🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep16.130653.17059@spider.co.uk> paulq@spider.co.uk (Paul Qualtrough) writes:
>Why don't all banks and other organisations requiring what are in effect
>ID cards get together, create a single (smart) card with a single PIN of
>however many digits is socially and security-wise acceptable, and then put
>all their institution-specific information on that single card?  The banks
>would, I suggest, _love_ the problem of customer authentication taken
>out of their hands and the burden placed somewhere else.
>
>Ideally, governments should introduce such a thing as an identity card
>and licence card companies, banks, etc. to piggy-back their stuff on it.
>The government guarantees that the card holder is who their PIN says they
>are, and the burden of fraud is spread - we pay ever so slightly higher
>taxes, but lower bank charges.

Try this on the current government...  Sort of ``Hi John; I've got this
idea for a `Security Charter'.''

>OK, so the civil libertarians don't like the idea of big brother watching
>us through universal identity cards, but in this market economy world
>you can always set one (low) scale of charges for those who reckon they
>have nothing to hide and another (higher) rate for the libertarians who
>want to have lots of individual cards.  Money talks eventually.

Damn good idea.  Maybe the proportion trusting the identity card would
be higher (a) in the more liberal democracies, and (b) where an
identity card is already manditory, eg Spain, Italy...

Damon
-- 
Damon Hart-Davis | Tel/Fax: +44 81 755 0077 |1.28|| Cheap Sun eqpt available.
Internet: dhd@exnet.co.uk | Also: Damon@ed.ac.uk || Mail/news feeds available.
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