Certainty of Identity: A Fundamental Misconception, and a Fundamental Threat to Security
Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra
Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University
Version of 13 July 2001
© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 2001
Conclusions
Given the explosion in privacy-invasive technologies, and their blind application, it is difficult not to feel deeply pessimistic about the directions our society is taking. The world is recognizing the threats that technologies pose for the survival of the species; but, in the meantime, the survival of society as we know it is under dire threat in a much shorter time-scale.
Data-veillance technologies threaten to dramatically increase the power of the organizations that control their deployment. Power corrupts, and the scale of power that can be delivered by data-veillance technologies will increase the degree of corruption of the organizations that control them. When lists of ‘public enemies’ are drawn up, national security, law enforcement and social control agencies will need to be not just included, but placed high up on the scale.
Meanwhile, the balance of power in an increasingly globalised world is changing. Transnational and even large national corporations are increasingly above the law, and will impose and enforce law as they wish it to be, and co-opt law enforcement agencies to their own needs. Alliances between government agencies and private sector corporations are still in their infancy. As they become more common and more pervasive, personal data will leak across organizational boundaries, and organizations will cross-leverage their power over individuals.
Pitifully weak data protection laws will not even be able to retard the bush-fire of the surveillance society, let alone quench it. Individuals who stand out against the use of power will be increasingly subjected to data-veillance, psychological pressure, and countermeasures.
The technologies of surveillance need to be resisted, not just by criminals but also by people who actually like the ideas of freedom and democracy. While-ever people are capable of contemplating a concept as vacuous as ‘certainty of identity’, law and order devotees will pursue simple-minded objectives of subjugating society. Nymity services are going be very big business.
