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HP Announces National Id System Built on .NET 393

Posted by Zonk from the more-id-planning dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Yahoo is running a story about HP's national ID plan, 'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,' said Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety, HP. 'HP and Microsoft are working together to provide government agencies the ability to access the integrated data streams needed to securely identify people both in the physical and virtual worlds.'"
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HP Announces National Id System Built on .NET More

HP Announces National Id System Built on .NET

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  • I'm pretty torn about this (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:47PM (#12670760)
    I can't decide if I'm upset because it's a National ID, because it's made by HP or because it's being built on .NET.

  • Microsoft: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:47PM (#12670763)
    Where would you like your identity to go today?

    • Re:Microsoft: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:53PM (#12670809)
      You may mean that in jest (or maybe not) but seriously, with microsoft's absolutely WOEFUL security record, a record of being constantly INsecure, of constantly avoiding fixing problems when they're raised, time after time after time... I have to ask

      Are HP completely braindead?

      If HP were farmers: "HP announces alliance with Lions, Jackals and Wolves to mind sheep & lambs".

      • You say insecure like it's a bad thing. I happen to have it on good authority that insecure is about to be the next big cool buzzword.

        Bobby: Hey, it says here on this review that this software is really insecure.

        James: So, we don't wanna go with that right?

        Tim: Are you kidding? They're INsecure. That's gotta be like, what, THOUSANDS of times better than just 'secure.'

        Bobby: Clerk? We'll take ten thousand units.

    • Oracle (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Considering that Oracle said they'd donate the software [google.com] to the
      feds for free for a national ID system, you have to wonder what Microsoft's price was. Clearly there's some payoff; but my bet is that it's to some special interests (individuals, or the states of specific lobbiests) and the taxpayer'll get screwed.
    • .NOT!

  • They clearly want a piece of the pie. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:48PM (#12670773)
    The UK ID card system is now estimated at £18 billion (30 billion dollars or so). That's up from £3 billion and £6 billion previous estimates.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4590817.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    • Re:They clearly want a piece of the pie. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rpozz ( 249652 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:54PM (#12670821)
      Thanks for the link.

      The LSE study also raised the issue of people who are against ID cards, called "refuseniks". It said: "The costs of handling this group will be substantial".

      Looks like it's possible for the general public to do something about this one. Enough noise about it and it'll be too expensive and political suicide. The use of the word 'handling' is quite disturbing though.

      Given our government's total incompetence at handling things like this, I'd imagine it will end up costing even more if implemented.
      • Something like this could be heavily disrupted by a queue blocking technique. Cause huge backlogs by going down to a registration center, sitting at one of the biometric terminals and refusing to move.

        The biometric readers will be fairly expensive and will require trained operators so there won't be all that many of them at any one registration point.

    • Explain to me exactly how they got me to fund a system that is detrimental to my freedom?

      • The minority rules OK! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:48PM (#12671133)
        In the UK, the Labour party just got reelected with only 36% of the vote. Yup. That's a minority. Almost 2/3 of the population didn't want them in power.

        Step 1: So, the first thing you do in a "democracy" to reduce individual liberty *and* get them to pay for it is take advantage of a medieval electoral system which gives a 1/3 minority an absolute majority in the parliament.

        Step 2: Then you use that parliamentary majority to push just about any legislation you like through the house.

        Step 3: Profit!

        Good eh?

        • In the UK, the Labour party just got reelected with only 36% of the vote. Yup. That's a minority.

          50% of the vote has no significance in country with more than 2 parties. No party has won a UK election with more that 50% of the vote since 1931. Criticising this particular government for not having a majority of the vote thus makes no sense.

      • Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Informative)

        by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @04:52PM (#12671882)
        Explain to me exactly how they got me to fund a system that is detrimental to my freedom?

        The Real ID Act was cleverly attached by its author, Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) [house.gov], as a rider to a completely unrelated appropriations measure for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since voting against appropriations for troops is unAmerican, the bill along with its Orwellian rider passed easily (House 368-58, Senate 100-0).

