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

What's wrong with a national ID card?

[cdraus]

At least I'd know who I was. Anytime I forgot I could look proudly down at my chest and point to my ID.

Boy, then we'll be safe

[selectspec]

Sounds like a fancy passport. Gee wiz, nobody will ever be able to forge that! What a complete waste of time. Why anybody listens to that Jack Ass is beyond me. He's just panicing because nobody wants to pay $8,000/cpu for his shitty database anymore.

SSN

[Neon Spiral Injector]

First the Social Security Number which when proposed to the people of the US was promised to not be used as a unique identifier, but just a way of tracking your payments into your social security account. Try doing anything in the US now without that Unique Identification Number. Get a job, get a phone, open a bank account, get a loan.

So now this, at least they seem to be a little more up front about the purpose.

Yes, I'm outraged by the loss off life and destruction of property. But I'll be more outraged by the sheep that allow things like this to pass.

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.

But does it make it right?

[kisielk]

But Ellison said in the electronic age, little privacy is left anyway. ``Well, this privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion,'' he said. ``All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy. Right now, you can go onto the Internet and get a credit report about your neighbor and find out where your neighbor works, how much they earn and if they had a late mortgage payment and tons of other information.''

So since we are already losing our privacy and our civil liberties, we should might as well give up the rest of them to Larry and Oracle.. good idea. This is just another prime example of how in this day and age people are willing to let their stand by as their rights vaporize before their eyes. Too many people are willing to simply succumb to the will of corporations like Oracle, that's how things like the DMCA get passed. Of course, the big corps know this and use it to their advantage.

Opportunistic dick...

[Deluge]

If Larry Ellison were a lawyer, he'd be the epitome of ambulance chasers. I saw this guy on TV a day or two after the attack (or possibly even the very same day), on a news program no less, and what he had to say amounted to "I feel sorry for all those people, this is terrible, blah blah, ORACLE ROCKS!, this is such a national tragedy."

Now, I can understand that there's some unsavory individuals who, for example, looted stores near ground zero in the midst of all the chaos. But to have one of the richest men on earth hawking his warez under the guise of offering insightful commentary on how the WTC attacks affected the tech sector is just sick beyond belief.

Say what you will about evil corporate bosses, but at least Billy G had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.

And now, of course, he is further attempting to turn the situation to his advantage. The man has no shame.

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

It worked great in Nazi Germany

[T1girl]

Need i say more? We've already got E-Z Pass, Acme Rent-A-Car's GPS systems and every "CRM" system devised in the last 5 years tracking our movements and purchases. I used to think people who claimed the government had implanted a chip in their brains to monitor their movements were crazy; maybe they were just prescient. This would be an instant challenge to hack. We already live in a country where the Pres' teenage daughters can drink on a fake ID, so there would be a big demand for faking these IDs.

Re:of course!

[spudnic]

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

National ID is Good, IF DONE PROPERLY...

[trims]

National ID cards (in the US, replacing the mishmash of Social Security, Driver's License, Military ID, blah blah) are actually a privacy enhancing thing, if backed up by the proper regulations.

Right now, in the US, we (ie the individual) have virtually no way of tracking who is tracing us, and identity theft is difficult to trace. There are a thousand and one different places to steal access to, any one of which can be used to forge access to another. And furthermore, there is almost no way to keep track of who accesses what information.

Even if the US put in reasonable privacy laws for the current system, keeping track of all accesses to your information is problematic, at best.

I'd be all for a National ID card, should they pass reasonable privacy laws with it. And my definition of privacy laws is this: I get to control who has access to what information, I decide what information can go in the system, I decide the granularity of info given to people, I own my information, nobody can collect information about me (unless as an unidentifiable part of an aggregate) unless I explicitly permit it, and no one can share any information about me with anyone else. There would be exceptions for court-ordered disclosures for law-enforcement, but that's it.

That system would be great: it would prevent a person with a suspended driver's license in one state from getting a new one in another, while at the same time prevent company A from discovering I like Mary Typer Moore shows by my viewing habits, then selling this info to company B.

