IDs -- Not That Easy Questions About Nationwide Identity Systems (2002) / Chapter Skim
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2 Policy Considerations
2 Policy Considerations
Pages 16-33
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From page 16... ...
. Establishing a nationwide identity system would almost certainly be a complex and expensive process, requiring years of legislative, technical, and public relations work, as systems now in place elsewhere have shown.1 WHAT DOES IDENTITY PROVIDE?
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Multiple identities (that is, multiple sets of information corresponding to a single individual) may allow individuals to control who has access to what kinds of information about them, and the use of multiple identities can be a legitimate strategy for controlling personal privacy in an information society.
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Splitting the record, therefore, might require additional personal information. 4A current example of a system that attempts to disallow multiple identities is the Commercial Driver's License Information System (CDLIS)
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Thus, any proposal for a new identity system requires a discussion of what sorts of identity information would be relevant and helpful to the stated goals of the system.5 It also requires taking into account the levels of confidence with which information was associated to an individual, since basing a system on fragile or unreliable data poses numerous risks. In addition, in some cases there are legal restrictions on what sort of information may be asked of an individual (presumably to include in that person's associated identity information)
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even if a country indicates that an individual seeking admission to the United States has a problematic background record, that doesn't mean the United States would consider such a person a risk (for example, a country might provide warnings about political dissidents)
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Broader, and perhaps more important, is the meaning of the ID (that is, the identity information about a person in the identity system and its associated token)
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14The European Data Protection Directive mandates a limited right of individuals to know what algorithms are used to make decisions about them on the basis of personal information.
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The information associated with an individual identity could be distributed within the identity system in multiple ways. Parts of it may be machine-readable, parts may be readable by humans.
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of the information associated with an ID is a major concern, underscoring the importance of the initial policy choices related to the purpose of the system. Management and Operations Determining how any nationwide identity system should be managed and operated will be a key issue.
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The Privacy Act and the Government Information Security Reform Act in particular impose significant public notice and comment requirements on federal agencies to ensure public participation in the appropriateness of planned agency uses of data. The Computer Security Act imposes a risk-based standard for agencies to ensure they protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive federal information and supporting systems.
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From page 26... ...
If private entities are allowed to use the nationwide identity system for their own purposes, it is likely that IDs would be linked to a wide range of information, including bank accounts, credit cards, airline tickets, car rentals, hotel stays, retail transactions, purchases of controlled items (guns, explosives, For example, it may be useful to correlate instantly the renting of a large truck in one state with the purchase of a large amount of fertilizer a day later in another state.
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From page 27... ...
That is, two different digital representations of an iris or fingerprint could be compared to see if they might have come from the same eye or finger.20 21 Finally, privacy is of serious concern to many, especially when information linkages extend across the boundaries of multiple identities for example, in the linking of health data, credit ratings, or organizational memberships with our employment records. Of greatest concern to most people is the creation without authorization of such linkages by others, particularly those in positions of authority governments or employers, for example.
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. Clearly, minimization runs counter to the kinds of information collection and correlation needed for the preemptive and retrospective analyses contemplated by proposals for a nationwide identity system meant to counter terrorism and unlawful activities.
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The constitutional limitations on an agent's ability to require presentation of IDs,23 along with the limitations on the ability of Congress to enact a nationwide identity system, should be explored before any such enactment to avert the costs of imposing the system and then having to revise or abandon it in the face of its unconstitutionality, to say nothing of its effects on civil liberties. Depending on implementation details and policy decisions, a nationwide identity system could be used to compile and store large amounts of information on individuals, so that the legal restrictions on compiling and using dossiers would have to be strictly obeyed.
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Current systems have many characteristics that pose a challenge to meeting the goals expressed by proponents of a more uniform nationwide identity system. For example, the documents in current systems are not standardized in form or information content, so that a person inspecting an offered document often cannot determine if it even resembles an authentic document (much less whether it actually is authentic)
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The correlation and aggregation of personal information thus raise a variety of policy questions about the use of such information and constraints on it. As Garrett Hardin wrote in 1968, "You can't do just one thing."25 The introduction of a nationwide identity system would create ripples throughout society and the legal system.
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From page 32... ...
In addition, birth and death data in the United States are not subject to stringent accuracy requirements nor are they highly correlated, making it relatively straightforward to exploit a deceased person's birth certificate in order to establish credentials as a basis for an identity. Given the attendant risks, a nationwide identity system would need to provide much better protection against identity theft than do current systems of identification.
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From page 33... ...
Any proposed system must be examined to determine whether the net result with respect to identity theft would be better or worse than it is now. It may be that more robust security in a nationwide identity system, along with increased attention to data integrity (for example, correlating birth and death records, as discussed above)
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