What a parcel of rogues in a nation’s database - The Scottish ID Database and Britain’s Asymmetric Constitution

That the Internet as a global medium poses unique challenges for legal regulation and law, still intimately linked to the nation state, is a common place. Much less studied are challenges to ICT governance that are the result of sub-state divisions. As recent decades have seen a resurgence of regionalism, in Europe and globally, with several groups achieving substantive “devolved” powers in autonomous or semi-autonomous regions, this question merits closer scrutiny. Countries with “asymmetric” constitutions are a particularly fertile ground to explore the issues that are raised for the use and regulation of information technology systems that try to serve local needs while being integrated into a global communication infrastructure. This paper uses the discussion on a national ID database and e-identity provider for Scotland to explore these issues. We will see that even the most advanced technological solutions are still influenced by historical events, and in our case lead us back to the 17th century, from there to the second World War, and finally to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. Also, much of it will turn out to be the fault of the Germans