Hal: "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."
- Arthur C. Clarke 2001 a space odyssey
"People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word."- George Orwell, 1984,
A national identity card could result in one of these two situations and it is in our best interest to work out which is more likely, as national ID cards are now in the pipeline for countries preparing for the 21st century. India hopes to role out its national ID card in three years and a ministry, led by Nandin Nilekani, one of the biggest names in IT, has already been set up to oversee the process. The UK has also toyed with the idea of a national identity card and Singapore already has the system in place. As population, governance and technology continues to expand, the question of national ID cards will soon become a much more pressing and immediate issue for countries around the globe and the raging debate between efficiency and privacy will continue to grow as citizens around the world decide on how much information and power they are willing to provide to their governments.
The implementation of these cards will require the use of advanced IT data-basing technology, enormous political will and unparalleled logistical organization, not to mention gigantic sums of money and human capital. India's National ID card project has already been labelled one of the biggest IT projects in human history and if China was to follow , one could only guess at the scale and complexity involved.
This blog is aimed at trying to understand the methods by which a country would implement a national ID card project and the reason for doing so, are such initiatives worth the immense costs and complications? Will they help or hinder our society? And in the end, would national ID cards result in a 2001 space odyssey utopia or a 1984 nightmare?
Q. This is supposed to be an expert blog? where is the in depth analysis and reams of detailed information, data and statistics???
ReplyDeleteA. The first post was merely meant to provide an overview regarding the purpose and intent of the blog, in depth analysis and data will be present in the posts which are to follow.
This is a quick intro, and I'll look forward to seeing more in-depth postings of specific issues and examples.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the grey-on-black print is pretty hard for me to read.