        Note that the rider specifies no funding. The federal ID card is left as an unfunded mandate for states to implement on their own budgets, with the usual extraconstitutional trick of threatening to withhold federal highway funds from states that fail to enact supporting state legislation. In practical terms, aside from being a fascistic federal power grab, this is a really expensive measure for the states. Unfortunately Real ID enjoys some myopic political support because it will stick it to illegal aliens. (And anyone seeking asylum, political or otherwise.) People don't realize the larger implications of a national ID card that one is forced to carry, and we just got them with hardly any public debate at all: [mediamatters.org]

        House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) originally introduced the bill as part of the House's intelligence community reform package in late 2004. When opposition to the provisions in the Senate threatened to kill that bill, the provisions were dropped, but the House leadership agreed to reattach them "to the first piece of legislation this session that both chambers were expected to pass" [Los Angeles Times, 1/27/05]. The Real ID Act was reintroduced in 2005 and passed the House, but apparently recognizing that the stand-alone bill lacked support in the Senate, the House leadership attached the legislation to the House version of the emergency funding bill. The Senate version did not include the measure. With bipartisan support, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced an amendment expressing the sense of the Senate that the provisions should not be in the final bill, but the amendment was ruled "non-germane" and denied a vote. Most of the Real ID provisions in the House's version survived the House-Senate conference committee and were part of the conference report that passed the House and Senate.

        During the Senate debate on the final version of the bill, several senators voiced opposition to the inclusion of the Real ID provisions in the conference report, but this opposition was not reflected in the final vote of 100-0. Here are some excerpts from the debate:

        * Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): "That does not stop me from objecting and expressing my disappointment to two provisions in the bill. One is the so-called Real ID Act. Actually, unlike a lot of legislation we pass here, this is well named. This really is a national identification card for the United States of America for the first time in our history. We have never done this before, and we should not be doing it without a full debate. This Real ID provision turns 190 million driver's licenses, which are now ineffective ID cards, into more effective national identification cards. To add insult to injury, we have also slapped state governments with the bill for them. I strongly object to this. When I was governor of Tennessee, I vetoed our state ID card twice because I thought it was an infringement on civil liberties. I thought that driver's licenses are for driving. If we need an ID card, we should have an ID card."
        * Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI): There are many concerns I have with Real ID in addition to the process used to bring it to the floor. First, the measure is an unfunded mandate to the states. Furthermore, unless every state complies, the federal government will have to mandate the creation of a national ID. Between the creation of a new database and approval system, training for DMV workers, and struggling state budgets, Real

    • Oracle already announced their competitive bid [cnn.com] for this project. How big a pie can it be considering Oracle's price?
  • Microsoft is helping to make it. That makes me feel SO safe.
  • who lobbied for this legislation? i think it would be interesting to see who all was pushing for the RealID (besides senators trying to cover their asses)

  • Whoever would have thought (Score:3, Funny)

    by instantkarma1 ( 234104 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:52PM (#12670805)
    that the answer to all of our homeland security issues would be Micrsoft?

    Gee, I feel more secure already.

  • .NET + HP + National ID (Score:5, Funny)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:55PM (#12670827) Homepage
    What could possibly go wrong?

    • What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:09PM (#12670917) Journal
      They make a system just secure enough to track 90% of the users, the avarage mom and pop. They use that data to figure out how much they can get away with... how much patriotic swell there is in redneck america.

      They make the system just insecure enough to let hackers get in, to let disasters strike. They use that as justification for more intrusive forms of government control.

      Is it possible that governments aim here is not to make a system that is unhackable? Maybe they want it to fail, as a prelude to enslavement?

      This is why computers suck. They will no longer be an aide to your life, no longer making life simpler and easier. Computers will now be used to track you, identify you. You are already probably in some government index with a score of how much of a threat you are. Check out Lenin from the library, your score goes up. Join the wrong chats, your score goes up.

