Personally, I can't think of a better use for *my* tax dollars! --Declan After a quick skim of the commission's paper I do not think this "digital safe" is meant to be a general purpose holder of information but is intended as a more modern, more accessable holder of the information already managed by the municipal governments (name, address, date and place of birth, social security number, nationality) with the

On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 10:16:50AM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: possibility of containing additional information such as biometrics and fiscal income. All these will be subject to access control and will be unlocked to the citizens by use of the new generation passport (which will also contain smartcard with a certificate). Government agencies will gain access in a similar way as they do now (which is independently audited and, in contrast to many other countries, always subject to public verification). The costs are estimated at 65,8 Mfl (app. 30MEuro) from 2001-2008, this is including design, implementation and roll-out. This translates to about 2 Euro per person. As presented, the newer system stores and manages the same kind of information the old systems do, but in a more visible and for the citizen more controlable way. The major drawback I see is that this system seems to be highly centralized, which makes it less resistant to large scale compromittation as the current, highly decentralized system. Let's just hope that they will build on strong technologies and not use the swiss cheeses of security from Redmond. By the way, the Telepolis article <URL:http://www.ct.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/7393/1.html> is far better in summarizing this then the quoted article. With kind regards, Wouter Slegers