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262 The LSE Identity Project <strong>Report</strong>: June 2005been miniscule in comparison to the potential deleterious impact on privacy of thescheme proposed.Is there a "pressing social need" for a general purpose central biometric database, if theinterests of national security, the prevention or detection of crime, the enforcement ofimmigration controls, prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment, andefficient and effective provision of public services can all be accomplished withFederated Identity systems, and biometrics compartmentalised to specific domains,physically stored only in tamper-resistant devices, and matched by offline biometricreaders?It is illegal, not "sensible", to create a single electronic internal passport just becausethere is an international imperative to introduce biometrics into border-control systems.It is technologically unremarkable to design an international travel and immigrationbiometric system, which links to other sector-specific identity systems only to an extentwhich is foreseeable, explicitly legislated, enforceable, and compliant with EuropeanConvention rights.Architectural Considerations: Designing for information securityand privacyIndividuals can currently gain access to government and private-sector services withoutdisclosing a universal identifier. In a number of countries with identity cards, thispractice is constitutionally essential. Citizens either present entitlements that are notinescapably linked to identifiers or they provide service providers with local identifiersthat cannot readily be linked to other identifiers used by the same individuals in otheractivity domains.Individuals today are represented by an abundance of local identifiers that are eachrelied on by only one or a few service providers. Local identifiers enable serviceproviders to identify individuals within their own domains, to create accounts on them,and to effectively deal with fraudsters. At the same time, the segmentation of activitydomains ensures that identity thieves (whether outsiders or insiders) cannot cause crossdomaindamage, and that service providers and other parties have limited profiling andsurveillance powers over individuals.The UK’s proposed national ID card would replace today’s local non-electronicidentifiers by universal identifiers that are processed fully electronically. This migrationwould remove the natural segmentation of traditional activity domains. As aconsequence, the damage that identity thieves can cause would no longer be confined tonarrow domains, nor would identity thieves be impaired any longer by the inherentslowdowns of today’s non-electronic identification infrastructure. Furthermore, serviceproviders and other parties would be able to electronically profile individuals across allactivity domains on the basis of the universal electronic identifiers that wouldinescapably be disclosed whenever individuals interact with service providers.A variation of the envisioned national ID card architecture whereby service providerswould delegate the authentication of individuals to central authorities would serve toworsen these problems. These central authorities would become all-powerful in that
The LSE Identity Project <strong>Report</strong>: June 2005 263they would house the power to track and trace all actions of individuals across allservice providers in real time. In addition, these authorities would have the power toselectively impersonate individuals wherever they go and to deny them access toservices across all activity domains – all at a single press of a central button.The currently envisioned ID card architecture for the UK also has severe implicationsfor the autonomy and security of service providers. When the same universal electronicidentifiers are relied on by a plurality of autonomous service providers in differentdomains, the security and privacy threats for the service providers no longer come onlyfrom eavesdroppers and other traditional outsiders. A rogue system administrator, ahacker, a virus, or an identity thief with insider status could cause significant damage toservice providers, could electronically monitor the identities and visiting times of allclients of service providers, and could impersonate and falsely deny access to the clientsof service providers.In sum, the national ID card as currently envisioned by government poses grave threatsto the privacy of UK citizens as well as to the autonomy and security of serviceproviders.The source of the problemThe main problem with the envisioned ID card infrastructure is that the UK governmenthas modelled its design after enterprise architectures for identity and accessmanagement. Enterprise architectures centrally house the capability to electronicallytrace and profile all participants. This gives the enterprise the power to provide andmonitor access by employees (and possibly “extended” user groups who accesscorporate resources, such as suppliers) to their corporate resources from a centrallocation, and to centrally shut down all their access rights in case they leave thecompany.By way of example, consider the Liberty Alliance ID-FF architecture, an industry effortto standardize so-called federated identity management for the enterprise. ID-FFdescribes a mechanism by which a group of service providers and one or more identityproviders form a circle of trust. Within such a circle, users can federate their identities atmultiple service providers with a central identity provider. Users can also engage insingle sign-on to access all federated local identities without needing to authenticateindividually with each service provider. Liberty Alliance ID-FF leaves the creation ofuser account information at the service provider level, and in addition each serviceprovider only knows each user under a unique “alias.” However, the user “aliases” (alsoreferred to by ID-FF as “pseudonyms”) in Liberty Alliance ID-FF are not pseudonymsat all: they are centrally generated and doled out by the identity provider, which first andforemost acts on behalf of (and in the security interests of) the service providers.
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