ID and Conversation
Eric Norlin, in supporting well-formed and humanistic digital ID, says identity is a “necessary precursor” to relationship: “How can companies have conversations with individual *human beings* if they can’t actually identify and know who they are?”
Sorry, Eric, but I simply don’t get this. If I write snail mail to Kellogg’s complaining about the lack of frosting on my flakes, in what sense do they need to know who I am to respond? All they need to know is where to send the response. If I send it by email, why do they need to know more than they do in the RW?
If you, Eric, are thinking about longer-term relationships with companies, if Kellogg’s is worried that their customer database won’t know that me@address1 is the same as myself@address2, they can ask me to register on their site. It happens all the time, without any further digital ID scheme required.
So, what does a more elaborate digital ID scheme get me besides an infrastructure that can be turned against me? What am I missing here?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
me me me me me ….yikes i love the narcissism of bloggers (joking, of course)…
BTW: i think that your argument — “what does it get me” — could have been (and was) similarly made at the very beginnings of the internet, email, cell phones…..ie, NO ONE (in the general population) really saw why they would *need* email…in fact, that’s not even really the question.
however, the quick answer is: security. (try not to laugh, i’m not kidding)
Eric, I fully understand that we can’t predict what will come from new technologies. But that doesn’t mean we should accept every proposal that comes our way. E.g., a national ID card would have unpredictable consequences, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t argue now about whether we want one. Same thing with dropping the drinking age to 12 or raising the voting age to 55. The fact that the proponents of digID refuse to point to a single unique user benefit worries me.
You point to security. And I don’t laugh at that. Not at all. But trading liberty for the promise of security is the oldest game gov’ts play, so I’d like to know a lot more before embracing digID with a big hug and a wet kiss (wet hug and a big kiss?).
okay, here’s my user benefit:
http://www.unchartedshores.com/blogger/archive/2003_01_19_archive3.html#90219886
btw, here’s another one — if we “federated” identity between blog comment systems, we could do cool things with blog linking and i wouldn’t have to cut and past my blog entry into your comments….
come to think of it, the Liberty 1.1 spec could probably be bent to accomplish that….now if only someone had coded it so a hacker could mold it to that purpose — oh that’s right SourceID has. ;-)
Please explain how digital id will prevent identity theft perpetrated by a credit bureau employee? Seems to me it will just make it easier to steal *all* of my identifying information instead of just selected bits and pieces.
I agree with Katherine. I’ve had my identity stolen online and in the RW. It wasn’t fun, but I don’t see how digID would have prevented it.
And, why do we need digID to make it easy for apps to share data? I’m missing that part of it entirely.
as to theft: digital id makes *revocation* easier — ie, it helps to prevent maximum damage once a theft has occurred.
as for apps sharing data: one thing that identity foes never seem to realize is that the Liberty 1.1 spec builds in (inescapably) the explicit permission for passing (much less sharing) of any identity data….ie, the Liberty spec actually *increases* the level of privacy you have today….
not that anyone would bother to read the Liberty spec….
Why read when, by being sufficiently opinionated and wrong in public, someone like you will get irritated enough to explain it to me?
good point, david….workin on that now.
well i am anxiously awaiting eric’s defense of the digID because, quite frankly, i enjoy the anonymity that the web allows us. it’s my personal opinion that digIDs will only provide new toys for hackers to play with. and i don’t imagine that it will take a good hacker too very long to assume my identity, and become the proud owner of ALL of my debt!
These secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we’ll be writing a little less code than we’ve done in previous articles, but we’ll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.