      Remember, this is the same government that tapped the phones of the Black Panthers in the 1960's, arrested innocent people, killed innocent people, overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile. Our government stinks with evil.

      • Remember, this is the same government that tapped the phones of the Black Panthers in the 1960's, arrested innocent people, killed innocent people, overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile. Our government stinks with evil.

        GWB is in power since the 1960's? :-)
        • GWB is in power since the 1960's? :-)

          Not GWB, but a Bush. :-)

          Greed affects all people the same way. Power will currupt. The 3000 square foot house seems small compared with the new 4500 square foot house next door. Yet, somehow, the people in the 1960's seems to live very comfortably and happily in 1000 square foot homes. Power works much in the same way.

          The problem is greed becomes institutionalized within families. A family such as the Bush family, they need power to hide what they have done in

      • evil government (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Infonaut ( 96956 )
        Our government stinks with evil.

        Is this the same government that helped stop Fascism, stopped Soviet Communism, and gave the world the Internet, or is it a wholly different government? Is it the government that sat by while the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan? Is it the same government that in the 1970s let inflation run rampant in the United States, causing the standard of living here and around the globe to stagnate, or is it the one that fostered a huge technology and economic boom through more open

  • ... the US government will have a fine excuse: "The Windows server crashed, there was nothing we could do."

  • dumb question but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blackcoot ( 124938 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:56PM (#12670830)
    they intend to build a secure national id system out of technologies which have proven themselves to be insecure at each turn?

    god forbid there ever be something like code red or equivalent that hits this system, because the resulting sound will be that of 280 odd million people being simultaneously sodomized by very large cacti.

  • No need to worry (Score:5, Funny)

    by SupremeTaco ( 844794 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:56PM (#12670833)
    I'm trying out the beta version, and it includes an option for anonymous posting on Slashdot. See, it works just fine!!
    -----
    Name: Richard Kniefle
    Citizen Location: San Francisco, CA
    Occupation: Hospital Records Manager
    SSN: 123-12-1234
    DOB: 04-23-59
    Political Affiliation: Liberal Democrat
    Status: Citizen of Concern
    Church Affiliation: None
    • Dear Me Kniefle,

      It appears as though your .Net National ID software is suffering from some teething troubles.
      Please update to the latest version immediately to rectify this issue.

      I have attached the changelog for your information.

      Sincerely

      HP Dev labs

      --------- Attachment: changelog.txt
      v1.02 : gb : 192.168.0.3 : Missed off extra info fields, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Credit Card Number and Car Reg #. Update for fix

  • What happened to privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xmundt ( 415364 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:57PM (#12670837)
    Greetings and Salutations...
    I would feel far better about this if;
    a) the bad guys would play by the rules and register for their identity cards just like us law-abiding citizens and...
    b) We did not have such a long history of government abusing power that it takes.

    It may be a more complex world now, but, because of that, privacy should be even more valuable and preserved...rather than being stripped away.
    While there is no current indications that this ID card will become a required, internal passport, there is a VERY good chance it will be...which undercuts one of the mainstays of American life - that of unfettered travel throughout the country. It could, alas, lead to a totalitarian state on a VERY easy road. Read Lewis Sinclair's "It Can't Happen Here", and see if you see any parallels between HIS thesis and OUR reality today!
    On top of that, I have little confidence in the government or large organizations to keep accurate enough records to make this workable. So far, the track record is not great.

    Regards
    Dave Mundt
    • Actually, the people involved in the 2001-09-11 terrorist attacks all had valid ID (driver's licenses and so on, that is; the sort of ID that you already have today). What makes anyone think they wouldn't get national ID cards, too?

      The problem really is that once you actually find out that a suicide bomber means trouble, it's too late, because then he's already dead. The fact that you could find an ID card afterwards doesn't make a difference anymore.

