother in your wallet.
On CCTV – is it a) an unfortunate but necessary tool for reducing street crime and not a problem if you are a law-abiding citizen or b) Big Brother up a lamp post.
On smart electricity meters – are they a) an essential way to better monitor and manage your household energy use and reduce carbon emissions or b) Big Brother in your home.
On radio frequency identification (RFID) – is it a) a way to reduce supply chain costs, cut retail prices and cut supermarket queues or b) Big Brother in your underpants.
OK, the quiz does not tell much about your personality, but it might give a clue which national newspaper you read.
Clearly, nobody wants to see George Orwell proved right. Privacy and personal freedom are fundamental tenets of our society and should never be compromised. But surely, adhering to knee-jerk reactions to any new technology that could be perceived as potentially infringing these rights is every bit as much of an example of the totalitarian tendencies that Orwell’s 1984 was all about.
The only difference is that the jerking knee means the agenda is being controlled not by an intrusive state but by a reactionary minority with their own agenda and political dogma.
I have often heard the argument that the danger with something like identity cards is how do we know a future government might not want to use the information in ways we can not foresee.
Frankly, if we find ourselves with a government that thinks that way, ID cards will be the least of our worries.
Smart meters are another good example. This is a technology that promises to allow businesses and households to take control of their energy use, cut their bills, reduce power demands, and contribute to environmental challenges.
Instead, according to one newspaper, they are ‘spies in your home’, that will allow some evil electricity company to find out all sorts of information about your personal life.
Of course, the implications of any new technology need to be fully discussed and any safeguards put in place. But let’s have a debate about how technology can help, not a diatribe about dangers that need never become a reality.
One would have thought that the editor of a computing magazine would be aware that the dangers of the ID scheme are related to the vast identity database and inappropriate collation and sharing of data, not the cards themselves.
A desire to have a debate about how technology can help is to fall into the same trap that the government have fallen for. This is not about technology. Collection, collation and sharing of unnecessary personal data is wrong whether it is done by the Stasi with paper records or by the Home Office with the latest over-priced, under-specified, immature technology.
Unfortunately, technology makes it easier for these data to be collected and distributed and so ministers and civil servants are succumbing to the desire to do so.
The tendency towards the database state must end. That does not mean that databases are bad. It does not mean that government databases are bad. But it does mean that there is a responsibility for the government to respect the privacy of the citizens that it exists to serve.
Posted by: Geraint | Thursday, 31 May 2007 at 10:12 PM
Clearly, the editor works for a private sector company with an interest in the prosperity of the IT industry and he is seeing developments from that standpoint. As someone who works for the public sector and with close, daily involvement with the security services, I would like to inform him that from my standpoint, the concerns of civil libertarians and privacy activists are anything but ill-founded. The level of surveillance by government and its agencies on the law-abiding people in this country is nothing short of sinister. Our government is gathering and storing as much information on you and me and all of us at a frightening rate and it is my experience that it will have no compunction about using it against us whenever it suits their purpose.
I have a front row ticket to see Big Brother wrecking our traditional freedoms and gorging himself on our private lives while you are standing outside, assuring us it's all for our own good, while making a few bob selling the programmes.
Posted by: Brutus | Thursday, 31 May 2007 at 10:30 PM
The questions really do highlight the problem. We are only ever presented with two options, with little or no indication that any compromise might even exist.
The difficulty as regards anything new is that there is little in the way of evidence to support its deployment, and there is frequently a distinct tendency for enthusiastic assertions. Questions are justified.
If a technology needs safeguards, surely this would point at it being a potential risk if those safeguards are not there, or are poorly implemented - so perhaps the knee-jerk response is the correct one. There should not be an automatic presumption that "new" must therefore be "good", or that technology is always right and we are always wrong.
Posted by: Henrietta W | Friday, 01 June 2007 at 01:38 AM
Here are some comments from technology and legal experts who oppose the government's plans for ID cards and a National Identity Register. Do you believe they all belong to a "reactionary minority with their own agenda and political dogma"?
"I don't think ID cards would make us safer," she says. "I suppose if they came in, I would have one, though I do object to the vast expenditure of public money until we're very clear what good it's going to achieve."
