Anyone know more about this BT "uk identity verification" scheme?

[Ken Brown]

> But they'll believe utility companies, who have *never* asked me for any
> kind of verification of my identity. Perhaps TPTB think we are all too
> stressed when we move house to bother about lying about our name?


That's because all the utility company care about is that you exist and
are able & willing to pay for the juice used at that address, and
haven't run away yet. The utility bill establishes a reputation. And
that's all the bank care about really.  

Such reputations have nothing to do with the idea of "identity" touted
by governments, which somewhere between a rather vague philosophical
notion of essential properties  and at worst just a list of people they
are entitled to treat as their subjects for purposes of conscription or
whatever.

The two ideas ought really to be kept quite separate.  If I go to the
electricity company and say that I'm Sinbad the Sailor and offer them
money to pay the bill for 82 Acacia Avenue it ought to be of no
practical, legal, or moral concern to them that some bank somewhere
knows me by another name.