| I work with homeless people, people in precarious situations, people without ID, immigrants without papers, etc. I've discussed this very concept multiple times, from multiple angles, with a few organisations. This issue becomes a real issue of when the person becomes gravely ill, or dies. Most of the time, it's impossible to trace the person's history - contacting next of kin, working out their path until their demise. This is a real problem to solve. However, the practical aspects are that this device needs to be non-identifying, and needs also to be non-exploitable by third parties (in particular: police). Many people without papers are already in a situation that's difficult enough as it is, but this would be made even more difficult by giving police / other authorities a tool to trace, track, and punish. Likewise, many people in these situations do not WANT to be found, or do not WANT to carry papers. The conclusion that I had come to would be that these devices are completely encrypted, and provide no form of external data (ID, etc); and a 'read only' industry facing interface would be exposed. Services, such as hospitals, or indeed police, etc - could lodge requests to a system with this data. The system would register this information, but give nothing back. The organisation trusted with this information (could be a recognised charity that works with homeless etc) - would be able to, if requested, or required, or at the person's death, be able to access this information. The end result being, a person holding one of these cards would be able to have a medical history, and be able to build up a map of their lives. Such things already exist: social security card, etc. It's a tough problem to crack, once you start to consider the human element. |