E-voting and identity

Voting and identity have a very delicate relationship. Only a few processes - pendsomuchonanidentitymanagementrespectingthe? nelinebetweenreliable identi? cation and reliable non-identi? ability each at its part during the process. And only a few processes may change their outer appearance so much with the advent of new IT as voting and identity management do. So it was no surprise in FIDIS, the interdisciplinary Network of Excellence working on the Future of Identity in the Information Society, when Ammar Alkassarproposedanalyzethetechnical, socio-ethicalandlegalrelationsbetween Identity and E-Voting as part of Sirrix’s activity in FIDIS. There are many reasons for doing this, e. g. , the open question of the imp- cations of identity and identi? cation to the emerging ? eld of E-Government and E-Democracy, especially E-Voting. Issues to be discussed are from several - mains, e. g. , is identity fraud a crucial matter in E-Voting? What is the trade-o? between anonymity and free speech vs. content-related o? ences? Is it approp- ate to use ID cards or health-insurance cards with digital identities for citizen tasks or voting? What about using SIM cards? Can we employ biometrics for identi? cation purposes with respect to E-Democracy? Last but not least nearly all areas of E-Government rely on a reliable link between the citizens and their governments and administrations. However, in contrast to business processes, the e? ects are much more crucial: Identity fraud may cause more problems than in the business domain; the consequences of misuse cannot be measured just by ? nancial means.