Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans • Hacker News Board

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#151

Post by rsingel » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 5:10 AM UTC

nowarninglabel wrote: post #121

rsingel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry the Engadget piece is full of FUD and light on details. I was at the event and covered it for Wired.com. This initiative is coming out of NIST inside the Commerce department, with smart folks there who know this 1) a tough problem, 2) needs to be an open standard and 3) that the feds role here is best as being the ones who convene the people in the room. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/obama-strategy-for…

>"There's got to be a better way to prove you are real and legit, than giving some company the right to pull a sub-one dollar sum of money from your bank account and then confirming that to them online" I've never had any problem with this method, what are your objective quantifications for why a 'internet id' from the Commerce Department would solve this better? Why does taxpayer money need to be spent on a problem…

There's literally nothing in the proposal about an internet ID from the Commerce Department. While I'm not thoroughly convinced we need better identification on the net, the proposal here is about creating standards for stronger identification -- something like OpenID with the weight of the federal government trying to get industry, privacy and security groups in the same room. The alternative, it seems to me, is to watch Facebook corner the market on consumer identity, while defense contractors or the banking industry wins government contracts, and the latter eventually create some very badly designed system for citizens to log in to government agency websites.

While I'm also deeply opposed to any government-run program, that's not what's happening here.

I'm also a bit disappointed here with Hacker News. Folks here could easily imagine an internet that is easier and safer with a better way for users to manage their identities, while retaining both privacy and the possibility of pseudonimity and anonymity. Instead, mostly what's shown up in the border here is a Reddit thread with people saying, "You can take my anonymous internet but you'll have to pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands." HN is usually much better than this.

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#152

Post by kgermino » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 5:39 AM UTC

seabee wrote: post #137

mark_l_watson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. Both political parties represent corporate interests, not the publics. Our infrastructure has suffered as a result of this and too much profit goes not to producers of goods and services but to wall street and other special interests. We can agree to disagree on this, but this is the way I see it.

It's obvious enough that infrastructure has declined with the blackouts you guys have had over the last decade.

To be fair the California blackouts had as much to do with Enron as with infrastructure problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#153

Post by sportsTAKES » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 5:54 AM UTC

bigsassy wrote: post #5

This article is pretty light on details. Here's a quote from the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt: 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. Read…

If anonymity will remain what is the point?

And saying there is no chance a centralized database will emerge is impossible to predict.

And what purpose does the ID serve if it's not able to be referenced via some sort of data base.

The White House's comments are nonsensical.

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#154

Post by wmf » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 5:55 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #148

lionhearted wrote: post #100

Profile: Sebastian Marshall. Internet ID 353-808-A331. Known aliases: "lionhearted". Primary contact info: sebastian@sebastianmarshall.com Political positions: A believer in liberty, pro-international travel and open borders, tends towards mild hostility towards regulation. Generally law-abiding. Friendliness to American Interests Rating (FAIR): 72/100

That 353-808-A331 is the lower 64 bits of your ipv6 address anytime you do anything online. You won't have to login anywhere! If you need to do something important you'll just sign with your private key and the gov will graciously provide the public key keyserver. I've been trying to tell that to everybody for years. Your Fair Score is actually your TerrorScore. Would you like to sort social media profiles by TerrorS…

IPv4 NAT is the best thing that ever happened to online anonymity.

There's exactly one person behind my NAT; how many are behind yours?

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#155

Post by nowarninglabel » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 6:40 AM UTC

rsingel wrote: post #151

nowarninglabel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"There's got to be a better way to prove you are real and legit, than giving some company the right to pull a sub-one dollar sum of money from your bank account and then confirming that to them online" I've never had any problem with this method, what are your objective quantifications for why a 'internet id' from the Commerce Department would solve this better? Why does taxpayer money need to be spent on a problem…

There's literally nothing in the proposal about an internet ID from the Commerce Department. While I'm not thoroughly convinced we need better identification on the net, the proposal here is about creating standards for stronger identification -- something like OpenID with the weight of the federal government trying to get industry, privacy and security groups in the same room. The alternative, it seems to me, is to…

"I'm also a bit disappointed here with Hacker News. Folks here could easily imagine an internet that is easier and safer with a better way for users to manage their identities"

I'm disappointed with you. Why do your values for a "safer and better" internet have to be imposed on me? Where is your objective data showing this will be a "safer and better" internet? Is internet use in Australia "safer and better" because they choose to govern and censor it? To me this sounds like the marketing-speak of the war on drugs and terror.

Furthermore, why do I need a federal program to do this? There are already identity management solutions and standards widely available, namely Shibboleth http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/, which is deployed across California State Universities and universities across the U.S. There is no reason it could not be leveraged for federated identity.

