The electronic 'me'

Integrity of the system

It is to the advantage of an individual to have all connections in the one place and connected biometrically to themselves as it makes it very, very difficult for someone else to steal their identity. The only way for an electronic identity to be stolen is to physically kidnap or take control of the person.

Fraud through the attempted creation of multiple identities would not be possible as it would almost certainly be detected by biometric security procedures and by an individual's behaviour.

Audit procedures and independent checks of organisations looking after connections (the links between relationships) would further protect the integrity of such a system.

Does it need government legislation to come into existence?

A system as described here does not require any special legislation to become operational; in fact we have already built a system with these characteristics. It can be viewed at www.edentiti.com. This system can co-operate with other systems built in the same way and it is expected that over time many different Edentiti-type systems will interoperate. Individual organisations use the system for registration of customers who can prove who they are. As it reduces the cost of transactions, it is expected that such systems will ultimately prevail in the marketplace for identification.

Conclusion

The advantages of people retaining control of their own electronic identity information are great in terms of reduced costs, increased privacy and more open and secure transactions, making it an approach that is likely to prevail.  By adjusting the way we handle individual transactions we can attain our system goals of increased security and reduced costs while still having a free and open society.