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Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

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Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#51

Post by wmf »

protomyth wrote: post #49
wmf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've gotten to the real issues here. If the problem is lack of industry consensus (i.e. N standards instead of one), maybe the government can bully the industry into picking one .

I'm really not sure we are at the point where we should be picking. We are still very early and e-commerce seems to be doing fine without it.

We are "very early" in the sense that we're in the same place as 1996: usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and SSL. (Or maybe we're worse off, since we didn't have much phishing in 1996.) What is it going to take to get some progress here?

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#52

Post by webXL »

trotsky wrote: post #27
mindcrime wrote: post #2

Yeah, right. Let me know how that works out for ya. Like anybody is going to trust something like this, when the US Federal Government has it's fingers in the pie. This thing is dead in the water from day 0. This idea is about as dead as the Norwegian Blue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE

arpanet

DARPA contracted with universities to create it. Just because the military's interests were once aligned with advancing communication technology between academics doesn't mean we should accept that all or even some of the current government's "involvement" is simply for the betterment of mankind. These people ultimately rely on the threat and use of force to do their "job" no matter how remotely connected its authority is to the U.S. Constitution.

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#53

Post by Bystander »

“There’s going to be a huge bump and a huge increase in the amount and kind of data retailers are going to have.”

And government control too? Count me out.

There are already plenty of people buying things on the web - I don't see a real problem here that the govt needs to fix.

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#54

Post by younata »

jchrisa wrote: post #5

Doesn't seem so farfetched to me. If there is gonna be de facto centralized identity providers (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) the govt may as well get in on the game. Only makes it more important that we get decentralized identity mechanisms (key based id) up and running sooner rather than later.

and this is part of why every email I send is PGP-signed. <3 this decentralized way of identifying me. All you gotta do is trust a guy who trusts me, or semi-trust several guys who (semi-)trust me.

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#55

Post by younata »

Artifex wrote: post #42
aamar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Postal Service has existed for over 200 years, and at no point has it become mandatory. We could easily provide half a dozen other major government initiatives which intersect with commercial activity and do not seem remotely on track to mandatory usage. What makes this particular initiative different? If the postal service were created today, would you also suspect that it would become mandatory in a matter o…

Yes, but there also used to be competing post offices that were so profitable and efficient that they were able to offer three-cent stamps. Read about it here: http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP3.htm Spooner's post office was so good that no one was really using the USPS any more. He was literally running them out of business. That is, until Congress came in and said that what he was doing was illegal. Since then,…

so, why hasn't email been made illegal? It's essentially free post, and the post office could argue that it's killing their revenues.

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#56

Post by jerf »

T-R wrote: post #16

Atwood and others have been praising the idea of a centralized identification system for a while, and tying it to a government identification system makes sense, but tying this to the Obama administration could be a marketing disaster. I can already hear Glenn Beck associating it with Nazi Germany and advocating against its use. Similarly, its association with Verizon, AT&T, Paypal, Symantec, and Google is likely to…

... you think the reaction would be substantially different if the Bush administration seriously proposed this? Same script, different actors. The best measure of how much of our political arena our politicians aren't actually serious about is which opinions flip 180 when control passes from the demopublicans to the republicrats. "Hey, remember how we were against the idea of the Internet being controlled by the government? Now it's peachy keen!" "Remember how all that spending was like, terrible last year? Now it's our turn and we have a moral imperative to spend! Wheee!"

(And just to be clear, no, neither of those are targeted at one party in particular.)

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#57

Post by joe_the_user »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #18
nickpinkston wrote: post #17

Wait... this doesn't add up for me: "[This will] limit fraud and streamline online transactions, leading to a surge in Web commerce" - Is this really that big of a factor in constraining online retail, or is there a greater chance of it imposing stupid rules. Who's behind this? "Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., PayPal Inc., Symantec Corp. and AT&T" - Oh yea, this sounds perfectly benevolent... But who's over…

You'll just be able to use your government issued id to make your book purchases on Amazon. Sounds good!

You'll be able to use your government issued id and your credit card to buy stuff on Amazon that now you have to buy with ... your credit card.

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#58

Post by [deleted] »

javert wrote: post #32
nickpinkston wrote: post #17

Wait... this doesn't add up for me: "[This will] limit fraud and streamline online transactions, leading to a surge in Web commerce" - Is this really that big of a factor in constraining online retail, or is there a greater chance of it imposing stupid rules. Who's behind this? "Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., PayPal Inc., Symantec Corp. and AT&T" - Oh yea, this sounds perfectly benevolent... But who's over…

but it seems like where the companies (incl. GOOG) are trying to take net neutrality - into a controllable space with gov't teeth... This is why I'm opposed to net neutrality. Net neutrality has always been about "a controllable space with gov't teeth." Net "neutrality" is a contradiction in terms because it requires the government and corporate cronies to make it work, and the government and corporate cronies are no…

[deleted]

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#59

Post by Natsu »

javert wrote: post #32
nickpinkston wrote: post #17

Wait... this doesn't add up for me: "[This will] limit fraud and streamline online transactions, leading to a surge in Web commerce" - Is this really that big of a factor in constraining online retail, or is there a greater chance of it imposing stupid rules. Who's behind this? "Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., PayPal Inc., Symantec Corp. and AT&T" - Oh yea, this sounds perfectly benevolent... But who's over…

but it seems like where the companies (incl. GOOG) are trying to take net neutrality - into a controllable space with gov't teeth... This is why I'm opposed to net neutrality. Net neutrality has always been about "a controllable space with gov't teeth." Net "neutrality" is a contradiction in terms because it requires the government and corporate cronies to make it work, and the government and corporate cronies are no…

> Net neutrality has always been about "a controllable space with gov't teeth."

Eh? No. It was formed as a reaction to plans announced by the big telcos to monetize traffic flowing through their networks. Specifically, they were going to hobble the connection speeds of any popular website like YouTube unless they were paid money. So people who weren't even their customers could have their traffic throttled merely because it happened to cross their network.

At the time, everyone from the ACLU to the Christian Coalition was outraged by this naked money grab. Basically, almost everyone hated the idea.

Then a bunch of lobbyists came into play and split us up about what we should do in response. So you have the current false choice of "let the government regulate the internet" and "let free enterprise screw everyone over."

What everyone wants is an internet where a suddenly popular site only has to pay its own ISP for bandwidth, not one where every single network operator comes to them for a handout saying, "That's a nice website you got there. Would be a shame if anything happened to it."

Getting there is the hard part.

Re: Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama Administration

#60

Post by rorrr »

evilduck wrote: post #43
rorrr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make no sense. Driver's licenses are required , if you want to drive any car.

False. Drivers licenses are only required if you want to drive on public roads. If you have a lot of property with private roads (farms, quarries, etc), you're free to drive unlicensed. Hell, you don't even have to get a license plate for your car if you never put it on a public road (although you'll probably have to register it with the state for property tax reasons).

Oh yes, a very common case, people driving on their private roads.
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