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Compulsory CyberIDs on the way for Kiwis

NZ Post is complaining that a massive fall in mail volumes will soon make it impossible for the SOE to continue delivering snailmail six days a week.

The company has told government that without some form of subsidy or other support, mail deliveries will have to be cut to just three times per week and hundreds of jobs will be lost.

And to think, when I built email into an accounting program I wrote back in the early 1980s, everyone said "why?" and asked "what good is that?"

My, how times have changed!

Even the ubiquitous fax machine has fallen from favour and when my last fax machine broke down in the early 2000s I didn't bother replacing it. Why would I?

In fact, I don't even have a scanner -- a high resolution digital camera does the same job more quickly and conveniently, without absorbing large amounts of valuable desk real-estate.

NZ Post is boxing very clever with government over this issue and it is on the threshold of creating something very dangerous...

The company says "give us money or help us sell our Real Me product by embracing it".

What, you may ask, is Real Me?

Well it's the cyber-equivalent of that universal ID card that was promoted by government many years ago and roundly dismissed by the public.

Now I don't know about you but given recent appalling security and privacy breaches at WINZ, IRD, ACC, EQC and raft of other government departments - I don't think the government or any of its SOEs are quite ready to deliver a service such as this.

If we find ourselves using a single-source identifier for all services, *any* breach of security by that ID service has huge potential for disaster and I don't think NZers ought to be exposed to that level of risk.

The benefit of having a separate ID and authentication system for each service you use is that if/when any one of those services are compromised, you don't have to worry about the risk to others.

Imagine the chaos that would ensue of Digital Me was compromised and it meant that a bunch of evil little sods would then be able to masquerade as *you* to your bank, your doctor, the IRD, the ACC, police and any other company, service or agency that relied on it.

I'm sorry but, based on the track record of government cybersecurity to date, this is a very, very bad idea.

And, if it were enforced by government, it also brings us a step closer to George Orwell's 1984.

A couple of days ago I was stopped at a traffic checkpoint and got the "Papers please" demand, whereupon I had to show my vehicle was registered, warranted and that I was carrying my driver's license. It would seem that Real Me would extend this concept into the virtual world.

I wonder what those who fought two world wars would think about the way NZ is increasingly looking like one of the fascist nations they risked (and gave) their lives to protect us from.

Compulsory cyberID?

Not for me!

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