IAS (Identification, etc) and e-Europe GIF

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 21:19 16/10/2002 +0100, Peter Tomlinson wrote:
>The e-Europe Smart Cards project has generated a 4 part document called the
>Global Interoperability Framework for Identification, Authentication and
>Digital Signature. Effectively, this is a high level specification for
>public sector issued smart cards with your personal digital certificate on
>it. Did I say ID card? No, I didn't.
>
>I'm studying this as part of a document review job, and in part 3 section
>4.1.2 (on p.15) have found:
>
>"Identification is a public function: Any off card entity is entitled
>without restriction to call onto the identification function and obtain the
>identification data from the smart card."

This is a striking example of political objectives finding their way into 
what one might expect to be politically neutral technical documents.

People should be free (and in the UK generally are free) to use what name 
they want for any lawful purpose.  This implies that people choose their 
own names, and thus (in a sense) identities, and are not obliged to have 
themselves given identity by the State or other outside bodies.

Identification should therefore be a private, not a public, function; 
holders of cards should be entitled to determine what part of the data in 
the card is made available to whom on any occasion.


>It seems to me that, if I as a UK citizen (sic) am carrying this card,
>nobody except me is 'entitled' to obtain the identification data from card.
>I might grant permission for it to be read out... I might go to the Tower
>under some circumstances if I didn't reveal my identity... I wonder in how
>many European countries my identity is in fact a public piece of
>information? (Maybe the good side of being a subject of the Crown is that I
>can be anonymous when I want to be.)

An important freedom to maintain.

Regards

Nicholas

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