Howard Schmidt, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, said that such a system will not be a national ID one, but rather a necessary program to create trusted digital ID in order to improve the security of online transactions. Besides, this program is meant to relieve the burden of having to remember multiple usernames and passwords.
It seems like the authorities are not trying to reduce fears of federal intrusion into our everyday lives. The news emerged that the government is going to relieve the burden of having to keep in mind all your usernames and passwords by introducing an Internet ID for all citizens.
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, or NSTIC, assumes that the country is experiencing a major problem in cyberspace: when people are in the Internet, nobody really knows if individuals or organizations are who they claim to be. Besides, everyone has to remember lots of usernames and passwords for online services, which is so inconvenient that majority of people use the same passwords for all accounts. This, in its turn, literally gives criminals who manage to compromise their passwords the “keys to the kingdom.”
At the same time, Schmidt said that it was not a national ID program, pointing out that the society now needs a cyber world enabling people to confirm their identities securely. Meanwhile, such system will allow them to perform sensitive transactions like banking with minimal disclosure of data and at the same time will let them stay anonymous when blogging. In fact, Howard Schmidt calls such program the “Identity Ecosystem”, highlighting that no-one will be forced to get a digital ID against their will. In addition, the government is not planning to create a central database to store digital IDs.
Well, the project seems rather tame, but the only problem is that the same was said of Social Security numbers, with the government insisting that those would never be used for identification purposes. However, nowadays it is used for identifying people in everything – from their bank account numbers to their monthly utility bills.
In addition, when the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace takes effect, it will be just a matter of time before it becomes impossible to conduct business or interact with websites without a “Trusted Identity.”
by : SaM
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