Is The Government Really Developing A National Internet ID?

[SpartanDem]

Last week, CNET's Declan McCullagh reported that the government was trying to create an "Internet ID for Americans," and that the Department of Commerce was orchestrating the plan. The article quickly spread around the Internet, leading to a common understanding that Obama was trying to replace systems like Facebook Connect or OpenID with a top-down, government-controlled competitor.

But if the Department of Commerce was supposed to create from whole cloth a national Internet ID for all Americans, somebody forgot to tell the Department of Commerce.

The agency leading the initiative for the Department of Commerce says that they have no intention of developing their own proprietary, let alone mandatory, internet identification system. "The federal government is not going to provide an alternative to Facebook Connect or any other services. What we're going to do is help to convene the existing people that are doing authentication and try and make sure they're moving in an interoperable way and a way that protects privacy and security," said Ari Schwartz, the senior Internet Policy Advisor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

A preliminary draft of that strategy has been released, but how that strategy will be implemented is yet to be determined. For now, NIST is focusing on ways to improve security, efficiency, and privacy. Eventually the goal is give the government's stamp of approval to vendors or authentication systems -- not because the vendor would use a government system, but because the system they would be using complies with the government's established standards

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/is-the-government-really-developing-a-national-internet-id.php?ref=fpc.


I knew smelt I something funny about this story, but I could put my finger on it. I also didn't know it was written by Declan McCullagh he's the ass who created the whole Al Gore invented the internet meme