HP Announces National Id System Built on .NET

Anonymous Coward writes "Yahoo is running a story about HP's national ID plan, 'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,' said Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety, HP. 'HP and Microsoft are working together to provide government agencies the ability to access the integrated data streams needed to securely identify people both in the physical and virtual worlds.'"

Comments

Re:Microsoft:

[Anonymous Coward]

You may mean that in jest (or maybe not) but seriously, with microsoft's absolutely WOEFUL security record, a record of being constantly INsecure, of constantly avoiding fixing problems when they're raised, time after time after time... I have to ask

Are HP completely braindead?

If HP were farmers: "HP announces alliance with Lions, Jackals and Wolves to mind sheep & lambs".

dumb question but...

[blackcoot]

they intend to build a secure national id system out of technologies which have proven themselves to be insecure at each turn?

god forbid there ever be something like code red or equivalent that hits this system, because the resulting sound will be that of 280 odd million people being simultaneously sodomized by very large cacti.

fuck off

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Simplely put, the government can fuck off. I will downright refuse to use ANYTHING built on microsoft technology which is this important. If all my personal data is being kept on it then I DEMAND security above and beyond anything MS has ever done.

I don't care if I get arrested 100 times over for refusing to carry an ID card, it'll be worth it.

Lets review

[John Seminal]

The USA starts wars all over the globe.

Libraries are now requiring finger prints.

Chicago installed 3000 camera's.

And now this...

I just have one question. Did ANYONE read the patriot act?

What if I want to read a book by Lenin, and not let anyone know that I have read his book? It seems that will be more difficult to do in the future. If I read it at the library, they have my fingerprint scan. If I buy it from the downtown borders, the police camera can look inside to see what books I have. If I somehow sneak the book home, and read it, then want to discuss it on the internet, they can find me.

This reminds me of Ray Bradbury, only far more sinister, with a splash of Orwell tossed in. My dear God, how dumb is the american populace? Has the smartest 5%, the ones that run the entertainment industries, the news, the companies, has the smartest 5% of the people sold their souls for more money?

We have all been enslaved.

Re:Lets review

[Anonymous Coward]

...Has the smartest 5%, the ones that run the entertainment industries, the news, the companies, has the smartest 5% of the people sold their souls for more money?...

Of course. The degradation of Western society is led by greed, not morals. And the US leads the charge. Freedom? Just a buzzword now. The hippies had it right in the 60s-70s, the corporations are taking over, they saw it for what it was. Every ill Western society suffers is due to greed and avarice.

Family values? Nonexistant. Why? Western society (read greed) dictates both parents must work, JUST TO PAY THE BILLS. So who's at home with junior, nurturing him/her? No one, or the local day care center, who's responsibility is to make sure these kids behave, but not nurture. Parents have abdicated their responsibility to their children because our greedy society dictates it must be so.

When are Westerners going to realize that people, and family, are far more important than The Bottom Line? Hope its soon, or humanity on the whole is doomed.

What could possibly go wrong?

[John Seminal]

They make a system just secure enough to track 90% of the users, the avarage mom and pop. They use that data to figure out how much they can get away with... how much patriotic swell there is in redneck america.

They make the system just insecure enough to let hackers get in, to let disasters strike. They use that as justification for more intrusive forms of government control.

Is it possible that governments aim here is not to make a system that is unhackable? Maybe they want it to fail, as a prelude to enslavement?

This is why computers suck. They will no longer be an aide to your life, no longer making life simpler and easier. Computers will now be used to track you, identify you. You are already probably in some government index with a score of how much of a threat you are. Check out Lenin from the library, your score goes up. Join the wrong chats, your score goes up.

Remember, this is the same government that tapped the phones of the Black Panthers in the 1960's, arrested innocent people, killed innocent people, overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile. Our government stinks with evil.

Yes, and worse, they can have you killed

[John Seminal]

So if someone exploits a security hole in .NET they can take my identity?

If we have a system where everyone is tracked, through databases, camera's, RFID in cars, fingerprints in libraries, and a future dna database, think about the abuse?

Someone hacks the government servers, and puts in data, data that says you are a terrorist, a dangerous terrorist with knowledge of how to build bombs.

You, of course, are just an avarage joe who is walking to the local park to read Invisible Man. Next thing you know, a van hits you on the sidewalk, and you're dead. The driver is not just some old man who lost control. He is an old man who appears to have lost control.

I can't help but wonder, if Joe Mccarthy was alive, if Bush would nominate him to be Director of Homeland Security? The technology we have today is what he was missing to acomplish his goals. If he had todays technology, he could have killed the people who complained, before they got organized. Just find out who is reading the "banned" books, and execute them. Of course, the USA will never pull a book off a library shelf. They will just monitor who reads it.

Re:Yes, and worse, they can have you killed

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Someone hacks the government servers, and puts in data, data that says you are a terrorist, a dangerous terrorist with knowledge of how to build bombs.

You, of course, are just an avarage joe...

The danger is not to the average Joe (maybe the average Joe for whom a hacker has a grudge perhaps) but the real danger is to those people who are considered a threat by those who officially/legally control the database.

It is far more likely that we will see such a database used to harass the political opposition (we've seen plenty of anecdotal evidence of that with the no-fly list already). We are also likely to see it used to benefit the "friends" (aka campaign contributors) of the database controllers - corporate whistleblowers for example.

A national ID system is one of the most un-American things to arise from the 9-11 kneejerkers. The only possible benefit is that it will catch stupid terrorists - the ones not smart enough to buy a counterfeit ID or bribe the right underpaid clerk. Meanwhile it is a huge sacrifice of freedom (you know, one of those principles this country was founded on) that will lead to further centralization of power, increased corruption and of course a huge tax bill to pay for the boondoggle.

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed.
The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general --
into an unbearable hell and a choking life." -- Osama bin Laden, Oct 21, 2001.

Re:Like it ot not,

[analog_line]

.NET is the most advanced RAD environment on the market today.

What kind of complete moron uses "Rapid Application Development" to implement something as dangerous as a national ID system?

Re:What's so bad about this?

[CHR1S]

I'm not surprised to hear this coming from DigtlDug since he is now working for Microsoft according to his blog.

Seriously, just because you work for a company does not mean that you have to be blind to the security issues that do and may exist in a particular product.