Having a properly monitored and regulated central database of personal info is far better than the completely insecure mishmash of crap we have today.

But unless they put in those restrictions, Hell No!

-Erik

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?

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

[EABinGA]

The god damn SSN isn't used properly (my fucking video store demanded I give them my SSN or I could walk out the door w/o a membership

I'll bet you did not have to show your SS card to the clerk. Few people ever ask to see an SSN card; they believe whatever you say.

If someone absolutely insists on getting your Social Security Number, you may want to give a fake number. There are legal penalties for providing a false number when you expect to gain some benefit from it. For example, a federal court of appeals ruled that using a false SSN to get a Driver's License violates federal law.

Making a 9-digit number up at random is a bad idea, as it may coincide with someone's real number and cause them some amount of grief. It's better to use a number like 078-05-1120, which was printed on "sample" cards inserted in thousands of new wallets sold in the 40's and 50's. It's been used so widely that both the IRS and SSA recognize it immediately as bogus, while most clerks haven't heard of it. There were at least 40 different people in the Selective Service database at one point who gave this number as their SSN. The Social Security Administration recommends that people showing Social Security cards in advertisements use numbers in the range 987-65-4320 through 987-65-4329.

There are several patterns that have never been assigned, and which therefore don't conflict with anyone's real number. They include numbers with any field all zeroes, and numbers with a first digit of 8 or 9.

Follow this link to see more details on the structure of SSNs and how they are assigned.

better idea

[ocie]

Let's not waste money on an expensive database system. Let's just find all the bad people and make them wear easily identified tags around their necks..

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.

What's worse is

[Sagarian]

Most Americans don't understand their rights with respect to their SSN. They freely give it when they don't have to. As for me, I almost always refuse to give it unless it's for a tax-related deal (like setting up a bank account that pays interest, brokerage account, etc.). I invariably get dumbfounded looks and a conversation with "the manager" who has to approve my opening an account / applying / whatever without giving it.

A separate system for ID (vs. tax) like you talk about the French having sounds more ideal, but the amount of education and administrative overhead would be high.

At least we could probably make it harder to forge than a Yemeni passport. But with our track record on currency...

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:How about a Scarlet 'A'?

[OmegaDan]

Could the "A" stand for asshole? We've got alot of A-holes in my locale :)

INSPASS

[Animats]

The US has an official ID card now, called INSPASS. If you have one, you can go through an automated express lane when entering the US at major airports and some border crossings. Getting one requires going to an INS office, showing a passport, being fingerprinted, photographed, and having a hand geometry scan. The systems at airports currently validate identity with a hand geometry scan only, but that may change as the technology improves.

This is the system most likely to be expanded into a national identity check system. At the very least, we'll probably see that level of physical identification at all INS-controlled entry points.

Re:It Hurts to Admit This...

[Pig Hogger]

In the same manner, we might be able to flash such a card in the airport and not have so much hassle getting on the plane. And someone who doesn't have one would be subject to more intense 'scrutiny'.

Why do I hear the sound of a rubber glove smacking on some security officer's hand????

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.

This sentiment might come back to haunt me, but...

[Xeger]

I think a national ID card system is a good idea.

I consider myself a staunch libertarian when it comes to the Bill of Rights, and to personal freedoms in general. So I can hardly believe I'm saying this! But hear me out. I propose a few rules for a national identity card system that would provide us with all the benefits of nearly unforgeable proof-of-identity without compromising our right to privacy or any other right which we currently enjoy.

1) Central to the identity card system is a suite of protocols for digital signature operations; key signing, verification and exchange; and key revocation. The principals of public-key cryptography form the basis of the system and can be used to implement rest of the features, which I outline below. The system is designed to facilitate cryptographically secure communication between private citizens, thereby giving us rights that we practically don't have today!

2) Nobody can ever be compelled (forced) to show his card. Similarly to the right of a business to refuse service if you don't wish to furnish your social security number, organizations may choose not to talk to you if you won't furnish some proof of identity, but proof of identity can never be required by a government agency, or in relation to the fulfillment of certain human needs (food, water, air, clothing, shelter, communication).

