Ellison Wants National ID Card, Powered By Oracle

cplater writes: "This article discusses Larry Ellison's call for a U.S. national ID card, and his offer to provide the software for such an initiative." There's an advertising slogan to be proud of: 'Oracle, the Big Database behind Big Brother'. Or 'Oracle, the All-Seeing Eye'. Or 'If it's good enough for Orwell, it's good enough for your company'. Update: 09/23 23:22 GMT by M : Richard Jones writes "The British Home Secretary is considering compulsory identity cards, despite the fact that such cards would not have made any difference in the recent terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The British have generally opposed their reintroduction since the wartime system of identity cards was abolished in 1952."

Comments

I'm in favor of this idea

[JoeShmoe]

...if it's optional.

One unique ID that can log me into my systems, allow people to contact me, allow me to make purchases and make the coffee machine brew exactly the way I like it? Sign me up!

This is no different than what we have now with Social Security Number, Driver's License, MasterCard, IP Address. The difference is that all these numbers aren't interchangable.

Security issues? Use PINs or biometrics. Big Brother issues? Allow users to control their database entried, or opt-out entirely.

I look forward to one card wallets.

- JoeShmoe

Re:SSN

[spudnic]

Is that really so bad?

Your employer needing it is understood. He has to have your SSN to file forms and payments for you with the IRS. That was part of the original purpose, correct?

Now for the other people. They need some way of differentiating between you and anyone else. They need a Unique Identifier of some sort. How else are they supposed to make a decision on whether or not to extend credit to you? Getting a phone or other utility turned on is a type of credit.

Is it wrong for them to want to be able to go back and look at your history of paying other creditors? Getting a loan is not a right, it is earned by showing that you have fullfilled your obligations in the past and therefore, probably will this time.

If we didn't have some sort of unique identifier assigned to each of us, how would you propose they do this? "Ah, you're a white guy living in a good neighborhood. Here's the $250,000 you needed." If you can't profile people by their past actions, you have to find some other attribute to judge them by.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think this would be such a bad idea. As Ellison said in the article, all we would be giving up is the "illusion" that we can't be tracked.

Re:of course!

[spudnic]

Don't forget the great tax writeoff for his "donation".

And this is going to make us more secure...how?

[Robber Baron]

It boggles the mind how somebody so obtuse could become so wealthy. Larry, pull your head out of your nether orfice and think:

We already have many forms of identification. ID's which can easily be counterfited. How many fake driver's licenses, Passports, and credit cards are there in circulation now? How in your wildest dreams do you think you will be able to prevent counterfitting your new "Big brother" ID?

Everyone's vitals presumably will be stored in a giant database. What happens when the database is hacked and Abdul's fingerprints are matched with his newly counterfitted ID? That's right, he breezes right through security and we're right back to square one again! A cool hack would be to replace Dubya's prints with ohhh say...Ted Kazinski's...

Besides, in any case you dumb shit, all the terrorists have to do is keep their noses clean! That's right, come to the country and apply for one of these silly ID's..."got any priors?...No?...here you are Mr Atta!" Make their first offense the big one and what good will the silly ID do? Absolutely Jack Shit! What about foreign nationals? Are they going to be issued temporary cards for the duration of their stay? Based on what? What they disclose at the point of entry? This is a non-starter.

You really want to do your bit to help prevent terrorism Larry? Why don't you take a couple of your billions and endow a few schools in third-world countries? Maybe through education the worlds desperate will learn how to escape from their desperate situations and they will be less likely to commit desperate acts.

Bah!

[Greyfox]

There is no security anywhere. The best, and ultimately, only security is for each citizen to keep security in his mind at all times and question anything that seems out of place. No gimmick will buy you absolute 100 per-cent security. No silly little ID card, no amount of crypto backdoors, no amount of bank account back tracking will do as much to save you as one guy standing up and going "What the FUCK do you MEAN you want a million short options on American Airlines?!" Or one pilot holing up in the cockpit and landing the plane at the nearest airport.

