Mark of the Beast: Digital Identity and the Cashless Cartel
With the release of the iPhone X
people have been asked to accept a new level of biometric intrusion so that
their phone can identify them. But is this a simple security measure, or is
there a global policy agenda at work?
Since the turn of the century the
general public has been increasingly conditioned to interact digitally. From
social media, to e-commerce and cashless payment systems such as Apple Pay and Android
Pay, the "smartphone" is at the centre of the digital
revolution.
The driver for this is not just
corporate. There has been an accelerating transformation in the way that we
interact with government agencies. As just one example, patients in England
& Wales are now encouraged to pre-book doctor appointments. In
order to register for Patient Access patients
simply need to attend their doctor's surgery
with their passport and driving licenceafter which they will be
issued with a user ID and password.
Digital transformation of other
government services is being driven by the Government
Digital Service (GDS) which is part of the Cabinet
Office. GOV.UK Verify is
the new way to prove identity online.
Government agencies now using GOV.UK Verify include DVLA,
DWP, HMRC and DEFRA. Using GOV.UK Verify to access a
government service requires "customers" to select from a list
of companies certified to
verify identities, including:
·
Barclays, ·
CitizenSafe, ·
Digidentity, ·
Experian, ·
Post Office, ·
Royal Mail, ·
SecureIdentity
According to the Government Transformation Strategy,
2017 - 2020, published by the Cabinet Office, "By harnessing
digital to build and deliver services, the government can transform the
relationship between citizen and state".
Consideration is also being given to
making the GOV.UK Verify system available to Local Authorities across
the country. PublicTechnolgy.net reported
on 29 August 2017 that "London mayor Sadiq Khan has appointed the
capital’s first chief digital officer (CDO) ... Camden Councillor, Theo
Blackwell ... will take the lead on work to digitally transform public services
and turn London into the world’s smartest city”.
In his 2016 report UK Digital Strategy – local
government and digital transformation Theo Blackwell emphasised
that:
"Whitehall should empower local
government to...lead the development of an interoperability framework that
enables data sharing and end to end process automation across local and central
government".
By this stage you will probably be
wondering where all this transformation towards digitised Central and Local
Government Services is leading us. To discover the answer to this question we
need to examine the ongoing role being played by global financial institutions
such as HSBC.
HSBC and HSBC
Safeguard
HSBC's international network serves
around 38 million customers in 67 countries and
territories. Many of HSBC's customers have already received, or will soon
receive, letters concerning HSBC SafeGuard. This is a global
policy of this banking giant.
A copy of this letter has been examined
by UK Column researchers. This letter is headed "HSBC Safeguard: Help
Us detect fraudulent transactions and safeguard against financial crime".
It states that:
At HSBC, we're committed to
protecting all our customers' accounts, today and for the future. To do this we
need a little help from you. Our global systems rely on having the most
up-to-date customer information to detect fraudulent transactions and safeguard
against financial crime.
The letter continues, "As part
of HSBC safeguard, we're asking you to provide us with a document to prove your
identity". The fact that customers already provide this
information when opening the account now appears to be irrelevant.
How then can customer identity be
proved to the satisfaction of HSBC?
We prefer to see government issued
documents that include a photograph, such as a passport or driving licence.
The letter continued:
One of the quickest and most
convenient ways to provide us with your documents is to use the new
online JUMIO tool. To use this you'll need a computer equipped
with a webcam.
There is no indication in the letter
whether compliance with this request is voluntary or mandatory. However, it
does clearly state that if you fail to provide up-to-date documentation
"we may not be able to provide you with all of our services".
Reference to the frequently asked questions section
indicates that if a bank customer "fails to respond within 30 days of
receiving the letter a reminder will be sent". This implies that
compliance is mandatory. HSBC were contacted by telephone to clarify the issue.
HSBC indicated that this was not a mandatory requirement however we
have anecdotal evidence to
suggest that customers who fail to comply with the requirements of HSBC
SafeGuard have received a further HSBC letter stating
We are sorry to advise you that we
will no longer be able to provide you with banking services ... and ... we will
not be revisiting this decision.
