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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?"
that this is a better idea than what is available here in the US, where you can obtain anyone's private records through a third party, as long as you have money.
this is unnecessary, microsoft already has a system called passport that works even better
why reinvent the wheel?
Any action taken by government *could* be the start of big brother.
Big brother is someone who is always hovering there, waiting to come out. Whenever people permit government, you permit big brother in to some degree or another.
Tha said, as a Canadian, this is cool.
You see, all these records are obtainable now.. but it's a pain in the ass to authenticate yourself to the proper agencies (go there in person, etc). It would be nice to have a lot of stuff online.. and I'd rather the issued me a private digital certificate for access than some dumb authentication mechanism like just my SIN number & birthdate.
As long as they aren't changing the rules reagarding the information they need to know... I'm okay with it.
ie: CCRA doesn't need to know my address if I don't live in the country. In fact, they don't need to know my address at all; all they need to know is where to send the tax forms/refunds/whatever, which does not have to be where I live.
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.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
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
-- My Weblog.
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.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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.)
We're not socialists, we just have some socialist policies. Healthcare may cost a lot in taxes, but at least everyone can be sure to get proper care regardless of income level. This is only because in Canada healthcare is a right, not a priviledge.
To say Canada's crime is skyrocketing is ridiculous. I can walk through downtown Toronto (largest Canadian city) in any area at any time of day or night and not fear for my life at all. There are a couple bad neighbourhoods, but even they are many, many times safer than a bad neighbourhood in a major US city. Per capita there is not a single major US city that has lower violent crime than any major Canadian city. Stick your insanely relaxed gun laws up your ass, Americans, you guys have got it all wrong.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
While I appreciate some of the concerns raised so far, I must comment as a developer who works for various Federal Government ministies on a daily basis.
1) GOL, while it is a great idea (offering Online government services in addition to "paper" based serveics) it is currently not much more than an idea. It has some official "GOL" apps, but they ar usually nothing more than internal government web apps redone in the Common Look and Feel. So far, only CCRA has a "real" GOL service and all it is is the Change of Address. GOL has not recieved mush hype or funding in over a year, because of September 11.
2) While the "pie in the sky" view of GOL (which is a LONG way from being reality) MIGHT have the POTENTIAL to be used as a "Big Brother" type of tool, the reality is that this is not likely to ever happen. Why? Most Canadian Federal Government departments don't share data between branches within the same ministry, let alone across departments or across ministries. Changing this attitude is required if "Big Brother" is to become a reality, and if you've ever dealt with the Feds (or the provinces or the city for that matter) you know its not going to change soon. Case in point: the department in our Ministry of Health that deals with First Nations (indians to the Americans) health delivery and funding often can't get information from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, a separate ministry. The end up collecting the same data, doubling costs.
And lets give our "Silly servants" some credit. A particular project I am currently working on had it's scope changed because the civil servants in the group refused to create and application that would collect identifying data! We must now create a version of our app that collects no identifying data and still be able to track individual cases for analysis.
3) GOL could in the long term cut government costs, impove efficiency and allow our governmentto govern better - they would have an up-to-date, accurate picture of some aspect of goverment business.
My concern isn't with GOL. I think it's a wonderful idea and will not likely even be designed to allow a "Big Brother" kind of use. My concern is with the calibre of the people who will be in charge of administering the system. In my experience, most sys admins, dba's, and developes in the Feds are old, behind the times, and unaware of the very technology they are to be in charge of (most have had their jobs at various ministries since the old Mainframe days).
Another Case in Point: the other day I saw a live "demo" of CCRA's "Change of Address" application. while it does require a great deal of information to sign up for the program to prove your identity (Name SIN, stuff from your Tax returns etc) once up and running it is only protected by username and password! No certs. No PKI. No "Smart Card". Just username and password (and no self admionistration that I saw).
So don't worry about GOL. It's pretty far off and not likey to be "Big Brother"-ish because of the culture of our civil service. But that same culture means that when it is in place, it will be administered by old-school, 2nd place techies who can't get a job anywhere else (most of the "technical" people I deal with when creating apps for the governement would never be hired by my company - their incompetent. Why? Because that's all the feds can get - they don't pay enough to get the really good people in the private sector.
And I haven't mentioned the Provinces yet. To becme a REAL Big Brother, the Feds would need a great deal of cooperation from the provinces...and any Canadian can tell you that's not gonna ever happen!
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
A 64 bits Canadian certificate is equivalent to a 100 bits American one.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
arrested for owning a gun, charged for saying something 'racist', and imprisoned for WRITING DOWN child porn
Oh my gosh - the Gun Nuts, the Klan, and Child Abusers aren't welcome in Canada? Terrible, who's next? Necrophiles? What about the poor, poor People Who Torture Animals?
Who would want to live in a country where you couldn't do things like that?