[OpenID] owning one's own identity

[Chris Messina]

This is a concern of mine, long term.
Initially, the OpenID providers are to be certified under the Open Trust
Framework — but anyone can become certified once the framework is complete
and certifiers are set up... how that might work for individuals owning
their own identity is still TBD (depending on demand, I suppose).

The challenge is finding the balance between cost, convenience, interest,
scale, and user experience. We still have much work to do in order to
determine how the government should best take advantage of technologies like
OpenID, but this initial pilot should help us figure out how this should
look — and what citizens want from the experience.

As someone who owns/hosts his own OpenID, of course I want to be able to use
that identity in government transactions — having to meet certain security
requirements doesn't seem like an altogether bad idea — as a cost of doing
it myself.

In any case, having public comments about this would be great — as we're
clearly just getting started in this initiative.

Chris

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Peter Williams <pwilliams at rapattoni.com>wrote:

>  In other words, by embracing OpenID (and InfoCard), the government is *helping
> to further establish the value of owning one’s own identity*, and of
> having convenient, consistent, and privacy-protecting mechanisms in place to
> enhance and enable participation. [
> http://openid.net/2009/09/09/open-identity-for-the-government/]
>
>
>
> From what one can tell from reports about the current profile, the
> government is doing the exact opposite of “helping to further establish the
> value of owning one’s own identity”. It is specifically requiring that your
> identity is managed (and legally owned) by certain (large) players. If
> PayPal decides today to revoke access to my PayPal account, I cannot access
> my .gov resources with the same identity I used yesterday – as the identity
> signals are the property of - and under the exclusive control of -  PayPal,
> not me.
>
>
>
> We seem to be heading back to the days when AT&T has total power of whether
> you could or could not keep your phone number, if you switched carrier.
>
>
>
> Why repeat the error?
>
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> general mailing list
> general at lists.openid.net
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>
>


-- 
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate

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