JUMIO
The HSBC website incorporates a Jumio documents upload page.
Further reference to the HSBC letter
reveals that "Jumio is an external company specialising in verifying the
authenticity of specific documentation".
Jumio, which is based in Palo Alto,
California, "uses computer vision technology to verify credentials issued
by over 200 countries in real time web and mobile transactions. Jumio’s
solutions are used by leading companies in the financial services, sharing
economy, retail, travel and online gaming sectors".
One of Jumio's solutions is Netverify. This system "combines ID Verification,
Identity Verification, and Document Verification for a complete solution to
establish the real-world identity of consumers". This product
"integrates into websites, iPhone, or Android applications". For ID
verification the customer scans their ID document, the ID is authenticated against
security features, the customer's facial image is compared with face in ID
document, and biometric facial recognition ensures the person is actually
present. Netverify utilises "advanced technology including biometric facial recognition and
machine learning" in order that outdated customer verification
methods that require customers to email, fax, or physically drop off copies of
ID documents at a branch office, can be avoided.
This explains perfectly why the HSBC
customer identity check is best made using the Jumio tool via a computer
equipped with a web-cam. It appears to us that HSBC customers with smartphone
banking apps will soon benefit from Real-time ID Scanning and ID Authentication using
their IOS and Android mobile device cameras.
Know Identity
Conference 2017
Jumio were sponsors of the Know Identity Conference which
took place in mid-May 2017. Amongst the other sponsors were: IBM; CapitalOne;
Equifax; Experian; IDMe, and, LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
Details of the Know Identity
Conference can be found on the website of One World Identity.
Daily Insights published
by One World Identity provide a flavour of what the future could bring to
the UK. This includes
·
Singapore plans smartphone-based national digital
identity system for accessing government services
·
Singapore bank pushes cashless transactions to elementary
school children with free smartwatches
Keynote and other speakers in May 2017
included:- Edward Snowden,Former Intelligence Officer &
Whistleblower; Carmi Gillon, Former Head of the Israeli
"Shin Bet" Security Service and a leading cyber-security
expert; Serge Llorente, Director of Mobile Connect of
Orange; Susan Joseph, Advisor at One World Identity; Anand
Menon, Director, New Customers at Mastercard; Don
Thibeau, Chairman and President of the Open Identity Exchange; Matt
Miller, VP Conversational Commerce and Remote IoT at Mastercard; Matthew
Thompson, Director of Business Development at Capital One; Laura
Hunter, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft; Adam
Madlin, Business Development Director at Symantec; Tom
Purves, VP Digital Products - Visa Checkout at Visa Inc.; Toby
Rush, CEO of EyeVerify; Alex Ketter, Head of US
Compliance at Google Payment Corp; Greg Kidd, CEO
at Global iD; Juan Llanos, Senior Advisor of One
World Identity; Alka Gupta, Co-Founder global iD.
We also noted the presence of Niall
McCann, Lead Electoral Advisor at UN Development Programme; Adam
Cooper, Lead Technical Architect at UK Cabinet Office,
and, Stephen Stuut, CEO of Jumio.
Examples of topics listed on the 2017 conference agenda included:-
·
Identity As A Pillar In The Global Development Agenda: Efforts To Date
And Future Directions;
·
Identity and Democracy: A Look at Voter Registration;
·
The Personal Data Economy;
·
National Identity Schemes: Contrasting Different Approaches and
Progress;
·
The Business Of Identity;
·
Who Owns Identity? A Conversation;
·
Facilitating e-Commerce in a World Where Everyone is a Merchant.
We get a clue where this mixture of
corporate and government interests want to go from another session
entitled Implementing Identity for All:
Over 1.5 billion people globally lack
the ability to prove their identities. SDG 16.9 aims to provide legal identity
to all, including birth registration, by 2030.
