Dutch government asked to create "digital safe deposit boxes"

Wouter Slegers wouter at yourcreativesolutions.nl
Thu Apr 19 02:56:21 PDT 2001


On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 10:16:50AM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 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
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





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list