Banks back UK government Midata identity project

The major UK banks and card schemes are a list of 26 companies that are working with the UK government on the creation of a new personal identity system for consumers transacting online. The 'Midata' initiative is an online replacement of the abandoned UK national identity card scheme. The Midata concept plans to release all sorts of data held by private business back to consumers. Companies can make this data available in which they can help consumers to manage their data (will consumers use this? probably not) and build a useful application and service to support it. An example of this is credit referencing agency CallCredit who will be providing credit reports for life.

This looks very much like social network analysis (although it isn't clear what it actually does) - understand/compile/analyze the social behaviour and habits of your citizens and compile a real-time centralized database collected from your main data assets - credit reference agencies, HMRC, DVLA and Passport Service to name a few. The revenue potentials for government, corporations, marketing agencies and advertisers are huge, and the cybercriminal community must also be salivating right now!