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Obama administration moves forward with unique Internet ID for all Americans

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

#161

Post by vog »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #80
jrockway wrote: post #55

I'll be getting one of these when hell freezes over. If that means starting my own Internet, then that's exactly what I'll do.

I would like to see more local (at the town level) shared networks. Something like cheap wi-fi base stations (really cheap!) that could link up a local area and have a good directory of what material people host to be shared, local bulletin boards, etc. I live in a rural area and several of my friends are going the self sufficient route and my wife and I are at least putting in enough solar panels to generate about 3…

I would like to see more local (at the town level) shared networks. Something like cheap wi-fi base stations [...]

Here in Germany, we have an initiative that is devoted to exactly that problem. It is called "Freifunk" and has been deployed successfully to other countries.

http://wiki.freifunk.net/Kategorie:English

The Freifunk hackers did some amazing work to provide the needed firmware for many of the cheap standard wi-fi routers, as well as other hardware.

They are also doing good scientific work regarding mesh networks. Since they are working with real-world networks, their work usually surpasses the quality of university research. That's why nowadays many German universities are working together with Freifunk. For instance, they use Freifunk routers for their field tests.

If you want to build something like that in your town, you should definitely have a look at what those guys are doing, and I'm sure they'll be happy to assist you.

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

#162

Post by Quarrelsome »

motters wrote: post #52

If it waddles like a national ID system and quacks like a national ID system, then it's probably a national ID system. Here in the UK we are fortunate to have recently dumped plans for a national ID system. Americans should do the same.

The issue in the UK was never about having an id card or an identity system. They have systems like that in France and they're fine.

The major issues were:

* taking biometric information from the entire population including fingerprints.

* linking that information to an online identity

* joining up all government databases on said identities (health, law enforcement etc) enabling departments to cross reference information

* plans to use this identity as your only gateway to be able to receive a job, receive benefits etc

* plans to allow certain individuals at any moment to "quarantine" identities (preventing work, benefits etc)

The entire system looked so open to abuse it was scary. I'm v.glad we're rid of it.

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

#163

Post by nitrogen »

chopsueyar wrote: post #83
sbov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal society, where there is no fraud or stolen identities, what are the benefits in building this?

It will end terrorism and drug abuse.

I'm guessing your comment was downvoted because people didn't appreciate the verbal irony (where both common meanings of appreciate apply). Or, if you were actually serious, then never mind.

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

#164

Post by nitrogen »

pyre wrote: post #117
yoyar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation for purchasers and sellers is a solved problem. Eg, ebay.

Right. Because eBay and Paypal have completely eradicated fraud and the gaming of the system. In addition, there are no false-positives in this scheme and people are not thrown under the bus just because they aren't 'internet famous' enough to get their situation resolved... I'm not agreeing that we need a government system, but don't point to eBay as the solution to fraud.

What system in existence is completely resilient to fraud and false positives, and what evidence shows that the US government can produce such a system?

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

#165

Post by bad_user »

wmf wrote: post #154
narrator wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, but how many people know that?

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

#167

Post by loewenskind »

zzeroparticle wrote: post #145
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.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I've always been rather fond of pg's quote which says something to the effect that "if I had to choose between bad high schools and good universities, like the US, and good high schools and bad universities, like most other industrialized countries, I'd take the US system. Better to make everyone feel like a late bloomer than a failed child prodigy."

I'm pretty sure our children will be talking about how pg was thoroughly proven wrong in this. What percentage of americans go to college? pg's quote seems to assume most will but I suspect it's the exact opposite. This means you are getting a small percentage of "late bloomers" and a lot of people who's only education was appallingly bad. Your late bloomers aren't going to do you much good when the majority of all people who vote are ignorant.

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

#168

Post by loewenskind »

anamax wrote: post #90
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.

> How about because ppl prefer religion over science. And security over freedom. Federal government getting more corrupt and more powerful with each year. When do you think that each of those became true? Or is it that they've finally crossed a tipping point? I agree that they're all true, but they've been true since before 1776. And, as bad as the US is on an absolute scale, I'm having trouble finding some place bet…

>And, as bad as the US is on an absolute scale, I'm having trouble finding some place better.

Then you're either putting impossible requirements on the new place (e.g. "and my friends have to all live there") or you're simply not looking. Throw a dart at western Europe. Any of those places will provide a better quality of living for most people.

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

rlpb wrote: post #72

We are going to end up with something sooner or later. The fact is that we want (and can) enter into contracts on the Internet. In order to enforce contracts we must have identities. Since the Government (specifically the judiciary) enforces contracts, this means that we must be entering into these contracts under Government-managed identities. Currently we acquire and prove this Government-managed identity using an…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by ThomPete »

anonymous246 wrote: post #67
ThomPete wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are dismissing this on pretty unresolved ground. To claim that Amazon/Newegg solved it with "verified purchaser" is simply on unsubstantiated ground. I could find plenty of serious uses for reputation systems. In fact I would claim that reputation systems is going to be the future of verification.

Please explain why such a "serious" use cannot be implemented with today's technologies. You can trivially ask people to give you their license number and run a lookup to confirm that they're who they claim to be at signup time. Yes, it's not gratis (see publicdata.com). But you stipulated that this is "serious" use, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Huh? I never said it couldn't be I said it wasn't.

But again it's not simply a question about identification as in per the right username/password/license plate.

I can log in and pretend to be anyone, in fact I can have multiple different accounts and be multiple different people.

But when you add social proofing on top of it you have created a verification mechanism that is much stronger since it includes my very existence, my friends, what I do etc. Things that can't as easily be faked.

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