Internet IDs for everyone
More big brother? Could someone please explain to me why it is that Democrats thought that it was so horrible for public libraries to keep a log on who was using the computer terminal, but it is OK to require that everyone has to have a unique ID to use the internet? This claim that it isn't a national ID card because it is a government controlled system makes no sense to me.
President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.
White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet.
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently being drafted by the Obama administration and will be released by the president in a few months.
"We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an event Friday at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, according to CNET.com. . . .
Labels: Regulation
posted by John Lott at 4:30 PM
3 Comments:
That is a horrible idea, but unsurprising coming from an administration with a long, sad history of horrible ideas.
And "internet ID" already exists. IP addresses, etc. The FBI's "Frankenstein" program can already track these, no? So why do we need another layer of government intrusion (i.e., snooping) again?
When a government official says that he wants to "enhance online security and privacy" that means that he wants to take away online security and privacy. It's really as simple as reversing what they say to see the truth behind their lies. Marxists are famous for standing the truth on its head, and Obama and company are Marxist.
If I have to have a government ID to use the Internet, then I will have no security or privacy against the biggest threat to the individual that there is - the government itself!
Can you imagine if Palin proposed this? The left would be howling like wolves! Instead, since it's Obama, they'll line up like lemmings.
The article I read states it's not going to be government controlled or mandated. Here's a quote from the same article:
Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.
Of course, your ability to interact with the government might be much more limited if you are planning on staying anonymous. Yet, currently we have social security numbers typed into webforms as our digital identities. I would actually prefer an encrypted private certificate I can control and protect with whatever means I deem necessary. And the fact that the government doesn't control it (they might have to sign it to trust it, but you don't need to give them the private key itself to do that) is awesome.
Yet, maybe you're suggesting it's a slippery slope to a non-anonymous internet, and that's a valid concern. But private SSL certificates already exist, thousands of people (albeit, nerdy ones) have been using them for 20 years, and nothing bad has happened as a result. If the government accepted my certificate's signature as a valid form of trusted authentication, the world would be a better place.
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