      So there's really no reason why you should feel safer j

  • Marketspeak Mumbo Jumbo (Score:3, Informative)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @01:59PM (#12670856) Journal

    Wow, just what did that press release say beyond "we're going to help create a national ID using Microsoft .net"??? A whole lot of veribiage and redundant terminology. For example:

    • 22 instances of "indentify" or "identification"
    • 7 instances of "integrate"
    • 7 instances of "system"
    • 5 instances of "e-government"
    • 4 instances of ".NET framework"
    • 3 instances of "authenticate"
    Feh. That's enough of reading through that tripe. Now I need to take a bath. --M

  • In this system... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Roofus ( 15591 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:00PM (#12670858) Homepage
    HP provides the hardware, and Microsoft provides the software. It's like the worst of both worlds!

  • fuck off (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:01PM (#12670866) Journal
    Simplely put, the government can fuck off. I will downright refuse to use ANYTHING built on microsoft technology which is this important. If all my personal data is being kept on it then I DEMAND security above and beyond anything MS has ever done.

    I don't care if I get arrested 100 times over for refusing to carry an ID card, it'll be worth it.
    • You wont get arrested for refusing to carry the approved ID.

      You will get detained once... And if you tell them to "FO" while in detention, you can be assured it wont happen again as you wont get released.

      Legal? no.. but when you cant even call an attorney there isnt much you can do.

      Even if they do release you eventually, they can still ruin you. No job, no credit, no house, no driving..

  • Oh man... (Score:4, Funny)

    by kryogen1x ( 838672 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:02PM (#12670876)
    Now I'm going to have to get a hotmail passport account!

  • Lets review (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:03PM (#12670880) Journal
    The USA starts wars all over the globe.

    Libraries are now requiring finger prints.

    Chicago installed 3000 camera's.

    And now this...

    I just have one question. Did ANYONE read the patriot act?

    What if I want to read a book by Lenin, and not let anyone know that I have read his book? It seems that will be more difficult to do in the future. If I read it at the library, they have my fingerprint scan. If I buy it from the downtown borders, the police camera can look inside to see what books I have. If I somehow sneak the book home, and read it, then want to discuss it on the internet, they can find me.

    This reminds me of Ray Bradbury, only far more sinister, with a splash of Orwell tossed in. My dear God, how dumb is the american populace? Has the smartest 5%, the ones that run the entertainment industries, the news, the companies, has the smartest 5% of the people sold their souls for more money?

    We have all been enslaved.

    • dumb down teaching standards
      teach american exceptionalism
      teach propaganda
      pass draconian laws
      ???
      profit

    • Re:Lets review (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:26PM (#12670992)
      ...Has the smartest 5%, the ones that run the entertainment industries, the news, the companies, has the smartest 5% of the people sold their souls for more money?...

      Of course. The degradation of Western society is led by greed, not morals. And the US leads the charge. Freedom? Just a buzzword now. The hippies had it right in the 60s-70s, the corporations are taking over, they saw it for what it was. Every ill Western society suffers is due to greed and avarice.

      Family values? Nonexistant. Why? Western society (read greed) dictates both parents must work, JUST TO PAY THE BILLS. So who's at home with junior, nurturing him/her? No one, or the local day care center, who's responsibility is to make sure these kids behave, but not nurture. Parents have abdicated their responsibility to their children because our greedy society dictates it must be so.

      When are Westerners going to realize that people, and family, are far more important than The Bottom Line? Hope its soon, or humanity on the whole is doomed.

      • RE: not exactly (Score:3, Insightful)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )
        I agree that we're collectively allowing "freedom" to become a meaningless buzzword - but the 60's hippie generation didn't do much of anything to help prevent that. Rather, much of it had seeds in that era.

        IMHO, we do an awful lot of worshipping the 60's that's unwarranted. Flower children, hipppies, etc. etc. The fact is, most of the people growing up in the 60's doing their psychadelic drugs, having sex with anyone willing, and protesting Vietnam ended up tightly wrapped up in "corporate America" aft
    • This reminds me of Ray Bradbury, only far more sinister, with a splash of Orwell tossed in.

      Orwell was an optimist.

