Re: WebID-ISSUE-8 (bblfish): US (Commerce Department?) ID initiative

Okay some clarification, or possibly more confusion, on the US
government's National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace
(NSTIC) initiative.

This article is a decent summation of this issue.
http://gov20.govfresh.com/2011-trends-national-strategy-for-trusted-identities-in-cyberspace-highlights-key-online-privacy-security-challenges/

Within this article you can find this quote about the NSTIC initiative
from U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Lock. He states, "Let’s be clear, we’re
not talking about a national ID card. We’re talking about a government
controlled system." This came from the Stanford event where the NSTIC was
presented.

So whereas in my previous email I stated that Howard Schmidt, the White
House cybersecurity coordinator, had made conflicting statements about who
would control this initiative, it turns out that the confusion comes from
the fact that two different, key people associated with this issue have
made conflicting statements. Howard Schmidt has recently stated that it
would not be a government controlled system.

What is the truth?

I imagine that whereas the issuance of secure credentials might be
decentralized allowing for private and public parties to participate, the
program itself may very well be centrally controlled by the US government.
Thus both statements (Lock's and Schmidt's) may be technically correct but
they are semantically different.

Received on Friday, 28 January 2011 17:38:10 UTC