-- Stella Rimington, former director general of MI5
"The potential to connect and collate information about people that may be commercially sensitive will make the population at large very unhappy. To create this huge database of information starts smacking of some sort of authoritarian state. This could really cause an outrage."
-- Mike Rodd, British Computer Society, external relations director.
"Has the Government made the case as to why a complex and costly identity card scheme is needed? We believe the answer is a resounding 'no'."
-- Peter Williamson, President of the Law Society of England and Wales
"The idea the card can be used to fight terrorism is completely fatuous. This scheme is convenient for government, but not for citizens."
-- Colin Langham-Fitt, acting Chief Constable of Suffolk
"My background is in terrorism. ID cards are not the solution to terrorism or serious and organised crime. Look at the bombers in Madrid. Spain has ID cards but it still has bombers."
-- Janet Williams, Deputy assistant commissioner, Metropolitan Police, former head of Special Branch
"Putting a comprehensive set of personal data in one place produces a honeypot effect - a highly attractive and richly rewarding target for criminals":
-- Jerry Fishenden, Microsoft National Technology Officer
"A national ID card for the UK is overly ambitious, extremely expensive and will not be a panacea against terrorism or fraud, although it will make a company like mine very happy."
-- Roberto Tavano, a biometrics specialist for Unisys
See also comments from Michael Osborne, an IBM researcher working on secure ID cards: http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/News/4976c780-6099-40be-8888-4f3b6a642db1.html
Posted by: Andrew Watson | Friday, 01 June 2007 at 10:55 AM
Mr Glick makes the erroneous assumption that all opposition to ID Cards is posited on the fear that a future totalitarian government might misuse them. This plays very conveniently to the government's attempts to smear all anti ID Card feeling as belonging to the 'green ink fraternity'. No, the reason why millions of people oppose ID Cards is that the case for this massive database has simply not been made.
The government flits from one excuse to the next. This week it's 'identity theft', last week it was terrorism and next week it will be what? Global warming and the enforcement of personal carbon limits? What opponents of ID Cards are doing is what any competent CFO would demand of his IT director. Show us the benefit and why this scheme delivers it. It's a pity that government shows such poor stewardship over our money.
I can understand why a representative of the IT industry which is pork barrelling for a slice of the ID Card project, would wish to diminish legitimate scepticism about ID Cards. Just don't expect us to take this tendentious spin seriously.
Posted by: Stephen Thomas | Friday, 01 June 2007 at 11:31 AM
There's some fantastic comments being made about this blog entry - please keep them coming.
I'd most like to respond to Henrietta W's post above - because I think she understands the point I was making.
I am in no way supporting ID cards or the spread of CCTV in this article - simply pointing out that we only ever hear the two extremes of the argument. By the very nature of the passion of people at those extremes, a genuine debate rarely happens; too often it becomes a slanging match.
My fear is that when you only hear the extremes, it generates an automatic response in those who sit in the middle - that technology is a bad thing.
With ID cards, for example, the anti-brigade are essential to the debate, their input will help to make sure that if this programme goes ahead, it will (I hope) have the necessary safeguards in place. Nevertheless, in an increasingly digital society, there are undoubtedly benefits to be had from each of us having a secure digital identity of some form. ID cards may or may not be the way to achieve that - but let's have the debate.
I am not coming out in favour either way - I'm certainly not a representative of the IT industry, nor do I have a vested interest in its prosperity. But I am an advocate for the use of technology to improve the way we live and work.
I have a vested interest in IT professionals, IT decision-makers, IT managers, IT buyers - that is Computing's audience, not vendors. And what I would like to see is that IT professional audience being involved in a reasoned debate about these issues, not at the mercy of a Daily Mail shock-horror front page.
You are the people that will have to make this technology work, and the ones with the best insights into how to make sure technology is used to the benefit of society.
I would hate to live in a country where the knee-jerk opponents and the blinkered promoters are the only ones involved in the debate.
