LSE Identity Project reflects on 20 years of observing, influencing digital identity policy

The London School of Economics (LSE) Identity Project is celebrating twenty years of existence. At an event held in London, academics gathered to reflect on the June 2005 launch of the LSE Identity Project report regarding the standing government’s plans to bring biometric identity cards to the UK.

The report, says an announcement, “played a prominent role in shaping parliamentary debates on the issue. It also influenced public and media perceptions of the proposed scheme so much so that following the 2010 general election, the first bill of the incoming coalition government was to scrap the identity cards scheme.”

The group says that, in the two decades since, “academic research into the social study of identity systems has grown significantly and globally as more and more countries look to introduce some form of identity system, in part to address Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.9.” (To provide legal identity for all.)

Edgar Whitley, professor of information systems in the Department of Management at LSE, offers a recap of evolutions that have transpired over 20 years. Whitley goes back to 2004, and then-prime minister Tony Blair’s efforts to introduce national ID cards. Work on the LSE Identity Project began the following year, to delve into stakeholder perspectives on the proposal, questions about the technical architecture of the project, and the implications of the legislation.

The group moved quickly, mustering an expert panel that led to the introduction of an interim draft report to keep pace with the movement of the legislation. Whitley points to specific language that appeared in the Labour government’s manifesto after it won an election victory in May 2005: “they made a commitment – and the wording is really important for for a little bit later on – to introduce ID cards including biometric data like fingerprints backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.”

Despite hefty promises from the Home Office, the revised bill faced major political opposition, and raised a din of questions about the relationship between the state and identity, the right to privacy and the sensitivity of biometric data. Some wondered whether the government was the best choice for building a large-scale IT project; others, including the LSE, worried about the potential for ballooning costs. “Even within government there were concerns about the viability of this project,” Whitley says.

From there, the narrative goes on like a shaggy dog story, illustrating the complexity of the societal and legal debate about digital ID in the twenty-first century – and the political and logistical struggles to push the project forward.

Aadhaar, Home Office take hits as discussion turns philosophical

Other speakers take up the discussion to talk about biometrics projects that mediate social welfare schemes, focusing on the sociotechnical aspect of digital ID. Verifiable credentials come up, as does age assurance and zero knowledge proofs. Data minimization is advantageous; but what if the government has access to all the transactional data from digital credentials?

Reetika Khera, a professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, has some sharp critique of India’s Aadhaar digital identity system: emphasizing the need for “administrative machinery” on top of tech, she says, if you “put good technology with bad administration and bureaucracy, you’ll get something like Aadhaar – which is sort of Big Data meets Big Brother and goes Kafka: you have the commercial interests a marriage of convenience between the private sector and the government to the detriment of citizens interests.”

She raises the example of women whose faces are scarred in an acid attack, making them unreadable for facial recognition. And there are problems for many people who “fall off the grid.” Khera says “the burden that is being put on ordinary people for a not very well defined gain makes the whole project quite questionable in a context like India.”

Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, aims his ire at the UK Home Office: “if the government genuinely wanted to create an infrastructure for identity that genuinely helped people,” he says, “they wouldn’t let the Home Office within a 100 miles from it.” He says a diverse sampling of civil society should be engaged in the development of a digital identity program: “that is the ID system that we should all dream of – one where nobody’s afraid to be part of it, and nobody wants to be outside of it.”

Event chair Shirin Madon, a professor of information communication technologies and socioeconomic development at LES, poses a larger question that seems to loom over the conversation: “do we think that technology can actually lead to a situation eventually that is not just a case of collecting for the sake of collecting but actually improving the situation in the long run, in terms of enabling people to have more ownership of their own data?”

“We often associate information or digitization with this big word, Democracy, and I often think to myself, what does this mean?” Madon says. “Is it just to do with the state having the possibility to to see and therefore to provide security and welfare and all the responsibilities that the state has in a democratic society? Or is it to do with somehow using digital identification and identity credentials to enable debate and deliberation, which is a very important aspect of democracy?”

Whitley – whose Women in Identity report was the focus of a recent Biometric Update webinar, and who has spoken at ID4Africa events to talk about ID inclusion – ponders the degree to which we have already granted machines a kind of latent control. He quotes the writer Neil Postman, from his book Technopoly: “in earlier times we used to say it is God’s will. Now we say the computer says no. And so there is that sense that the computer has become the god.”

The statement underlines the breadth, depth and complexity of the ongoing history of digital identity. As large language models and other algorithmic models like ChatGPT begin to populate the digital world with generated deepfake content, and technological and social change pushes the limits of digital public infrastructure and digital ID, more questions continue to arise. What will the conversation look like in another twenty years?

Whitley says there are many lessons yet to be learned – and “still lots for me to keep researching.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity management  |  legal identity  |  London School of Economics Identity Project  |  national ID  |  SDG 16.9