  • Does this mean that if I have a digital ID, and someone spoofs it, that if it says I went to another country and I didnt, that my word wouldn't be enough against the transaction log of such a device?

  • A few corrections to the quote in TFT (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today." No, let me phrase this in a more precise way: "The world security situation isn't really any different than it has been for the past thirty years, but now we finally have the political will to build systems to give us more control over people's lives. People are now willing to give up more of their freedom for perceived security, and we're going to take the opportunity to

    • The world security situation isn't really any different than it has been for the past thirty years, but now we finally have the political will to build systems to give us more control over people's lives. People are now willing to give up more of their freedom for perceived security, and we're going to take the opportunity to do it.

      I think this hit the nail on the head.

      The rest of it makes it seem like there is a definite malice behind the initiative. I do not see it that way. This is a multi-billion

    • "The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders..."

      In other words proof of citizenship required for interstate travel. Papers please.

  • "The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,"


    Yeah, except to Hitler, he seemed pretty adamant about tracking where the Jews came and went.
  • ...that this comes after the spoof "GPS Tags in Clothes" story - I got slightly confused between which one was actually fake :)
  • ... wouldn't you like to track them, for at least your own security, if not to do them more wrong?

  • Historical Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:30PM (#12671017) Homepage
    Lets See:

    Hitler needed an ID system. IBM was the ideal partner for them during the Holocaust. Perfect for tracking victims.

    Bush needs and ID system. HP is the ideal partner for them during the Crusades 2.0. Perfect for tracking non christians.

    history does always repeat itself.... sadly.
  • There is a truism, I'm not sure what the source is, that we are safe so long as we have an incompetent government and/or police force. If they're betting the farm on .NET, we have relatively little to fear. If they start doing things properly, get very worried.

    But seriously. National ID? What part of 1984 [online-literature.com] don't you guys understand? That book was even part of our school curriculum...

  • If we outlaw anonymity, then only outlaws will have amnesia.

    Incognito ergo sum. - Descartes

  • What's so bad about this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by DigitlDud ( 443365 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:48PM (#12671132)
    The article cites several countries where the .NET identity solution by HP is already in use. Obviously there has been no news about any security problems with these systems. You should be far more worried about simply losing your wallet than this system getting hacked.
    • I'm not surprised to hear this coming from DigtlDug since he is now working for Microsoft according to his blog.

      Seriously, just because you work for a company does not mean that you have to be blind to the security issues that do and may exist in a particular product.
  • Some countries has already been using national ID:s for decades... The catch is the system behind the ID:s and the management of such systems.

    Considering that the M$ environment is under constant pressure from various threats I would like to call the selection of that environment risky, and almost stupid. By selecting other environments you would be running the risk of being more dependent on a few persons with that particular competence. On the other hand the number of persons competent enough to cause t

  • The need to reject baseless assumptions... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JimBobJoe ( 2758 ) on Sunday May 29, 2005 @02:54PM (#12671167)
    'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,'

    If *anything* the lesson of 9/11 should have been that identification is not effective nor relevant to certain types of security sitautions, like air travel.

    Instead, the assumption stands that identification is essential, but, in regards to 9/11, it was somehow lacking, either in format (see REAL ID act) or application.

    Bad security is built around bad assumptions. Remove the bad assumptions and rebuild the security framework.

    Based on the vast quantity of individuals flying, and the amazing sum of variables, all of which indicate little about the potential danger of the passenger, a defense could be made that we would be safer building a security system around nameless tickets.

  • It looks like I just bought my last HP printer.
  • I would proclaim HP, Microsoft, and SCO as the Axis of Evil...
  • Forget about HP, .Net, or any of this other IT 1337 5p33k. Ask yourself this: If the U.S. or Europe create systems to track people across different states and whatnot, is that really going to accomplish anything? Maybe it will help find petty criminals, but that's like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.

    Or, what if many countries of the world get together and implement a compatible system that allows them to track people's identities across all those countries. Is that going to help fight terrorism? Or are t

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