After examining Gov.UK Verify and the U.S.-based Federal Cloud Credential Exchange (FCCX), students at University College London have found the programs to “suffer from serious privacy and security shortcomings,” while “failing to comply with privacy-preserving guidelines they are meant to follow, and may actually degrade user privacy.” Computing reports the students found both websites have hub-based systems that could surreptitiously “impersonate users,” which “represents a serious danger to citizen privacy and, more generally, to civil liberties.” In a blog post, officials wrote, “Gov.uk Verify does not allow for mass surveillance. It does not have any other connection with or ability to monitor people or their data,” SC Magazine reports.
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