In the movie The Net the character Angela Bennett, played by the actress Sandra Bullock, is arrested as Ruth Marx. She tries to explain to her sceptical court-appointed lawyer that she is not Ruth Marx and that she is the victim of identity crime, following an incident in which her purse containing her passport and credit cards were stolen while she was on vacation in Mexico:

‘Just think about it. Our whole world is just sitting there on the computer. It's in the computer. Everything — your DMV records, your Social Security, your credit cards, medical files. All right there. A little electronic shadow on each and every one of us — just begging for someone to screw with it. And you know what — they did it to me. You know what — they are going to do it to you. I am not Ruth Marx. They invented her and put her on the computer with my thumbprint.’

Introduction

In this chapter I consider the protection afforded by the criminal law to transaction identity. The analysis builds on the examination of the functions and legal nature of transaction identity in chapters 2 and 3, the examination of the inherent vulnerabilities of the identifying information in chapter 4, and the human rights implications considered in chapter 5. Against this background, the protection of an individual's transaction identity, in the context of a national identity scheme like the NIS, assumes considerable significance.