The ID2020 Alliance
According to the ID2020 website, Article
6 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights "stipulates that 'Everyone
has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.' The
Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) include target 16.9 which aims to
"provide legal identity to all, including birth registration, by
2030.' Critically, this must include the >20M refugees worldwide."
This is now made technologically possible because
"the rapid proliferation of smart devices globally, combined with
ever-increasing computing power and rapidly expanding broadband coverage,
enables new methods of registration and facilitates ongoing interaction between
individuals and their identity data".
On June 19th, 2017, approximately 300
people gathered at the United Nations for the second annual ID2020 Summit. The
ID2020 Alliance, a consortium of public and private organisations, was launched
there. The summit was attended by representatives of UN organisations such as
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme); UNECLAC (United Nations Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean); UNHCR (United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees), and UN OICT (United Nations Office of
Information and Communication Technologies).
Participating organsiations included:
Accenture; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Biometrics Institute; Gavi (the
vaccine alliance); General Electric; IBM; IrisGuard; MasterCard; Microsoft; One
World Identity; Open Society Foundation (George Soros); PwC; Rockefeller
Foundation; Standard Chartered Bank; Unique Identity Authority of India;
Verizon; the World Economic Forum, and HSBC bank.
The ID
2020 Alliance is a "global partnership of governments,
NGOs and the private sector". The benefit of such a partnership approach
is that it "opens up opportunities to piggyback on the systems and
processes that public and private organisations already have in place".
The ID2020 Alliance approach is
supported by a grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation and major financial support from Accenture (NYSE:ACN). By
2030, their goal is to enable access to
digital identity for every person on the planet.
Services giant Accenture in partnership with
Microsoft are building an "unprecedented global digital ID
program to provide legal identification to 1.1 billion people without documents
around the world".
It is also worth noting that in
August 2016, the World Economic Forum, in conjunction with Deloitte, published
their 108-page document A Blueprint for Digital Identity:
The Role of Financial Institutions in Building Digital Identity.
Among the steering committee members we discovered John Flint, Chief Executive
Officer, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, HSBC.
The Identification
for Development (ID4D) Initiative
The Identification for Development
(ID4D) initiative was originally launched by the World Bank, and they are proud
to be working alongside the United Nations to get “legal identity” into the hands
of all. The following comes from the official website of the World Bank:
Providing legal identity for all
(including birth registration) by 2030 is a target shared by the international
community as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (target 16.9). The World
Bank Group (WBG) has launched the Identification for Development (ID4D)
cross-practice initiative, with the participation of seven GP/CCSAs sharing the
same vision and strategic objectives, to help our client countries achieve this
goal and with the vision of making everyone count: ensure a unique
legal identity and enable digital ID-based services to all.
A findbiometrics article published in 2015
revealed that
A report synopsis notes that about
1.8 billion adults around the world currently lack any kind of official
documentation. That can exclude those individuals from access to essential services,
and can also cause serious difficulties when it comes to trans-border
identification.
That problem is one that Accenture
has been tackling in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, which has been issuing Accenture-developed biometric identity
cards to populations of displaced persons in refugee camps in Thailand, South
Sudan, and elsewhere. The ID cards are important for helping to ensure that
refugees can have access to services, and for keeping track of refugee populations.
Moreover, the nature of the
deployments has required an economically feasible solution, and has
demonstrated that reliable, biometric ID cards can affordably be used on a
large scale. It offers hope for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of getting
legal ID into the hands of everyone in the world by the year 2030 with
its Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative.
In the (very) near future, the
absence of a unique digital legal identity could mean that an individual
becomes disqualified from seeking paid employment, is denied a bank or credit
card account, is unable to arrange a mortgage, is denied access to
healthcare, and is refused access to central or local government services.
On top of that, the
governments, financial institutions, credit reference agencies and technology
companies have demonstrated time and again that they are not to be trusted with
the data they hold on us today. Should the idea of a unique digital identity
make us feel safer?
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