‘On the third day Winston went to the vestibule of the Records Department to look at the notice board. One of the notices carried a printed list of the members of the Chess Committee, of whom Syme had been one. It looked almost exactly as it had looked before — nothing had been crossed out — but it was one name shorter. It was enough. Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed.’

Introduction

In this chapter I examine the right to identity as a fundamental human right under international law and specifically under the ECHR. I argue that the right to identity arises in specific form in relation to digital identity in the context of a scheme like the NIS. I examine the relationship of this right to identity to other rights, most notably the right to privacy in the context of the scheme.

In the context of the NIS, the right to identity is the right to be recognised and to function as an individual under the scheme. It takes specific form as the right of an individual to an accurate, functional, unique transaction identity. This right arises because under the scheme, transaction identity is identity used by an individual for transactions and it is the gateway to, and gatekeeper of, the other Schedule 1 information which makes up an individual's database identity. Like the concept of identity which is the subject of this book, I argue that this right to identity is emergent.