The Conservative Government promised to produce a White Paper on its ‘National Data Strategy’ before the end of 2020 – one of the many initiatives shelved or delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. But digital issues offer both enormous economic benefits and considerable social and political risks, and technological innovation is opening up new advantages and dangers as time passes.
Now that the UK has left the EU, there are divided opinions within our government about staying close to its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or loosening its restrictions to make it easier for security services to investigate and entrepreneurs to innovate. So Liberal Democrat data scientists are looking at the issues raised and providing (much needed and welcome) advice to our parliamentary party.
Rob Davidson and an informal group associated with ALDES (the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists) have prepared a note on Digital Identity. The current debate is far removed from the old concept of a national Identity Card, centrally-run by the government. Many of us have had to prove identity, producing our driver’s licenses to prove our age, rattling off our NIC numbers, even paying notaries for verified copies of our passports to satisfy bank queries: using government-issued identifiers to satisfy private demands. Poorer people don’t have passports, and a declining number now have driving licenses, so find it harder to prove age, credit or status.
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