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What are Entrust thinking of? David Moss, March 2007
According to a 25 March 2007 article in the Observer, David Blunkett has been appointed as an advisor to Entrust Inc. but cannot lobby in the UK on their behalf, particularly in connection with the ID cards scheme, until after November this year. Entrust sell public key infrastructure (PKI) software and, according to a 29 April 2003 press release, they won the contract to supply this software to GCHQ. It is therefore not clear why they would need Mr Blunkett to lobby for them in the UK – Entrust already have the highest accolade we could possibly grant to a PKI company. With or without the ex-Home Secretary's influence, they must be in the running for the Home Office's misbegotten ID cards scheme. In theory that leaves doors in every other country in the world for Mr Blunkett to open. But: 1. In which country would it be an asset to Entrust to have a lobbyist who doesn't seem to understand its business? Judging by Mr Blunkett's testimony to the Home Affairs Committee (question 625), he thinks that the security of the ID cards scheme would be provided by biometrics, not PKI. 2. In which country is it an asset to Entrust to have as a lobbyist an ex-Minister who had to resign from the government not once but twice for breaking the ministerial code? 3. Which democracy is going to listen to an ex-Home Secretary who suspended habeas corpus? 4. Which legislature is going to be impressed by a politician who ridiculed judges for dispensing the laws of his own government? 5. ... and whose actions as Home Secretary were declared illegal by the UK law lords and by EU lawyers? 6. Which US party is going to welcome the ex-Marxist leader of nuclear-free Sheffield City Council into its deliberations? 7. Which CEO is going to take advice from this ex-Education Secretary who increased his civil servants from 9,805 to 19,899 while confidence in the quality of the education delivered collapsed? 8. ... and who, as Home Secretary, filled the prisons to overflowing while failing to take steps to build any more? 9. This is a man who left office crying and declaring on television that he believed and hoped that he had impregnated another man's wife not once but twice. What are Entrust thinking of? How can Mr Blunkett's appointment help their sales? Or their share price? There are, after all, other PKI companies. (RSA, VeriSign, PGP, Thawte, ...)
David Moss has spent five years campaigning against the Home Office's ID card scheme. |