I've come across a posting by Ben Laurie which deserves comment. Ben begins this way: Here’s some specific criticisms. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Law 4, “Directed Identity” says “a consumer visiting a corporate Web site is able to use the identity beacon of that site to decide whether she wants to … Continue reading Making InfoCard design decisions clear
Stefan Brands pointed us recently to an editorial by Neils A Bjergstrom, long-time IT security expert and editor of the Information Security Bulletin. As Stefan says, the piece does “a great job of explaining in plain language the most important concerns and issues that ought to be addressed:” If you still haven't gotten around to … Continue reading The ultimate biometric
Stefan Brands has posted one of the best argued and most important comments yet on the issue of identity correlation, the phenomenon giving rise to the Fourth Law of Identity. By way of background, this was part of a conversation taking place in an ID Gang discussion group hosted by Berkman Law School. Our friend … Continue reading Data Pollution and Separation of Context
Since I seem to be on the subject of Bluetooth again, I want to tell you about an experience I had recently that put a gnarly visceral edge on my opposition to technologies that serve as tracking beacons for us as private individuals. I was having lunch in San Diego with Paul Trevithick, Stefan Brands … Continue reading Just a few scanning machines…
People who've followed this blog for a while know that I'm very interested in the debate around government issued ID cards currently taking place in Britain. Like Americans, Britons aren't used to compulsary ID cards. The proposed British scheme is based on a single universal identifier used across all government contexts and possibly across commercial … Continue reading ID Cards – UK's high tech scheme under the microscope
Want some links? Doc Searls has been assembling some over at Doc Searls’ IT Garage (the blog where he discusses identity issues): Here's a pile of links on the Identity Conversation, coming out of last week's DIDW conference in San Francisco… Seven Laws of Identity, by Kim Cameron Microsoft's Vision for an Identity Metasystem, by … Continue reading Doc's links
Panopticon – the 15th Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy – is taking place this week at the Westin Hotel in Seattle. The list of speakers and participants is a privacy who's who. It includes Stefan Brands, well known to readers of this blog given his crossover into identity technologies, as well as Daniel … Continue reading From the Putting Two Plus Two Together Department
In discussing my definition of a digital identity, Stefan Brands has asked, “What is a digital subject – and why not an entity in general?” A great question. Let me quote from the Oxford English Dictionary. A “subject” is “a person or thing that is being discussed, described or dealt with.” “Digital” means “relating to … Continue reading What is a digital subject?
Thanks to Stefan Brands for pointing us to On the Identity Trail – a really interesting blog on “Understanding the importance and impact of anonymity and authentication in a networked society”. It sports the “animated fingerprint’ shown here (Warning! Don't look at it for too long!) and in addition to Stefan, the group includes luminaries … Continue reading On the Identity Trail
Chris Ceppi has picked up and extended an interesting piece by Stefan Brands where he uses a transportation analogy to classify personal digital identity systems such as FOAF and LID as bicycles whereas SAML and Liberty are jet planes. Chris goes on to say: Under this taxonomy, I see LID as a unicycle – novel, … Continue reading I Wish All Taxonomies Were This Amusing
