Secure Identification Cards

Three disparate yet related things happened in November 2008 that suggest it is apposite to revisit a film that was controversial when released but which provides a
sophisticated reading of London in the early 21st century. First, Dirty Pretty Things (Frears 2002) was aired on Channel 4. Second, ID cards started to be issued to overseas nationals and airport workers. Third, London Mayor Boris Johnson called for an amnesty for all British migrants working illegally. Soon after the film was released the frenzied moral panic about asylum seekers was peaking, until knocked off the tabloid agenda by the Iraq war. The film was controversial when released and still provokes strong positive and negative reactions. It weaves together with great aplomb complex elements of the material, imagined, live, surveiled and (immigration) policed city. The inner London location filming adds credibility which counters the somewhat implausible, though tense and engaging plot. Cinema has long influenced our perception of the modern city even to the extent of producing the city (Clarke 1997 and Shiels & Fitzmaurice 2001). Many reviews of Dirty Pretty Things have been written but I want to concentrate, first on some misconceptions and then on its neo noir (Schwartz 2005) credentials, which affect the manner in which it portrays divergent yet proximate
aspects of the city big condition in a globalised neoliberal political economy.

In order to make the international supply chain system highly efficient in worldwide transportation of goods, its business processes should be supported by high quality information systems that, “24x7”, provide the right data, at the right time, at the right place, to the right person. To do so, the idea of a (virtual) “Seamless Integrated Data Pipeline” has been proposed, a new concept of an effective information exchange system. A key requirement of the Data Pipeline is that the information to be exchanged must be safe and reliable. Starting form the idea that existing systems should be used, this paper proposes three basic protocols that enable the secure exchange of data with respect to three identified security requirements, namely, that of secure identification of supply chain partners, that of harmonization of security levels, and that of harmonization of trust levels.