Identifier portability: the fundamental issue

Drummond Reed drummond.reed at cordance.net
Fri Oct 13 19:59:23 UTC 2006


Yesterday we established consensus that with OpenID, identifier portability
is sacred.

Today I'd like to establish consensus on the following "postulate":

"To achieve identifier portability in OpenID, it MUST be possible for the RP
and the IdP to identify the user using two different identifiers: an
identifier by which the RP knows the user (the portable identifier), and an
identifier by which the IdP knows the user (the IdP-specific identifier)."

I would submit that if this postulate is true, then OpenID Authentication
2.0 requires two identifier parameters because if the protocol only allows
sending one, then:

1) If the RP sends the IdP-specific identifier, the RP must keep state to
maintain mapping to the portable identifier (bad), and 

2) If the RP sends the portable identifier, an IdP is forced to do a
resolution a second time after the RP has already done resolution (bad).

OTOH, if the postulate is false, then a case can be made for OpenID
Authentication 2.0 having just one identifier parameter.

PROOF

CASE 1: the protocol supports only IdP-specific identifiers and no portable
identifiers.

RESULT: IdPs can achieve identifier lockin. Not acceptable. End of Case 1.

CASE 2: the protocol supports only portable identifiers and no IdP-specific
identifiers.

RESULT: IdP is forced to know and store all portable identifiers for a user,
including identifiers for which the IdP is not authoritative, and users
would be forced to register all their portable identifiers with their IdP,
and to update these registrations every time the user adds or deletes a
portable identifier. Highly undesirable if not impossible.

*********

Please post if you do not agree with this postulate.

=Drummond 








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