DonsDeals Blog: White House Plan for Web Identity Ecosystem a Tough Sell So Far

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Saturday, January 15, 2011

White House Plan for Web Identity Ecosystem a Tough Sell So Far | WebProNews

White House Plan for Web Identity Ecosystem a Tough Sell So Far

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace Draws Criticism

62 comments Thursday, January 13, 2011

Update: Read more on this from our conversation with Google Open Web Advocate and OpenID Board member, Chris Messina.

Original Article: The White House is working on a "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" in which it has placed the Commerce Department in charge of an "Identity Ecosystem". In a nutshell, the program is about giving consumers IDs they can use to log in across sites all over the web, which they can rely on as being secure, and not have to worry about remembering countless passwords (and thereby not having to use the same password over and over again on different sites, which is incredibly helpful to cyber criminals).

Would you rather have a single web ID than use multiple passwords? Comment here.

Of course the announcement of this strategy has already drawn plenty of skepticism, backlash, and general controversy. For example, many are skeptical that government can succeed where technology giants like Microsoft or Google have not. As some have pointed out, the company that's probably come the closest and has the best chance of accomplishing becoming online users' universal ID would be Facebook, given not only its enormous amount of users, but its integration into a large portion of the web through Facebook log-in. Add mobile and the rest of the world outside of the U.S. to the mix, and Facebook does have a very widespread and portable reach. Of course not everyone trusts Facebook to be their universal ID, with many very concerned with how the company treats privacy issues.

Much of the criticism of the White House's efforts has been over the vagueness of the strategy, and of course many simply don't want the government involved in this.

Read more...
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2011/01/11/white-house-plan-for-web-identity-ecosystem-a-tough-sell-so-far

The Comments are very interesting...

By ModernFeudalism (WPN reader) - Sat, 01/15/2011 - 09:58

Government Wants More Control and Greater Taxation!

Don’t be swayed by their lies! Their idea for a universal id is NOT about safety for us, it’s about surveillance and taxation, nothing else!

The private Federal Reserve, in collusion with the U.S. government, Republicans and Democrats alike, are complicit in selling out working-class Americans, turning over TRILLIONS of our dollars to bankers, the military industrial security complex, to private corporations, and to foreign central banks, and have put you and I on the hook to pay it all back! Now they want to track our every move on the internet, to see where we get our news, to see what purchases we make, all so they can fleece us even more!

No freaking thank you! I can track my own passwords! (more on the site)...

By Guest (WPN reader) - Sat, 01/15/2011 - 09:44

White House and the Internet

Well as a non US citizen, I find the idea that such a system could be in any way secure Laughable.

With the advent of all things financial being dominated by the use of Social Security Numbers in the US and the amount of fraud that has precipitated I cannot see how yet another costly Government project aimed primarily it seems at tracking individual use of the web would benefit anyone except Government and criminals, not mutually exclusive.

In the UK we have had much discussion about the introduction of Biometric ID cards which would contain ridiculously large amounts of personal information. It seems to me that the more personal information is centralised, the more at risk it is prone to abuse.
Lets face it the Security Services in most countries already have pretty much unfettered access to this information if they so choose.
So I would say a definite NO to such a move, if for no other reason than where the US leads the rest of the world tends to follow.

By tm (WPN reader) - Wed, 01/12/2011 - 13:13

This is a blatant attempt to

This is a blatant attempt to get what they asked for weeks ago. Access to everyone's accounts on face book and twitter and access to encrypted files and messages.

If we just give the gov a master password they can then access any of our accounts on any website we use anytime they want. And we know they no longer get search warrants.

Right now they are having trouble accessing accounts on twitter and face book without a search warrant. And they can not access encrypted mail and files.