PRESS RELEASE
To:
Home Office
OIG (re US-VISIT)
IDABC (re OSCIE)
China (re Golden Shield)
Pakistan (re NADRA)
FBI (re NGI)
UIDAI (re Aadhaar)
Agencies
midata – time for BIS to answer the questions
19 November 2012
When midata was announced a year ago Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s Technology Correspondent, asked “what's the catch for consumers and why is the government getting involved”? Good questions.
... individual users were not yet being allowed to exploit all the information relating to them to make their lives easier. Armed with the information that social networks and other web giants hold about us, he said, computers will be able to "help me run my life, to guess what I need next, to guess what I should read in the morning, because it will know not only what's happening out there but also what I've read already, and also what my mood is, and who I'm meeting later on".
Thus Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, interviewed by the Guardian in April.
Slightly dotty, of course – your computer will know what mood you’re in? But the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) are trying to promote their midata initiative and it suits their purpose to say, in a press release the other day, that midata will allow consumers to “make better lifestyle choices”.
Even if it was true, what business would it be of the government’s?
None. If there’s a demand for lifestyle software, let the private sector provide it.
Economic growth
BIS also claim that midata would be “good for growth in the economy”. Strange, because at the 9 August 2012 midata open forum David Miller, a BIS economist, was asked how much midata would make the economy grow by and answered, it’s very difficult to say what the macro-economic effects of midata would be.
Banks, phone companies and energy companies already provide us with detailed statements, on-line and on paper, they have done for decades, and the economy isn’t growing. So what’s new about midata?
Personal data stores (PDSs)
Answer – PDSs, please see para.2.19, p.24 of BIS's midata 2012 review and consultation. BIS want us all to have PDSs, databases storing all of our transaction data, which can be processed to make our lifestyle choices for us and which identify us uniquely.
We wouldn’t be expected to maintain the PDSs ourselves. That would be the job of so-called “trusted third parties”, who would store all our personal data on the web, where it would be continuously updated by permanent links with all our suppliers.
What personal data? The BIS press release refers us to a document of theirs, A midata future: 10 ways it could shape your choices. The answer seems to be any contracts you have entered into, any warranties you have taken out, your driving licence, your educational qualifications, your CRB report, your bank accounts, the clothes you buy, your gas and electricity usage and your neighbours’ usage, too, your health records, entertainment preferences and favourite restaurants.
It’s an extensive set of data about you. midata may not help the economy to grow but, in the PDSs which it relies on, it would provide you with an on-line ID card.
Trusted third parties
Who are the third parties you’re meant to trust with all this personal data? Only one is regularly mentioned and most people will never have heard of it – Mydex – so what reason is there to trust it?
At the 9 August 2012 midata open forum Kirstin Green, a deputy director at BIS, mentioned that the chairman of Mydex sits on the BIS midata strategy board. To understand BIS’ midata proposal it helps to understand Mydex is therefore written with considerable authority, as is Making midata work for you.
Identity assurance
Actually, you may have heard of Mydex. You may have read the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) press release about the Identity Assurance Programme last week, Providers announced for online identity scheme. Mydex is one of the seven “identity providers” appointed for the UK last week by DWP. The idea is that in Whitehall’s new digital-by-default world, if you want to register for benefits, you need an identity provider to vouch for you, to say that you are you – a PDS is an ID card.
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They couldn’t answer them last year. Let’s see if BIS can answer Mr Cellan-Jones’s questions now.
About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.
Press contacts: David Moss, BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk
