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"Privacy Baseline" For European EID Cards
giles hogben writes "This paper from the European Network and Information Security Agency looks at the roll-out of privacy features in electronic identity card technology (PDF) over Europe. It includes numerous tables for easy comparison but doesn't make too much comment on the relative privacy-merits of different cards. Readers can draw their own conclusions though ..."
Here is the list of eID privacy features you asked for. Don't worry, it's not like you get to choose whether you carry one or not, and which one you carry, so don't get too excited. Have a great day!
Number 15. Governments forcibly extracting private information from their citizens and using it to gain more state power.
right now there are only 2 comments...
but in every thread that is specifically about the US (or god forbid if guns come up) is chock-full of europeans that bitch about the US-centric discussion. so where are they all now?
Privacy? What's that? This must be some sort of hoax...
What you have to understand that ENISA is a completely useless EU agency residing in Greece. It was installed by the lobby, and is back mostly by BSA members as Symantec, Microsoft,...
This year the Commission attempted to rewind it by merging its competences into a new regulatory institution for the Telecom sector. However the Telecom package debate lead to the rejection of the regulatory authority and thus to the survival to ENISA.
In other words, this institutione is owned by the industry lobby. It is just an advisory institution and its guidance is bullshit so far. It has no competence to propose laws or anything.
The studies carried out so far are of low quality and target imaginary audiences. For them Enisa experts have trivial recommendations. And Enisa openly says it lacks expertise and asks the vendor lobby for input. Enisa is a placebo institution for IT security. Anything that comes out of the body is suspicious.
Unfortunately privacy just isn't an important political issue.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Dear citizen of the EUSSR,
Here is the privacy you can expect from an ID card:
NONE!
Thank you for your tax money to aid the state oppression of Europe's citizens. We knew you'd never consent to having ID cards, that's why we sneaked in ID laws under disguise of other laws (see UK as an example of how state oppression is pushed through).
Have a nice day.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
OK, this is rough thought, but this is one way off the top of my head to make privacy as integral as part of the structure as security.
First of all, start with your average smart card, have your user private key on it and a PIN. The key stored can be revoked by whatever the EU's CA is and reissued.
Now, start adding certificated by whatever certifying agencies. For example, a county adds a certificate that this user is born in their county. A university adds a certificate that the user got a B. S. in chainsaw fencing at this time. The immigration authority signs a certificate saying the owner of the key is a bona fide citizen of the country. Finally the police department signs a certificate (perhaps a normal life, perhaps a short-lived certificate that is renewed when asked) stating the person has no felonies on their record.
Something that happens to change this (someone drops their citizenship), it gets revoked.
Now, by starting on the principle of assume nothing, a pub can ask for someone's smart card, check that the picture of the person holding it is the keyholder, then check a certificate on the key that the user is over 21 for drinking (if in the US.) The certificate does not give a birthdate. All it states is that the person is of legal age to get plastered. If someone is applying for a job that requires no felonies, the card will have a certificate stating this. All that is answered is just the question, no personal details are offered.
If a place finds no certificate stating a user isn't a felon, then they can do a background search with the user's consent, but if a user isn't a felon, no searching is needed.
Of course, a user can hide/show certificates, so when signing a pay receipt, the merchant doesn't get free access to all the details of citizenship, etc.
The one problem I see is a lost or compromised key. This can be fixed by one of two ways. One is to revoke the core key and have all the CAs re-sign certificates to a new key. Another way is a certificate granted by the core card authority basically stating that all the goodies on revoked key "x" now apply to current key "y".
Voila, people get privacy, and security is also assured (as best a PKI and other structures can. Nothing is perfect, and I'm SURE there are flaws in this idea.)