3) Every individual can create new, anonymous identities at will. These pseudonyms can be nothing more than a keypair and a globally unique identifier (and perhaps some optional contact information). The private key of each pseudonym is only stored in encrypted form, having been encrypted with the public key of the person who uses the pseudonym. Thus, the owner of the pseudonym can prove that he "is" the pseudonym, but only with his consent, and only under circumstances that he controls.

4) When a citizen's keypair is created, the private key is split using a keysharing algorithm into a large number of shares (~10,000 should do, or fewer for pseudonymous keypairs). The keyshares are distributed (in secret) to randomly chosen individuals. We perform the keyshare operation such that 60% of the shares must be recovered in order to recover the key. In a situation where some person, organization or government needs to crack the identity, he can appeal to these 10,000 people as a sort of "jury of peers" to see if he can convince them to divulge their keyshares. Once an identity has been cracked, private communications to that identity can be decrypted.

5) In order to protect against algorithmic attacks, a number of various symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic algorithms are supported by the system. Communications between agents in the system take place using algorithms and keylengths agreed upon by the participants.

One caveat: This all assumes that the identity cards are perfectly secure automomous computer systems. That is: the identity card is solely responsible for performing all the cryptographic operations, and information can never be read from an identity card without the consent of its owner. This daydream is probably the biggest flaw in my plan.

An optional federal ID?

[Chris Y Taylor]

The most commonly used form of ID in this country seems to be the driver's license. People ask to see it at a lot of places that have nothing to do with driving. My local video store won't rent you a movie unless you have one. What is the connection between being able to drive a car and operate a VCR? The reason it is used like that is that most people already have one, and so they are a convenient form of ID that also has your photograph to allow the clerk to verify that it is actually you. I know people who have a driver's license even though they don't drive, just to use as an ID. A lot of states (maybe all) offer the option of getting a generic driver's license style ID that is only valid for identification purposes. That way people who cannot pass the requirements to get a driver's license can still conveniently purchase beer, cash checks, rent a rug cleaner, etc. Still, I have known a few adults that don't have either a driver's license or a state photo ID. They weren't anarchists, they just didn't need it. They used public transportation to get to work and they paid for almost everything in cash, so they never felt motivated to spend an afternoon standing in line at the DMV to get something they didn't need. Such people very much are the exception these days, but it isn't illegal to not have a photo ID. The driver's license seems to be an excellent example of an optional license that is nonetheless almost universal because of its usefulness.

What can we learn from this that could be applied to a Federal ID? Perhaps the ID could be purely optional. People could get one if they wanted a secure ID. To make it popular, the government should also make it so that the ID grants the user permission to do something useful or fun, so that way a lot of people would sign up for one. Even combining all current Federal IDs (like pilot's licenses) into one would probably not have enough users to make the ID popular for identification. Another permit (or permits) need to be invented and added in to increase the IDs popularity further. A federal driver's license wouldn't work unless it was easier to get than a state one, and I don't like that idea because we have enough people who can't drive on the roads already. Making it so you need an ID to do anything that you currently don't need an ID for (like air travel) is going to meet political resistance (perhaps deservedly) from whatever lobbying group engages in that activity, so for the Federal ID to make it into law the activity should be something that you can't do now, but that a large enough group of people might want to do to kick start the use of the ID as a form of identification.

