[Reader-list] UK National ID card cloned in 12 minutes

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Anivar,

Thank you for posting this story regarding cloning of a so called
impregnable technology. I am sure this post or news items like this
one, are going to polarize people who are following the Indian ID card
story.

Here are some scenarios-

There are those who may look at this story and think that simply
because someone was able to copy UK national ID card within minutes,
does not necessarily mean that samples of all the cards in the entire
world could be copied within minutes. They may also feel that GOI must
have taken all these things into consideration that is why they have
entrusted the responsibility of ID project to Nandan Nilekani. One can
expect arguments emanating from this section to come maybe in -denial
mode-

Then there are those who are going to look at this story and express a
range of emotions from shock to concern, to deep concern, to paranoia,
to phobia, to maybe even panic tending towards mass-hysteria. People
ascribing to this view may present their thoughts laced with arguments
related to identity theft, loss of privacy, invasion of privacy,
private sector taking over the world, or even world becoming anarchic.
So one could expect the tone of arguments coming from this lot, to be
either deeply cautionary or celebratory.

A few of us, would be actually wanting to meet the person who did
this. They may be interested in learning from Laurie, how he achieved
this feat. This knowledge transfer might have two broad implications,
either that knowledge may go to the government sector, to be used for
more stringent coding or consolidation of technological/software locks
or to the piracy sector to create, build, archive and ultimately share
knowledge of cracking this technology and then harvesting data and
subsequently selling it to smaller private buyers who may not have
deep pockets to legitimately buy it, over the counter, but
nevertheless share a desire to own and deploy such data or trade such
data with other members of the corporate tribe. And as is evidenced by
a recent submission of a minister in our parliament, we know now, how
truthful and deeply honest,  the captains of our industries are.

Then there will be the policy crowd, who are of course, going to
downplay this story. They might even suggest that people like Laurie
routinely indulge in this type of stunts for cheap publicity. Before
we know, another event will take over, like, a news report or a study
or a report of perceptions of people expressing their total confidence
in the technology of Identity card or even calls may be made to those
news organization who are concentrating too much time on stories like
this, to act responsibly and to report keeping the national security
issues of a country in mind.

However, I wish to thank you again, though, for bringing this
particular view to the consideration of readers of this list.

Warm regards

Taha