Digitised identities

Identity cards ceased to be legal documents on 21 January 2011. However, the Westminster government is beginning to merge all government departments and other public bodies into GOV.UK online. Members of the public can engage with these services - for instance renewing a passport - on the internet, but this will require that the person provides authentication that they are `who they say they are.`

"Once they have proven their identity with an identity provider, the identity provider can authenticate their identity with multiple public services (relying parties) as and when required to by the citizen."

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/identity-assurance-enabling-trusted-transactions

So whatever the service the citizen connects to, the user is seamlessly transferred to the identity provider for authentication, and then is automatically passed to the department they are looking for - and only one username and password is required. All of this is meant to provide a user friendly `experience`and nobody has to worry about identity cards. That is taken care of in the cloud.

See Scotland’s Digital Future: Data Hosting and Data Centre Strategy for the Scottish Public Sector

The Scottish government states: "Our overall policy position is that cloud computing is part of the strategic future of digital public services in Scotland. It has potential to fundamentally change the nature of digital public service delivery and, when appropriately utilised, can provide benefits in cost effectiveness, energy efficiency and speed of deployment."

"The principles and approaches will be aligned to the development of the European Commission’s European Cloud Computing Strategy and will be kept under review and amended or supplemented as cloud computing and legislation evolves and lessons are learned from the adoption and accelerated growth within the public sector."

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/cloudcomputing/index_en.htm.
 

Who will be the identity provider in Scotland?

We are informed that myaccount will give people across Scotland a secure and easy way to access public services online. .."Currently local authorities and the NHS are able to use myaccount, but there will be more as the system develops over time."

They continue: "There will be many tasks you can do online without needing to sign-in. However, when you do need to sign in, using myaccount will give you one username and password for secure and trusted access to all public services across Scotland."

Step 1: "Register via www.mygovscot.org to create a myaccount. Once you have created the account you will be given a unique username and a password.

Step 2: "Use this username and password to sign-in to many of your local services online.

"The Scottish Government considers that the people of Scotland will prefer a public sector, not-for-profit body to be responsible for "myaccount". This contrasts with the UK Government’s approach of individuals setting up an account with a private sector body.

Actually it will make no difference to the outcome.

http://blogs.scotland.gov.uk/digital/2014/04/07/myaccount-signing-in-to-on-line-services/

Because, the plan is that eventually all services will be accessed online and there will be no communication via a counter service, postal service or telephone. No human contact, whatsoever. This will mean that everyone will require to authenticate their identity with an online identity provider if they wish to access health services, education, whatever.

At the moment, those people who are unemployed and need benefit must engage with the job centre via the internet and provide evidence that they are making attempts to look for work. Sanctions can be applied almost instantaneously by switching off the service. As the world gets more connected through smart meters, the internet of things and biometrics - having all of this activity linked to an `identity` who will also be interacting with services, will mean that people will produce a digitised version of themselves in the cloud.

And that is the whole point. Governments and private bodies are very keen to track the activities of individuals and populations. Control will be absolute.

It is the reason why naive children are being encouraged in schools to connect with the internet, giving out their personal details, getting fingerprinted and used to making transactions without money. Soon all monetary transactions will be digitised and tied to an `identity`- just like everything else. As the children grow up they will be ready to walk into the nightmare totally unsuspecting.

See
http://www.iandent.com/beyondbroadband/_Masters/Beyond_Broadband.pdf