Today I came across a good write up of the new US internet ID proposal that was announced earlier this week. What though does it mean to us? Well thinking that was a good question I decided to write this post.
Well first the Government tells us the reason for the ID system is to “authenticate and consolidate your identity online” and “ because our proliferating online passwords are inconvenient and insecure, and because last year 8.1 million adults in the U.S. suffered identity theft or fraud, at a cost of $37 billion.” However, they seem to have missed a memo… The majority of ID theft is in fact completely unsophisticated and doesn’t even use computers! More than 90% of all ID theft is in fact done without a computer involved anywhere. So what it seems we really need is to get rid of paper and move online.
So the assumption starting this all is flawed, where does that leave us? Well they want to have us consolidate our online identities through any of a number of companies… Who then have access to everything we do. I’m not really a privacy nut, but I do want to keep everyone from knowing everything I do. More so I don’t want a publicly traded company interested in profit holding my online identity hostage or deciding to sell data about what I do and where I go for a profit to anyone interested.
The biggest issue though is what you will carry this ID on. It is not just a username and password, but a piece of data that sits on “a flash drive, a cellphone, a smart card of some kind”. This means it is also terribly open to theft. Expect hefty fees to get a new card, flash drive, or cell phone verified to let you use your ID again will not be cheap either.
They claim they won’t be required, but business is not going to agree to that. To access your bank online, or buy things online, or make use of state resources on the web; you will in the end need one. Most likely you’ll end up needing more than one to make use of different systems. One for your cell phone and another on a card/drive you’ll carry with you.
The other big issue is it’s link with homeland security. The idea there is that anti-terrorist and police units will have access to your Internet ID information. That’s nice if your worried about terrorists, but as an average citizen it is just one more way for someone with access to find a way to make you a criminal. It’s easy to say you won’t break the law, but with 100′s of thousands of laws in place across the country… Many of which date back centuries… It is another matter entirely to actual be 100% noncriminal at all times and in all places.
It will cut down on ID’s used across the web, but I certainly have issues with it. Maybe this is one time when the government just needs to keep it’s head out of it.
