Digital Identity

Abstract

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