A Digital Certificate For Every Canadian

thepacketmaster writes "September 27 of this year, the Canadian government took a quiet step into the online world. Called Government Online, this broad project involves giving every Canadian citizen a digital certificate, which will allow citizens to access their personal government records online. So far they only have the Custom & Revenue Agency online with a simple Change of Address, but there are over a hundred more applications from various agencies ready to be put online. Could this be the start of something good, or is this Big Brother? How about voting online?"

Comments

well, depends

[Em Emalb]

"Could this be the start of something good, or is this Big Brother?"

Depends. Yes, it could be Big Brother, if the government is planning on using this as a way to track people. It also could be something very good, in that people could quickly and easily track themselves through the government. Unfortunately, this could also be a means for people to track you quickly and easily....leading to all sorts of uncool cracking/piracy,theft. It's a new tech, gonna have it's problems just like everything else.

Re:well, depends

[Citizen of Earth]

We travel to the US, are inindated with their culture and belief system and have a good idea what they are all about, but still choose to live differently. So given the information, and still choosing to live differently, you have to ask why?

Perhaps Canadians choose to live (a little) differently because most Canadians have a higher standard of living than Americans and Canadians in general have a quality of life. Dispite various yay-America sentiment, more guns, greater corporate control, and greater inner-city poverty does not a happy nation make.

Well, I trust my government more than I trust a corporation. I guess it comes down to spending your money NOT on the best product, but looking a little deeper. Who runs the company, what do they stand for, etc..I'd rather know the harsh truth, than some happy lie.

This isn't accurate. The fact of the matter is that Canadian corporations are extremely competitive internationally. They are assisted by an undervalued dollar (really, its purchasing power parity is $0.79US), but 40% of Canada's GDP comes from exports because Canada makes good products of all categories. No support-the-underdog sentiment is necessary.

Security?

[ilsa]

I hate to throw cold water on this, but with a digital certificate, are you proving that you are Jean Deau, or that you are sitting at Jean Deau's computer? This distinction isn't that important for, say, your my.excite.com page, but is vital for dealing with the Government. The links provided don't really give much detail on how this will be implemented. Will each Canadian have his own password, eh? Not being a Canadian myself, I am willing to work with the assumptions that a) there is some way of telling John Smith of Quebec from John Smith of Vancouver b) a substantial enough percentage of Canadians have access to the internet to make this not a waste of time and money.

As long as you can revoke your cert

[wirefarm]

With pgp/gpg and keyservers like pgp.mit.edu, it's painfully simple to create and revoke keys that you control - as long as Canada picks a similar system, the citizens are still in control. If you feel your key has been compromised, revoke it and go create a new one next time you go to the post office or city hall, or however they verify people...

I've *never* felt that having a digital ID was a threat to my privacy - if I control the keys, I can use the ID when I feel like proving who I am.
Nothing stops me from generating a new ket for some other purpose either - I usually create one for each job/work-email that I use. I've had my private one since '96 or so - you can go grab it from my slashdot profile.

Cheers,
Jim

Re:Well

[NumberSyx]

Voting online is a bad idea regardless of the software used to implement it. Simply put, there is no guarrantee of privacy. By having people goto public locations with private booths, each persons privacy can be garranteed because there are people there whose job it is to ensure it. At home, an abusive wife can illegally influence her husband into voting for a candidate or issue he would have otherwise not voted for. Corporations or Labor Unions could setup computer voting centers for thier members or employees. What guarrantee is there the persons Boss or Union Leader won't be standing over thier shoulder or there isn't a keystroke capture program installed on the computer or the data stream isn't funneled into another program designed to change votes or somehow invalidate "Wrong" votes.

