Eric talks about SXIP as Passport redux. I think Dick Hardt, the CEO of SXIP Networks, would have something to say about that. Seems to me the SXIP folks have learned a lot more from Passport than Eric lets on. I don't believe they hold identity information or do authentication directly. They are a registry combined with a browser redirection technology, pointing to a user's identity provider and thus adroitly avoiding the very pitfall articulated in the Third Law. They call themselves the first “distributed public identity network”.
While checking out the link to Dick Hardt above, I saw his interesting posting on the Second Law (somehow I had missed this) and the statement that he was intuitively aware of this law when developing SXIP. I'm sure he was also “intuitively aware” of the third law. I think his comment on the various meanings of discrimination is a propos:
This got me thinking that the basis of identity is to enable discrimination. I then realized that the negative, emotional response to universal IDs is a fear of unjustified or undesired discrimination through data correlation. Racism and sexism being the more evocative “isms”. We can “blame” the movie (or book for older people )* 1984 for surfacing this as a fear of the future.
Of course we all want positive discrimination per the Clue Train Manifesto and as Doc Searls promotes he wants in his relationships as a customer.
I want to understand SXIP more deeply. Maybe Dick will help me set it up on my blog for those who are SXIP enabled… That would certainly help me understand it better.