But the whole point of doing this exercise is to reduce terrorism (isn't it?). And many people here have rightly pointed out that a better ID system would not have prevented this recent act of terrorism. The passengers were not wanted felons. The FBI was suspicious of some of them, but we don't restrict people's air travel whenever they are under suspicion by some federal agency of maybe being associated nefarious activities. Even the knives they used on the plane were, from all accounts, small enough that they were not restricted items, and could have been carried onto the plane in plain sight of the security guards (I used to legally fly with my pocket knife all the time, I would just put it in the little tray as I went through the detector and no security guard even hesitated to hand it back to me on the other side because it was small enough to be permitted on the plane). Is it possible to have a federal ID that is optional, provides the user with permission to engage in some new activity, and would also somehow reduce the likelihood of terrorism? Yes. Make it a federal concealed carry weapons permit. I still wouldn't let anyone carry a gun on a plane unless they had taken the FAA's (supposedly very difficult) course on the use of firearms in an aircraft, but that could be an option like having a commercial or motorcycle rating on your driver's license. Who would want to go through the time and expense of training for and passing the FAA course just so they could carry a pistol* on an airliner? Well, after recent events, I think a lot of pilots and commercial aircrew would like to have that option. Don't forget the first thing the terrorists did was apparently to slit a stewardess's throat, so a lot of flight attendants are no doubt feeling very nervous and unlike the rest of us aircrews spend a lot of time in the air so their chances of being hijacked are much better. A lot of people would still get the regular (non airplane rated) version of the permit to allow them to carry a pistol in any state. Body guards (or "executive protection specialists") are an example of a profession that could greatly benefit from such a permit (so much so that it is amazing that one does not exist already) and whose presence deters terrorism. Salesmen or other business travelers who have to travel between multiple states, and may have to travel through dangerous neighborhoods or carry valuable items would likely flock to such a permit. Former police officers**, DA's, and other people who may make dangerous enemies would want one, as would people who have been victims of violent crimes and/or rape before and now feel the need to be able to protect themselves, and a lot of the normal everyday citizens who now get state carry permits because for whatever reason they want to be able to defend themselves from attack. Of course the permit would be in addition to, not in replacement of, the current state concealed carry licenses, otherwise the proposal would be plagued by state vs. federal jurisdiction turf wars (and rightly so) and would never get out of the courts.

Of course the permit should require a thorough FBI background check in order to limit the chances of a terrorist or criminal being able to get one. As long as the FBI had the attention of such a proactive chunk of the population, they could even take that opportunity to provide a little education on what unusual or suspicious behavior might indicate a terrorist cell or impending terrorist activity, give them the appropriate contact information (maybe a federal crime hotline printed on the card somewhere?), and ask people to give the Bureau a call if they notice anything. Sure that doesn't technically have a lot to do with carrying a gun, but that would be a good opportunity for the FBI to increase its chances of getting a useful tip; and, hey, what does donating organs have to do with driving a car? Even if a terrorist did get a federal carry permit, it is likely that a LOT more upstanding citizens would have one as well. Without such a license, the terrorist would still carry his weapon (a terrorist who won't break the law is not very effective), but the odds of a law abiding citizen that could offer resistance to the terrorist having one is much smaller.

Before anyone starts a gun-control argument over this, I would like to point out that this is not something that most states don't already have. The problem is that different states have different reciprocosity agreements with other states so that most state concealed carry permits are valid in some, but not all, other states and will accept some, but not all, permits form other states... resulting in a confusing hodge-podge of conditions. A federal permit would clear up the red tape by providing a universal standard simplifying the bureaucratic mess that currently exists. Also, the background check and qualifications could be made more difficult (at the risk of making the ID less universal) to further reduce the chances of criminals or irresponsible people from getting one. Surely only the most extreme gun control proponent would want to prevent even someone like a bodyguard, or an ex-DA who has prosecuted organized criminals, or the administrator of a medical facility that has received death threats from anti-abortion groups from being permitted to carry a weapon for self defense. The gun control politicking could be saved for when it came time to figure out how tough the standards should be for getting one. If you can think of a different optional federal permit or license that a Federal ID could be based on (espeically if it would actually reduce terrorism), then by all means suggest away. I admit, after all, that even if you combine a federal carry permit, pilot's license, and other federal ID's together, it still may not have the "critical mass" of users to replace the ubiquitous driver's license.

* Before this restarts the "what does a bullet do to a pressurized aircraft?" argument, the FAA obviously covers what type of ammunition can be used in an aircraft and what areas of the plane are vulnerable to gunfire.

** I'm sure that the police in a lot of areas would show turn a blind eye to an ex-cop who was illegally carrying a weapon because he was worried about being recognized by criminals but a such favoritism might not be universal, like the license would be.