The UK government is working with Google, Microsoft, and the financial industry to create a digital "vault" in which "every detail of people's finances could be collated and stored," according to a report in The Telegraph. Ultimately, this vault would store "people's address, phone numbers, tax details, where they are registered to vote, driving records and benefit claims, as well as information about their mortgages, pensions and bank accounts" in a single, unified database. Gulp.

One of the claimed benefits of the scheme is that it would make it easier to sign up for bank accounts and other financial services. The vault would replace the current system, whereby applicants need to send in copies of key documents such as passports to corroborate their personal information. In the future, "to check someone's identity, a company would then ask potential customers a series of questions and check the answers against the information in the vault."

That means the vault would need to be online so that it could be queried millions of times a day by financial institutions, and probably beyond: once a centralised identity system is in place, it will be natural for others to turn to it when people need to establish who they are. The system is supposedly "opt-in," but the UK's England's Care.data medical database was supposedly opt-out, and look what happened there. If created, it's likely that the vault will be one of those non-optional optional systems: you don't have to join, but if you decide not to, you can't sign up for anything important.

Of course, by placing such a centralised store of key financial data online, the scheme would create not just an irresistible honeypot, but an incredibly vulnerable one too. Even assuming every data security measure were taken, and that there were no errors in the code (just kidding), the vault would be under constant attack by just about every state and non-state actor hoping to get lucky. Which, in the end, somebody will.

The people who came up with this idea obviously don't read the news, or they might have heard about the 2.4 million Carphone Warehouse records accessed illegally in the UK, or the 21.5 million copies of US Office of Personnel Management records that are now sitting on some server in a foreign land. Even assuming there was anyone still foolish enough to think that centralised systems holding such valuable data were a good idea before these massive breaches, it is inconceivable that any vaguely rational human being could possibly think so now.

Against this background of ever-greater losses of highly personal data from consolidated databases, how is it possible that the parties involved are even discussing such an insane scheme? The interest of Google and Microsoft is clear enough: they just want to sell lots of kit. When—not if—the system is breached, they will doubtless just blame it on shortcomings in operational security. Similarly, the financial companies involved readily admit that their motivation is to get their hands on even more of the public's money: "senior executives at investment firms believe that offering every adult a 'one-stop' view of their financial life would encourage more people to save."

It's easy to understand how simple greed can make these people indifferent to the inevitability of security breaches, and the massive problems identity theft will cause people whose personal information is swiped, but what about the UK government: what's in it for them? As The Telegraph explains, it's simple, really: "people's digital vaults might provide an easier way to catch those avoiding tax or claiming benefits to which they are not entitled." Oh, even more surveillance. Well, that's OK, then.