International Law

Sir James Crosby's Review on Identity Assurance being written out of history by Gordon Brown ?

Sir James Crosby's resignation as Deputy head of the Financial Services Authority quango yesterday occupied much of the political news agenda yesterday.

One point which stood out during Prime Minister's Questions, was when Gordon Brown was squirming and tried to dissociate himself from the resignation, by attempting to downplay the closeness of Sir James as an economic advisor to Gordon Brown himself.

Gordon Brown showed his authoritarian control freak mindset about the Review which he had commissioned from Sir James Crosby, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he described it as a report on "security issues", rather than what it actually was, namely a wider Review of economic and social success criteria for any modern national identity scheme, which authoritatively disagreed with the flawed Labour National Identity Register centralised biometric database scheme.

11 Feb 2009 : Column 1361

Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Oral Answers to Questions -- Prime Minister
Engagements

11:30 am

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour)

Sir James Crosby did two reports: one for the Chancellor on mortgages, and one for me, when I was Chancellor, on security issues. He has completed these reports. He is no longer an economic adviser to the Government--[Hon. Members: "Ah!"] And he has only been so in the context of doing two reports.

[...]

Not only was this not a Review of Security, but a Review of Identity Assurance, in its wider economic and cultural impact, but Gordon Brown delayed publication of it for over a year after it was completed.

HM Treasury website has a copy of Sir James Crosby's Review: Challenges and opportunities in identity assurance (.pdf 226Kb)

The main conclusion of this Review was that

The potential of any mass ID system such as ID Cards therefore lies in the extent to which it is created by consumers for consumers.

and

The future of identity lies in putting the consumers first. For many organisations that calls for radical new thinking.

e,g,

[...]

Identity?is?"the?new?money"

[...]

As?a?matter?of?principle,?the?amount?of?data?stored?should?be?minimised

[...]

To engage consumers' hearts and minds on the scale required, enrolment?and?any? tokens?should?be?provided?free?of?charge.
[...]

Such conclusions are diametrically opposed to the Labour government's current bureaucratic, centralised, intrusive, monopolistic, massively expensive, police and security services orientated National Identity Register scheme, which offers no benefits to consumers at all, especially over the internet or over the phone.

See the cross political party NO2ID Campaign website for more details about how you can help to legally resist the "database state".

The fact that, in Gordon Brown's mind this topic is all about "security" and not about actually providing anything directly useful or desirable to individual consumers and citizens, reveals his creepy authoritarianism and yet again shows why he is not to be trusted as our unelected Prime Minister.

Full post as published by Spy Blog on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).