On Sat, 6 May 2006, Peter Todd wrote:

> My point is that the problem is people who need to crack the ID system
> for "legit" purposes, for instance to oppose the current government,
> won't be able to because it's technologically secure. Those who can go
> about it through bribery and what not are probably already pretty
> aligned with at least elements of the government anyway. The
> prostitution trade benifits lots of government types for those reasons.
>
> Net result, more corruption, those with the money make the rules etc.

It could be argued that it would be a 'populist' decision, driven by 
someone's illogical/technically unfounded belief that chipping is better 
than not chipping.

> One quibble... Taking the chip out of someone else will probably be
> quite hard. If I were implementing such a system the database would
> include a lot of biometrics, photo, fingerprint, instantly popping up on
> the scanners screen... You'd need to still bribe or hack into the
> database storing all of this anyway.

So they will have a chip and they will not trust the chip, so they will 
check other biometric data in case the chip fails or is faked, and they 
will check the other biometric data if *that* appears not to conform to 
the data in the chip. But they are already doing this now. So adding the 
chip to the system adds another variable. This means that the system 
will cost more for the same reliability as it had before. There are no 
exception clauses in Occam's razor principle.

Peter
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