Netcraft

[wiZd0m]

OS, Web Server and Hosting History for www.gol-ged.gc.ca OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 12-Oct-2002 198.103.32.172 Finance Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat
NT4/Windows 98 Microsoft-IIS/4.0 5-Apr-2002 198.103.32.172 Finance Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat
NT4/Windows 98 Microsoft-IIS/4.0 23-Jan-2001 198.103.32.142 Finance Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat

It does not look too good to me :(

Re:Well

[nut]

-- By having people goto public locations with private booths, each persons privacy can be garranteed because there are people there whose job it is to ensure it. --

You could actually have this and online voting as well - online voting doesn't have to mean from any internet-connected computer at all.
If you voted 'online' at a polling booth terminal, you could gain enormous efficiencies over today's system involving so many bits of paper.

And a digital certificate might be something you take on disk, card or some other medium to a public terminal, but again not use from just anywhere on the internet.

voting

[JimBobJoe]

How about voting online?

What is there this mad rush to figure out how to make voting to work on the internet? I mean...you vote very close to where you live...you either care to vote, or you don't, online voting isn't going to change that. The technical hurdles are so big that I can't see how they are justifiable.

Furthermore, Canada already has its own little system of voting (piece of paper, put x in your preferred candidates box) and it's cheap, easy to count, difficult to mess up, et cetera. It's we Americans, obsessed with technology, who have varying levels of expensive technology most of which more or less works the majority of the time. (Unlike the Canadian system which works all the time for pennies per election.)

Re:voting

[JimBobJoe]

I think you'd be amazed at how inconvenient voting can be in this country.

I think that was amazes me is that, every single election, you catch watch many people of an advanced age, with walkers and wheelchairs, come in time and time again to vote. I can attest this personally as a pollworker. Where there is a will there is a way--and many of these people did not consider themselves worth an absentee ballot. They showed up and voted.

I don't remember our constitution saying that you needed to own a car to be able to vote

I don't remember the Constitution saying that you were entitled to transportation to vote. But it is available.

They already have the information

[ACNeal]

Why is information garnered by computer somehow more incideous than information garnered by more traditional means?

The government already has the information, or will have recieved it anyway. They are using the certificates to give you access to your information, and not leave it available to other people. Even the information you will give or update would have been given to the government sooner or later.

I don't see a way for the government to abuse your privacy with this anymore than if a data entry clerk had entered your request for a change of address at the local post office.

voting online

[rakerman]

Is stupid.
Go to the polling station.
Mark an X in the circle.
Votes are counted while the scrutineers watch.
Time-honoured, simple, distributed computing system. Works great.
There's no sense in technology for technology's sake. Paper, pen, and people are the appropriate technology for voting in Canada.

MOD PARENT UP

[Swaffs]

"Well, I trust my government more than I trust a corporation."

This has got to be one of biggest differences between Canadians and Americans. The American stance seems to be that government is bad, the smaller and less invasive they are the better. Conspiracy theories abound, and unfortunately I can't for surely say that they're unfounded. The irony is that instead of letting the government have any control, corporations have managed to gain control. The dollar rules much more in the states than here.

There seems to be a large Us vs. Them mentality between the Government and the People in the U.S. This isn't so in Canada. For one thing, the government is the people, not just in theory but in reality. If the government were to try and take over the country (a common reason for Americans needing their guns) how would they do it? Are you suggesting that my parents and sister (government employees) would take me (non-government worker) hostage? Its ludicrous to be afraid of the government.

So getting back to the main point, I too trust the government more than a corporation, as I think do most Canadians. Corporations have only one goal, and that's to make money, and that's bad. When people talk about privatizing things like jails it truely scares me. I work in private security, and its pathetic. No corner is left uncut. There's no conscience or social responsibility. This is much better left in the hands of government. I personally believe the same holds for most things, like utilities and such. After all, the goverment is basically a gigantic co-operative. Sure the government doesn't always do the right thing, but its rarely a big deal in the long run. My only real complaint about the government is the lack of efficiency that companies have to gain to stay afloat. Of course, a lot of that efficiency is gained through corner-cutting. The trick is to eliminate the bloat without cutting corners.

Anyway, that's my CDN$0.02.