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

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.

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...

[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.

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.