Posted by: Bryan Glick | Friday, 01 June 2007 at 04:10 PM
Thanks for your comments Brian. As someone who has worked on very large governmental IT programmes, I am very sceptical of the approach that the government is taking. Both with respect to the planning of the project and its handling of reasoned criticism, which it has either ignored or used person attacks to undermine.
I disagree with you that there is a 'middle way' in answering the ID Cards proposals being put forward by the government. There is simply no way that us sceptics can make a dent in the government's certainty that it is doing precisely the right thing. If you doubt me, look at the shameful way that the LSE's proposals were treated. The government's attitude to freedom of information and weakening the DPA for its own administrative convenience, shows me that we are unlikely to see 'the necessary safeguards put into place'.
No, the only approach is the scpapping of this monstrosity and a fresh look what it is we are seeking to protect ourselves from. ID Cards have always had something of the air of a solution in desperate search of a problem to solve. The government's inability to build a coherent case for ID Cards just lends credence to that assessment.
Posted by: Stephen Thomas | Friday, 01 June 2007 at 05:23 PM
I'm not going to replicate the superb comments on this site already, but a few thoughts pop to mind...
1. You actually believe that the pro-privacy world has the ability to set the agenda? You over-estimate your strawman.
2. The LSE work on identity cards pointed a number of major problems with the government plans for identity cards, but supported cards in principle. Response from the government ministers? The LSE are all a bunch of privacy loons.
3. CCTV works and is necessary? Why is it that nearly all the research, some Home Office funded, points that this is not _necessarily_ the case? How exactly is a debate supposed to come out of this area if everyone except for the 'mad' few actually believes this it is necessary?
4. You're amongst the many who pine after a reasonable debate and then blame the advocates as though it is their fault. How are the advocates to fault for the identity card design that would be illegal in many card-carrying countries?
5. The design choices are key parts of the problem. Can all these technologies be designed in privacy-friendly ways? Of course. Are they? No. Are they ever? Rarely.
6. Tell me exactly how a reasonable debate is supposed to take place, and I'll tell you all the times that it has failed. Tell me about the debates that have taken place that weren't spurred by sensationalist media stories? Tell me of any political debate that didn't have attractive and simplistic headlines. Tell me of any Computing article that has had an effect where it's own headlines were deep, detailed, and descriptive.
7. Finally, privacy advocates and experts are often at the forefront of technology. You're painting them as luddites... amazing. Yet the politicians who push these technologies and these designs are how good at understanding technology?
Posted by: no one | Friday, 01 June 2007 at 09:38 PM
I think both Henrietta and you, Brian, are making a mistake that makes you easy prey to the promotors of universal surveillance schemes. That's the appeal to balance and compromise, which always drags policy in the direction the initiator wants. By looking for a compromise you are affirming the fallacies embedded in the proposals.
In reality there isn't a choice of two alternatives, with a cosy place somewhere in the middle. Those who reject, say, "ID-cards" and centralised ID management, are *not* saying no to use of technology to improve everyday security. They are saying that the policy proposed is bad and dangerous, perhaps even that having a policy in that broad category is bad and dangerous. (Would a standard Government menu in restaurants and at home be a good idea, whatever was on it?) Opponents reject the spurious connection made between that particular programme and an improvement in life. It isn't that we are against improvements in life.
"Don't do X," is not an argument for doing nothing. It is however an argument that doing nothing is better than doing X - or even part of X.
Posted by: Guy Herbert (General Secretary, NO2ID) | Monday, 04 June 2007 at 11:16 AM
ID Cards as a deterrent? Wake Up!. Two issues here, 1. Who Police's it (and how)? and 2. Has anyone looked out of the window lately and seen the chaos that is being caused by a section of society that makes a simple process like travelling on a bus or shopping in a mall an ordeal? National Security? We can't get the basics right. If we think carrying around a photo of ourselves will stop terrorism (or indeed anything), then the plot has been well and truly lost! Another whole ream of paper work for the 'enforcers' and another platform for the 'Human Rights' brigade. Somewhere in the middle 'Mr and Mrs Ordinary' will lose out - trust me!
Posted by: Robin Bhairam | Sunday, 16 September 2007 at 10:18 PM