Pan-European ID Standard to be implemented across Europe
Irene
November 22, 2009
Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed, or STORK, is a planned universal electronic identity scheme is set to go forth after a 14 month trial and agreements on standards have been made.
In essence the scheme will allow you to use your UK electronic identity, for example, if you needed to access an electronic government service in any other member state. So once you have a guaranteed identity to get into the UK Government Gateway you could use it to pay French property taxes or a Spanish speeding fine.
The UK side of the project is run by the Identity and Passport Service – although it makes clear STORK has nothing to do with ID cards or the National Identity Register.
Not the British versions anyway. It is an ID card. It’s just a European one. It is a database that will link other databases that have all your personal information in it.
Once it goes live, the makers are now concerned with scalability.
There are five projects in the next stage:
- Providing universal access to some British, Belgian, Austrian, Estonian, Catalan and Portuguese government portals.
- Safer access to chat services by kids and young people.
- Making it easier for students to study in other European countries.
- Electronic delivery of documents across borders.
- Dealing with changes of address for people moving to another country.
Safer access on the internet implies that they are “thinking of the children” and there will be some sort of verifiable access to the internet. This, in turn, tells us that anonymity on the internet is going away in Europe.
Since your data will now be connected into one giant database, your information can, and will be, screwed up, forcing you to defend yourself for some alleged crime in another European country that you’ve never been to. Since the government is convinced that their biometric schemes are perfect, you’ve got nothing to defend yourself against.
If the various European governments are worried about things such as welfare fraud and proper taxation, then an ID card with a name, photo, and number is sufficient. You do not need multiple types of biometrics, RFID, and even more leaky databases to accomplish this task.
