From: Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com 
  
 On 9/3/25 23:04, Nick Odell wrote: 
  
 >>> ID cards never were an issue. It's that sodding enormous unhackable 
 >>> database that went with them I objected to. 
 >>> 
 >> 
 >> It's just a database key, the DB will probably only have a few fields. 
 >> The point is it will provide a reliable foreign key for other databases. 
 >> 
 >> The ID could be less complicated than the Credit Reference Agencies 
 >> (CRA) databases, as it a cleaner ID, programmatically. If Experian, 
 >> Equifax, and TransUnion can do it... 
 >> 
 >> I guess your objection is that it provides the government with more 
 >> power, and that is true, but the answer is to introduce strong 
 >> transparency and database access rights. 
 >> 
 >> Personally, I don't know why the government can't do it already. Perhaps 
 >> the government are too tight to pay the CRAs. Or too incompetent to 
 >> design simple processing systems. 
 > 
 > IAN@Jethro but I presume he is looking back to great ideas of the 
 > Blair/Brown years when they were going to build the the great database 
 > of databases, the Deep Thought of databases upon which would be held 
 > in one central point anything anybody might want to ask about you. All 
 > completely under your control, of course, of course. And unhackable - 
 > that was a prime requirement. 
  
  
 Do you have a cite for that? I know at the time some people made that 
 claim, but I can't remember it as anything more than a simple identity 
 service, providing a reliable unique ID for every person in the country. 
  
 I think people confused the capability for a  universal, UK wide, unique 
 personal ID to simplify queries between separate and distinct systems as 
 creating a single database. 
  
 20 years ago, the IT world knew the benefits of simple services with a 
 single responsibility. Even fucked-in-the-head government software 
 providers would have known that. 
  
 The point about gold plating the service with complex biometric data, 
 that wasn't yet available, but that would only be misimplementing a 
 simple service due to a lack of understanding of the 80/20 rule, rather 
 than trying to create a universal database. 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)