>"While I'm also deeply opposed to any government-run program, that's not what's happening here."

Pardon? Just because it is a private-public partnership does not exclude the government from ownership, but don't trust me, go read the source yourself: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/ns_tic.pdf That is the draft from when it was proposed for DHS. You can see in the document itself the references to "accountability" of these private partners to the government in their "Identity Ecosystem".

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#156

Post by drivebyacct2 » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 6:51 AM UTC

eitland wrote: post #93

RickRoll wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about because ppl prefer religion over science. And security over freedom. Federal government getting more corrupt and more powerful with each year.

The problem is NOT that people prefer religion over science. The problem is people prefer sitcoms over both religion and science.

Uh what? I'd prefer that most Americans sat and watched sitcoms and left the mental lifting to the rest of us. Sadly, the religious folk think they have a seat at the intellectual table as well.

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#157

Post by omouse » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 7:02 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #19

drats wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me again of why we "need" a solution such as this? All this screeching reminds me of the people wanting a centralized solution to spam in the 1990s via government control or micropayments. We don't hear from them anymore because of spam filters and increased storage and bandwidth. My google account has double authentication now, telephone as well as a second email address, and serves as a central repository fo…

"Remind me again of why we 'need' a solution such as this?" There are lots of services that people want that are impossible to build without a way to prove that someone is who they say they are. E.g. better reputation systems. "we all KNOW it will be abused." Obviously. That doesn't mean there isn't a need though.

Reputation systems are bullshit. Some things just cannot be quantified, sorry.

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#158

Post by DuncanIdaho » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 7:40 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #102

postingfromwork wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the right track, actually. Academic motivation is virtually nonexistent in the States, whereas in China kids go to school on Saturdays and go to private cram schools until nighttime. A nation is made or broken by its education systems since after all, knowledge is power.

Academic motivation is virtually nonexistent in the States, whereas in China kids go to school on Saturdays and go to private cram schools until nighttime. A nation is made or broken by its education systems since after all, knowledge is power. Well, the OP said "rapid decline". This is a gradual non-improvement, which is not the same thing. Also, does going to school 7 days a week increase learning? I can sit in fro…

Knowledge is leverage. Leverage works as interest upon interest. Therefore gradual non-improvement is the same as rapid decline. Loosing 3 percent a year where everybody is standing still is not that different as standing still in a world where everybody is accumulating interest.

Also what I have noticed with myself ( I had a decadent phase in life, moved on and now look on "friends" who stayed where they were) - decadent consumerism might not look as bad when you start doing it. But it erodes your soul it makes you weak and timid. Arm the lumpenproletariat with high tech - and you won't get "a little bit weaker" society - you get idiocracy.

A human to be happy must play hard, work hard and love hard. This is a virtue that most everybody is abandoning these days. I'm not advocating for repression (like China, India or western world of old), I'm advocating that we don't forget a passion in our lives and that we do not fail to show it to our children. Else everything is in vain.

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#159

Post by dkokelley » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 7:41 AM UTC

This was a minor plot device in the book Ender's Game, where two super-intelligent children needed to borrow their father's network citizen access to post on the forums about their ideas. Obviously this isn't what the administration is suggesting, but it seems like a dangerous first step. I don't like it.

I'm happy with an optional OpenID-like system for stronger authentication and convenient access to account logins, but the system should be 100% optional. There's no way I'm going to trust anyone with the ability to masquerade as me through a closed system. Imagine using Facebook Connect or Google to log in to your bank. Facebook has no business involving me and my bank. It is between me and my bank only. And there is no reason for me to risk my full, unlimited online identity to a single provider like Facebook or Google. The government also has no business knowing who my bank or email provider of choice are.

Re: Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

#160

Post by DuncanIdaho » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 7:50 AM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #156

eitland wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is NOT that people prefer religion over science. The problem is people prefer sitcoms over both religion and science.

Uh what? I'd prefer that most Americans sat and watched sitcoms and left the mental lifting to the rest of us. Sadly, the religious folk think they have a seat at the intellectual table as well.

They do IMHO.

No their function is not to divine when did Noah leave the ark and how did all those animals and humans repopulate the earth in 4k and something years.

Their job is to ask "stupid" questions. Their job is to analyse the results of science through spiritual and theological lens. In short role of religion in society is same as role of CEO in a company - to provide strategy, vision and guidance. Sadly both are increasingly failing us.

True problem of religions nowadays is not that there is no place for them - but that they outright refuse to re evaluate their positions, instead demanding their rights of old. Just like RIAA, MPAA, etc..,

But indeed that would mean they had to work and be creative - maybe even expose themselves to some risk, but that would be too hard. Better to cling to old birthrights and refuse to cooperate.