[OpenID] owning one's own identity

[Breno de Medeiros]

As far as I understand, and IANAL, government websites have to go
through an expensive certification process to be able to accept/keep
PII in compliance with the Privacy Act, and that is the main reason
that the profile doesn't accept delegation at this point (to make sure
every government website can participate, whether or not they are
certified). Delegation allows users to assert PII in URLs, and not all
government websites are cleared to handle this type of data.

So we could be more optimistic and think about baby steps before giant
steps. In the short term, as more OPs become certified, government RPs
could allow you to 'link' various ids under different OPs to your
government login so that you can get transferability to some extent.

In the long term, reconciling delegation/user-centric id with
privacy-oriented uses of OpenID certainly makes for interesting
challenges.

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:46 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
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-general
>
>



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--Breno

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