This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 28 Jun 2008, by tony curzon price.
We can layer all sorts of powerful features and describe all manner of personal attributes in an identity, and develop ever more sophisticated protocols for exchanging the data securely, but all identities come down ultimately to the authorities we entrust with them. This means that identity management is not really the management of individual identities, but the management of institutions we trust.
As you tussle out the policy issues around online identity, keep one idea in mind: your identity is an entry in the database of the authority that authenticates you. Feel better? Whether you do or not, at least you will be guided down the right policy-making paths.
Our credit ratings are a function of the companies that maintain the ratings; were the companies to go out of business and lose the expertise needed to maintain their databases, we'd lose our credit ratings. The same goes for online identities; they persist only as long as the institutions that offer them.
I don't really believe Equifax will go away (without some other responsible authority taking over its databases), so a more pertinent worry is that the government will take ownership of data that companies have promised--or at least, users have assumed--would be confidential. This fear reflects the reality that our online identities are owned by the authorities that grant them. We also fear that companies will mine our data and use it for purposes we haven't authorized.
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