Google and co join gov's identity marketplace

Cameras first, this next

Love the way the UK government keeps trying to persuade us that being spied on in everything we do is in our best interests. Pity the gulivle masses are so stupid they fall for it.

Confused

The Cabinet Office has its Digital Identity Initiative - a federated ID for accessing government services. Is this: a) the same thing rebranded; b) something completely different; c) the same thing only left hand didn't know what right hand was doing?

Calling all mooncalves

For a brief while there yesterday, there was a story on the BIS website called "The midata vision of consumer empowerment". It's gone now.

But there is a press release, available at http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=421869&NewsAreaID=2

And Ed Davey, the minister responsible, has blogged on midata at http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/blog/2011/11/03/giving-consumers-the-midata-touch/#comment-2054

1. The claim is made repeatedly that midata empowers people and that midata gives them unprecedented control over the use of their personal data. How? BIS give no answer. Suppose you fill your "personal data inventory" (PDI) with a lot of your Lloyds Bank data (Lloyds are one of the midata partners) and then pass a selection of that data to British Gas (another midata partner), perhaps to open an account, how can you control what British Gas do with the data? You can't. You get no new powers with a PDI than you had before there were any PDIs. There is no sense in which you are newly empowered. The BIS press release is misleading.

2. There are unexplained claims that having a PDI will help you to make decisions. Unexplained, at least, in the BIS press release. But there is an explanation here -- http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=35514 The purveyors of PDIs, previously known as PDSs, believe that analysing the data in your PDI will help you to decide who to marry, see particularly comments at 08 Jun 2011 18:19:11

3. midata is clearly closely related to the Cabinet Office's Identity Assurance scheme (IdA) as noted by ElReg. At least it should be. But on Monday 31 October 2011, the Cabinet Office held an IdA conference. The impression was that they were in control. There was no mention of midata, which appeared, unheralded, three days later on Thursday 3 November. Is midata, as FatsBrannigan asks, and so do I, a freelance operation by BIS? Is the Cabinet Office in control?

4. Ed Davey is Lib Dem MP for Kingston and Surbiton. Here he is claiming that the UK economy can be expanded by making it easier for people to give their data to marketers in a handily formatted container designed to suit them. Socially dodgy. Economically dodgy. Politically dodgy.