Are we to seriously trust the Government Initiative on Trusted Identity

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced at a press conference recently that the username and password combination that is used to authenticate online users is passé. That a new solution is required to replace this old antiquated system. And the commerce department outlined a Cyberspace Identity that Americans opt in for and use this common identity to access all their online resources. Using Biometric devices, cell phones and other gadgets, users can sign into their accounts without entering passwords. That reminds me what I have been saying all these years about the need to replace the password all together with alternative solutions. And the security industry has thrown up quite a lot of solutions for users such as password managers, password generators, two factor authentications, one time passwords, etc. The more recent solutions being SSO such Facebook connect, OpenID and Google Friend Connect. When the industry has failed to provide a single viable solution, what rabbit does the government hopes to pull up its sleeves in the coming days and months? Considering the acknowledgement by the White House itself that their own technology is pretty outdated and 10 years old, what hope is that it’s an elephant such as the government would move fast enough to provide a universal identity for Americans. One that would be truly universal. I know of the Government of India trying to achieve a similar feat in India and the Chinese Government having already done it. But most importantly, why would Americans adopt something that’s coming from their government when they are already more suspicious of the government trying to pry into their lives. And rightly so, this concept has been criticized by all as a non-starter. Yet, we keep coming across statements from the commerce department to push this through. Rather than the government initiating this idea, it would be more prudent for consumers to adopt something that is offered as a service by private industry and one that conforms to the initiative best practices. I have been a proponent of both universal identity and online privacy. And I have been working around a solution that says, yes you can use a single universal identity to access all your accounts but at the same time such an identity should be stored or tracked by any website, application or the government. And such a solution already exists. If the government were to really be serious about implement a solution for the benefit of online users, they have to just look around and simply advise instead of setting up another organization to go about developing a solution.