Authorization and Profiling Systems

I have been thinking a lot lately about identity theft, driver licenses, voter registration, passports, ATM cards, etc., and so I wanted to try to build a framework for discussing these issues. Sometimes discussions of specific solutions marginalize the larger discussion of the underlying purpose of such systems, and I have been as guilty as anyone in that regard. I see two distinct purposes for identification systems.

The first purpose is authorization: Various public and private authorities would like to be able permit some people to do some things but not others. (For example, I should be authorized to cancel my own cell phone service, and perhaps also that of my husband, but not that of my neighbor.) But authorization is not quite the same as identification. Assigning permissions to identity profiles and associating those identity profiles with individuals is merely one way to implement an authorization system. For an authorization system to function it is not necessary to know who you are, only that you are authorized (or not) to do whatever it is you are trying to do. Even imprisoning someone technically requires only the knowledge that the person has been convicted and sentenced.

The second purpose is profiling: Various public and private authorities want to know our ages, where we live, what we purchase, etc. This is the aspect of identification most people worry about, because we rightly fear our loss of privacy. Nevertheless there are some purposes for which most would concede some level of profiling is acceptable, such as the census, or perhaps the income tax. But again, profiling is not quite the same thing as identification either. Profiling is about gathering statistics and correlating data. For example, the census may wish to know that exactly one person lives at a certain address, and that the person living at this address is African-American, but that person need not be identified in any other way--they need not even be named.

The foregoing discussion leads me to wonder: is it possible to separate the authorization and profiling systems somehow? Might it even be possible to implement some of these functions without resorting to a classic "identification" system at all? The classic authorization system, which requires no identification whatsoever, is of course the humble key. Anyone can use it, and ownership implies authorization. We do not need to "log in" to enter our homes or use our cars--we need not prove who we are. Perhaps some series of public/private keys (in the figurative sense) could be used to accomplish some of the authorization functions without storing information in an identity profile?

Anyway, I have no answers, but I thought I would share my musings. I just thought it was interesting that we often focus the debate immediately on "identity" whereas the underlying goals are authorization and profiling, which are not quite the same thing.