WRITTEN ON November 1st, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Identity

My coz’n'colleague Ruth and I held an ID management dinner last night (31st Oct) round a table decorated with her happy Halowe’en pumpkin and my grim one. We had a great conversation with a dozen friends old and new about where we’ve got to, what we’re trying to do and who can help how. Very grateful to all who came or supported. I’ll post up a summary in a sec. But my opening comments are below:

Some of us are tasked with transforming government and implementing the properly expressed will of Parliament, some in the business of developing a healthy market for e-enabled services, and some just want to play a constructive role in a frank and well-informed conversation about what we’re trying to do and how we’re doing.

The central theme is what identity management do we need to support transformational government based on e-enabled services. This means something citizen-centric, socially acceptable which works online despite the vagaries of the Internet. We’re told this will converge around the national identifier to be introduced by the Home Office, but we’re also told by Liam Byrne two weeks ago that online working is not part of the initial Home Office plan. And we learn from the Home Office reply to CST last wek that until 10millions of cards are in use, it won’t be possible to say what they’ll be used for. Tony Mcnulty told me a year ago the System had been missold, and that henceforth government would emphasis the benefits to the citizen rather than to the state. But there has been a deafening silence since.

There are many of us critical friends here, trying to be suportive. I’m not a conspiracy theorist – none of us here are.

But it IS Halowe’en….

The night on which it is customary to explore our deepest fears. I think a really good conversation is based on empathy with people we did not previusly understand, so can we tey to imagine what it’s like to be someone genuinely apprehensive about the intention and effect of a single biometric register, the plastic token?

The “Identity Card” scheme generates an identity-verified, chronological and location-based audit log – a tracking database, used to eliminate deviancy and eradicate crime and disorder.

The data are mined, and combined with comms traffic data, used to monitor offenders, intelligence targets, and anti-social groups. It’s joined up with the national facial biometrics database links watch-lists to digital wireless CCTV.

We introduce choke points with biometric checks to create a grid for internal movement control monitoring of individuals.

Each moral panic permits a further click on the ratchet. The systes is used to disrupt subversives and to understand and manage perceptions of key groups – discrediting critics, bringing phoney community leaders on side.

And the existence of a prior agenda is dismissed as disloyal, fantasy. OK – bring the lights up now.

I did get a letter describing this agenda in some detail many months ago, and havent yet decided what to do with it, so I thought I’d share it with you as a Halowe’en fantasy.

Of course, as I said, none of us are conspiracy theorists. But you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to take the view that events are unfolding in line with that view of the world. I think that’s the lesson of the new report from the Information Commissioner, who talks of us sleepwalking into a surveillance state.

Can we understand and empathise with that fear?

And if we do can we truly say, like a parent to a scared child, don’t worry it’ll all be fine?

Tonight, of course, is the night we’re meant to explore our fears. It’s only when we understand them that we can allay them. For tonight please enjoy your meal; let’s be as frank as possible about how you see the needs, the possibilities, the options and the concerns about ID management.

We’re meeting under the Chatham House rule; Ruth and I will circulate a paper summarising the points made but without reference to who attended.

Initial reaction to this was mixed: some said this was nothing like scary enough in a world which is now beyond parody; others that the consequences of not being able to identify yourself were equally scary.