GOVERNMENT SECURITY FAILURE (2)

In my post about this yesterday, I inferred that the fall-out from this fiasco would be protracted and far-reaching. And, judging by current reaction, one of the first major planks of Government policy to feel the fall-out is the NIR and ID cards.

Of course, this figured prominently in George Osborne's response to Darling's statement with him saying that the debacle is "the final blow to the Government’s ambition to create a national ID card." Cameron ran with it again taday at PMQs, describing retention of the policy as "weird" and "truly bizarre" . Like Ross Anderson, Alice Miles in The Times has put a wider gloss on it: "The Government's entire public IT agenda — all those systems and databases and supposed safeguards — is now under threat. [Darling's] statement was fine and comprehensive, but it became risible at one point: when he claimed that ID cards would somehow have made this lost information safer ..." Even The Sun, not renowned as being especially libertarian on this issue, insists: "The shocking blunder means Labour’s plan to bring in ID cards now looks doomed." All good stuff and, of course, grist to NO2ID's mill. Anyone with even half a brain should be able to see the sense of this train of thought. At the very least there should be a moratorium on development of the project - and a host of others including the Children's Index, the NHS NPfIT, &c - until such time as the security features of the plethora of databases that the Government has on us have been properly reviewed.

But ... but ... but!

Paradoxically it could well be that this "beyond farce, past comprehension, criminally irresponsible and beneath contempt" (to borrow Alice Miles' words) fiasco could entrench The Great Bottler's (possibly unwilling) support for ID cards. The trouble for GB in his bunker is that, on the back of the election-that-never-was, the political initiative has been sacrificed. In stark contrast to his honeymoon period from July of last year, the Government now looks like a victim of "events, dear boy, events" rather than being in control of the overall situation. So there is no advantage, political or otherwise, to the Government bowing to the pressure of those events and tossing ID cards onto GB's earnestly-to-be-wished-for Bliar-rite funeral pyre. Quite the reverse in fact. Politically the last thing GB and his Government want to be seen doing right now is 'collapsing' or flip-flopping in the face of difficult circumstances. Undoubtedly there's a huge storm out there at the moment (which could get even worse before it gets better) but they are reckoning that the best, if not only, route to redemption is to ride it out and hold the line, although it has to be said that the pressure of events may force their hand anyway,

But, then again, ... but ... but.

There is room for supposing that the Government actually had taken a decision to scrap the ID cards policy. While it is always difficult to decipher Westminster Village smoke signals, you, dear reader, will recall that two or three weeks ago - actually on 4th Nov, the timing's important (i.e. before the shit hit the ministerial fan over the HMRC debacle) - the Sunday Mirror dropped exactly this bombshell on to an unsuspecting public: "... the proposed roll-out to force all Britons to carry [ID cards] will be shelved indefinitely, according to Whitehall sources." The ever-reliable and ever-acerbic John Lettice's take on this can be found here at The Register. Now, from outside the bunker, it's impossible to say how authoritative the Mirror's line was. But what we can say is that, as a matter of course, there is 'no smoke without fire'. Equally The Mirror isn't exactly known for being backward in coming forward in support of and/or to help out Labour administrations. So could it be that some underlings from the No. 10 bunker were tasked with preparing the ground for a major policy announcement on ID cards by briefing the line to the Mirror? Well, stranger things have happened - but I suppose The Great Bottler would say, "Not on my watch, not any more!" Still (after 10 years of Bliar) there is a discernible strategy here which could/should have run something like this: spin and/or leak a major story to a tame tabloid; issue junior ministerial denials while letting the story run; bide one's time before conceding that the spin/leak was accurate and that the policy change has been arrived at because of the arrival of an authoritative and unarguable piece of evidence commissioned (of course) by one's good self; QED off the Bliar-rite hook!!!

Here you've got to throw the Crosby Public Private Forum on Identity Management into this potent Witches' Brew. This was instigated by GB - though first touted by him in February 2006 in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute* - in July of 2006 when he appointed Sir James Crosby, formerly of HBOS, to head up the Forum, the terms of reference of which are:

• a) Review the current and emerging use of identity management in the private and public sectors and identify best practice.
• b) Consider how public and private sectors can work together, harnessing the best identity technology to maximise efficiency and effectiveness.
• c) Produce a preliminary report for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Ministerial Committee on identity Management by Easter 2007.

The word on the street about this - endorsed in part by this from The Ideal Government Project - is that the Forum is leaning heavily towards a federated structure with extensive use of/reliance on 'infomediaries' and 'trusted third parties' rather than government (i.e. a system wholly at odds with the existing legislation for and architecture of the ID cards project) as the primary movers of identity management.

Now, whatever else one might say about GB, he is one of the archest politicians of his age. From his fastness in the Treasury he would surely have recognised the potential downsides of the ID card policy in both financial and political terms, not least because the parliamentary debates on the relevant Act had thrown up all sorts of nasties (the statutory requirement for the twice-yearly Cost Report, the concept of a "plastic poll tax", &c). So, whatever he may have been saying publicly about ID cards at the time, what was his motivation in setting up a wholesale review of an established and (supposedly) agreed line of Government/New Labour policy? Surely it is not too incredible to suppose that he was aiming to cover his back against these pitfalls.

One can speculate, as Ideal Government do, why it is that the Forum hasn't published any of its results yet, despite the inference in their terms of reference that something would be forthcoming by Easter of 2007. Of course , it may be as straightforward as their thinking being wholly antipathetic to the ID cards project - perhaps we'll never know. But it could also be that The Great Bottler knows full well the flavour of any Report and is witholding its release until a moment of his choosing so that he can play it to his maximum political advantage.

I make no bones about it. I may well be adding 2 + 2 and making 5 in all this. Nonetheless it's intriguing stuff. Time alone will tell. So, as they say, watch this space.

* In fact, a large section of the speech is devoted to GB's thinking on ID cards and makes for interesting reading.