{"id":870,"date":"2007-10-08T20:11:28","date_gmt":"2007-10-09T04:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=870"},"modified":"2008-03-05T21:16:39","modified_gmt":"2008-03-06T05:16:39","slug":"burton-group-goes-to-mainstreet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Burton Group goes to Mainstreet"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this cogent article<\/a>, the New York Times’ Denise Caruso distinguishes herself\u00a0with a\u00a0compelling treatment of complex identity and privacy issues.\u00a0 For instance, her characterization of Mint.com <\/a>is enough to turn the Flying Nun into a paranoid:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“In exchange for customers uploading their account information and allowing sponsors to offer them specialized services, Mint will connect nightly to their credit-card providers, banks and credit unions. Then it automatically updates transactions and accounts, balances their checkbooks, categorizes their transactions, compares cash with debt and, based on their personal spending habits, shops for better rates on new accounts and credit cards.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sure would like to know more about how\u00a0mint.com protects itself, who oversees it, how it protects me, and most important, what it does and doesn't and will never do with the massively detailed personal information it collects.\u00a0 Today, not even my accountant or my wife scrutinizes my credit card spending.<\/p>\n

To the rescue<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as\u00a0the reader is\u00a0losing all hope,\u00a0in rides – are you ready? – Mike Neuenschwander from the Burton Group.\u00a0\u00a0 He puts forward the ideas\u00a0all of us in the community are\u00a0working on, but with a twist that is very novel – and perhaps even “American”:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in a situation where business holds all the cards… \u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Businesses put the deal in front of the consumer, they control the playing field and the consumer doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any say in how the deal plays out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

ONE way to change this, he said, is to make people more like organizations.<\/p>\n

To this end, Mr. Neuenschwander and his colleagues have floated the intriguing concept of the L.L.P.: the Limited Liability Persona. This persona would be a legally recognized virtual person in which users could \u00e2\u20ac\u0153invest\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the financial or identity resources of their choosing.<\/p>\n

Once their individual personas are created, consumers would be able to use them as their legal \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alter ego,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d even in financial transactions. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My L.L.P. would have its own mailing address, its own tax ID number, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the information I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d give when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m online,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Neuenschwander said. Other benefits include the ability for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153personas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to limit their financial exposure in ways that individuals cannot.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When you enter into a relationship with a company and give them your personal information, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at tremendous risk \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the U.S., certain kinds of personal information aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t treated like property at all. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very difficult to sue someone for misuse of personal information. And even if you do, they can never give you back your mailing address, your Social Security number or your DNA, for that matter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

But if a company loses or tampers with an L.L.P\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s data, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the law allows me to sue them because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s corporate information,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Neuenschwander said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s digital-rights management,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he added, referring to the access control technologies used by publishers and other copyright holders to limit use of digital media, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153only you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re acting on behalf of your own organization.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bob Blakley blogs here <\/a>in more depth, pointing out that<\/p>\n

Melissa Lafsky, the Times\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Freakonomics blogger<\/a>, has added Denise Caruso\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article to her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153FREAK-est\u00e2\u20ac\u009d links list under the title \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Identity data: the newest hot commodity for businesses\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Way to go, Burton Group!\u00a0 Good to see you talking mainstream.<\/p>\n

Bob provides links to more resources, including one on\u00a0Identity Oracles <\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0his sexy name for the\u00a0 claims transformer generating “minimal disclosure tokens”.\u00a0 Good Names\u00a0mean a lot.\u00a0 Let's start using it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bob\u00a0also links to a description of what he calls the Relational Continuity Sockets Layer (RCSL<\/a>) – which I haven't yet been able to read yet.\u00a0 [While I don't intend this as an excuse, the name makes it sound like scientists are still gluing body parts together in the basement.)<\/p>\n

My\u00a0takeaway is that\u00a0 L.L.P seems both novel and easy to implement at a technical level in the identity metasystem, again showing us the advantages of a palette of identities from which users\u00a0can conveniently choose.\u00a0 I've already written extensively on the idea that “derived claims” of the kind made by an Identity Oracle\u00a0were\u00a0one of the underlying goals of the claims beased architecture in the identity metasystem.\u00a0 In other words, both L.L.P. and Identity Oracle are\u00a0technically\u00a0practical\u00a0today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It's now a matter of business people understanding the opportunities and stepping forward.\u00a0 The Burton Group seems to be starting to play a more important role in reaching out to Mainstreet – and we'll all benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike says, “In the U.S., certain kinds of personal information aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t treated like property at all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,8,11,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}