It's complacency that burned us once and as much as we want to go back to our complacent little sheep lifestyles, that is no longer an option! These gimmicks are trying to restore a happy illusion that we're safe again and can go back to our complacent little lives, but even if they succeed for a few years, they will ultimately guarantee another tragedy like this down the road, when someone figures out how to defeat the measures.

Re:National ID is Good, IF DONE PROPERLY...

[dragons_flight]

Fair enough, but what will the default settings be? I think it's obvious enough that most people won't concern themselves much with managing their information, or who learns what.

If it includes too much information then we worry that this information can be too easily exploited to harm people. If it includes too little, advertisers will still require some other monitoring system when you make purchases etc. Of course you could make other systems illegal but that has lots of other problems.

Putting in a bunch of personal controls is useful for you, but what about your grandma or neighbor or cousin? We still have to figure out what an appropriate level of privacy is in general, cause most people won't deviate much from what they are told they ought to have. Perhaps this means it should be totally opt-in. Or, maybe the National ID should only be tied to activities that legitimately require ID now, such as driving, bank records, military, credit cards, etc.

Given the complexity of modern life and the amount of goods and services we use for with others are responsible, where should the limits on privacy be? And what is the level of acceptable intrusion, if any?

Privacy freaks

[Saib0t]

I've been reading slashdot for several years now, and one thing I can see is that most people (who get modded up to at least 2) are privacy freaks

Having a national id card that allows for one to say you're you through a picture on a card and fingerprints is not a bad thing at all. At least it can make everyone certain you're who you pretend to be.

I've been living with an ID card for my whole life now (in belgium), there are no fingerprints on it, but there are my pictures, address, etc... and I don't have any problem with that. I have to show my ID card only to governement people, I can show it to anyone though, but am not legally bound to do so. tons of people have already seen my id card, address etc, do you think I get a pizza van in accross the street with 15 cops xraying my house? There are few things I need to use my ID card for: dealing with the administration, banking, crossing boundaries of Europe, when a cop wants to verify that I have everything all right with my car (taxes paid, car passed the yearly security test, ...) among others. What's bad with that? Do you think they enter everything I do in a database?

To go on with the privacy stuff, if you guys (and ladies) don't trust your goverment with your personal information then ELECT PEOPLE YOU TRUST. If you're tired of corrupted congressman/president/parties then vote for someone else!.

I don't see a single reason you'd want to hide things from your government, if you're a lawful citizen, then the cops/fbi/cia/nsa/whatever have absolutely no reason to get [extra] data about you, right? If that's not the case, then it's a sign you don't have the right people in the key positions in your governement.

I'm not saying there's no corrupted people in my country government, far from that, but if they decided to go for an electronic version of my ID card with more data on it that allows for tracking things I do with that card, then I say "no problem, go ahead", if it can simplify things when dealing with day-to-day matters, then they get a high five from me.

I think that those who want to hide things are those who should not be allowed to hide them. Yuo want to hide you have an affair with your secretary, fine with me, the governement is not interested in that anyway. You want to hide you're growing marijuana in your garden then you have a problem... If you want to be allowed to smoke pot, then make it lawful to do so instead of hide it. it seems like you're doing thinks backward. Make things legal instead of hiding the fact you're doing these things. If the people you have elected don't want to vote these laws, then vote for other people.

Big companies give money to politicians to get the laws they want, that's called 'corruption' and is illegal. Corruption has always been there but it seems to me that USA got it to a point where people have absolutely no control over how things work now. Politicians will vote laws that favour big companies anyway, because having flourishing businesses in your country is good for the people, but with corruption/bribes/lobbies as they are, politicians don't vote these laws for the people but for THEM. Solution: make parties open their finance books, enforce anti-corruption laws, ban lobbying, make politicians have to say what they own when they enter a function and have they declare what they own when the leave that function and create something to control that. Sue the corrupted guys, ....

So next time you have to vote again, vote for people you trust, I think it's high time the USA have a decent uncorrupted government and remember also that whatever government is in place in your country also has an influence on my country, whether I want it or not.