Thread: Obama Administration Reportedly Plans to Create Internet ID for Americans.

STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.



That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

The Obama administration is currently drafting what it's calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months.


"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said.

Details about the "trusted identity" project are remarkably scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.

Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential, if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.

Source


Yea, right "There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," or that it will be optional forever.

Yeah we'll see how this plan works lol

They're probably think about "One password to rule them all"

and all we have to do is wait for someone to hack it all, then we are all screwed

Oh hell no. I wouldn't use it. EVER. The Gov can't even get disaster response right, let alone security for their computers. He has totally lost touch with reality.

Agreed Hurricane, NASA was running Windows boxes for fuck's sake. Like seriously, let's go ask an educated individual like Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman if they would ever, in a million years, use this system. I'll guarantee you'll get a no, and that's coming from the people that used to prefer their systems completely open for the community to use.