[governance] germany plans citizen email

[David Goldstein]

I'm not sure what the kerfuffle is about this proposal? Maybe list members should follow my website for happenings as I noted a story from The Sunday Times 2 weeks ago where in Britain "Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor
and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of
everyone in Britain." See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882600.ece.

Governments already have the power to monitor pretty much what they want for a whole range of reasons, and having citizen email would make no difference. If a government has an interest in what you do, they can pretty much monitor it.

The Americans have a centre in a mountain that monitors pretty much everything electronic that they want to monitor, and has done for years. Someone on the list pointed out the name of it last time I raised it, but I've forgotten, again!


And see my website at http://technewsreview.com.au/ for stories on issues such as this when I find them.

Cheers
David



----- Original Message ----
From: Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Ralf Bendrath <bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Sent: Sunday, 12 October, 2008 3:20:47 PM
Subject: RE: [governance] germany plans citizen email


> > but would they be required to use t for anything other then government
> > business?  sure if they use it for other stuff then tracking becomes
> > possible, but if it is just your gov't id used when doing citizen stuff?
> >
> > a.
> >
> I don't know, I guess that's the sort of detail that's really needed to
> evaluate this properly. 

If my impression of German society and systems is any good, it is obvious
that they wont be asking people to use the citizen id for all purposes. It
will only be for citizenship purposes. 

But national ID schemes with attached data
> matching
> capabilities are a privacy issue, and the US social security number is a
> case in point.

Yes, the social security number comparison is useful. This number has
privacy issues, but it has important social security implications as well
which is its primary purpose. Same is true of online enablers - and rights
and entitlements - for citizenship engagements. 

Online identity and data systems have higher and some unique privacy
challenges, an issue which needs to be strongly engaged with in this case.
Some privacy expert Ralf Bendrath, incidentally from Germany, may have
something to tell us on this. 

Parminder  


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Peter [mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com]
> Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 5:10 AM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; 'Avri Doria'
> Subject: RE: [governance] germany plans citizen email
> 
> 
> Comments below
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri at psg.com]
> > Sent: 12 October 2008 10:02
> > To: Governance List
> > Subject: Re: [governance] germany plans citizen email
> >
> >
> > On 11 Oct 2008, at 01:38, Ian Peter wrote:
> 
> Not be, I was quoting Johannes Ernst
> >
> > > First you create a universal digital identifier for each citizen
> > > that they have no control over (e.g. they can't have more than one
> > > for different purposes, change it to something else, run it on a
> > > different computer, decide not to show their name in it etc.)
> > >
> >
> >
> > but would they be required to use t for anything other then government
> > business?  sure if they use it for other stuff then tracking becomes
> > possible, but if it is just your gov't id used when doing citizen stuff?
> >
> > a.
> >
> I don't know, I guess that's the sort of detail that's really needed to
> evaluate this properly. But national ID schemes with attached data
> matching
> capabilities are a privacy issue, and the US social security number is a
> case in point.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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