White House To Drop Details of Cyber ID On Tax Day

BeatTheChip writes "Dept. of Commerce Scry. Gary Locke plans to release solidified details of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace [NSTIC] program starting 11 AM on Tax Day. Technologies and new policies will be demonstrated and discussed to attending press. NSTIC, a federal cyber identity program, drew criticisms earlier this year on initial announcement for similarities to a national identity program. It was deemed 'Real ID for the Internet' by some privacy and civil liberty organizations. NSTIC is a national online authentication program for public use under the oversight of the Dept. of Homeland Security."

Connection Error

[elrous0]

Sorry citizen, in compliance with U.S. law, Comcast Cable Broadband now requires that all subscribers identify themselves by their U.S. Internet Identification Number before accessing internet content. Please contact your local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for more information on how to obtain your U.S. Internet Identification Number. And thank you for choosing Comcast as your broadband provider!

fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

well, fuck.

*Puts on tinfoil hat*

[penguinman1337]

I am honestly afraid that this is basically going to turn into an internet driver's license. Imagine if you were required to get government approval in order to read a book? This violates all kinds of freedom of speech provisions. I'll wait to see the details before I make a final judgement, but I much prefer being able to remain effectively anonymous online.

Welcome

[xMrFishx]

Welcome to City 17. You have chosen or been chosen to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centres...

Re:Connection Error

[Toe, The]

Sigh. Yeah, let's just use people's Facebook identity as their trusted ID.
I can't think of a single reason why that might not be a superb idea.

P.S. Oh, hey! Let's also let the voting machines be designed by the private sector, in closed source on Windows. That can't possibly be a problem, right?

Re:That's Not How It Works

[majestic_twelve]

It will be voluntary until businesses only accept transactions associated with this ID and, like EULA's which are also completely voluntary, people will simply "agree" and go along with it so they can watch their porn, buy their Amazon merchandise, or whatever have you.

Re:That's Not How It Works

[penguinman1337]

Yeah, right. According to Uncle Sam, SSNs are also voluntary. And while it may be voluntary according to the government, what's to prevent ISPs from requiring it for internet access?

And how is this private? Sure, it might just share enough info to complete a transaction on any specific site, but what's to prevent the administrator of the program (in this case the highly trustworthy US government) from using it to track citizens who happen to be doing things they don't approve of? For example, making a donation to a group that has contrary views to said government (for example, if I decided to donate to the American Communist Party.)

Re:*Puts on tinfoil hat*

[penguinman1337]

You're right, individual sites have every right to enforce TOS on their individual site. If I don't like it, I can go make my own blog somewhere and say whatever the hell I want. Imagine for a moment if a browser's license was required.

"Hello, this is the Internet Police, you have gotten too many anti-social points on your internet license. It is hereby suspended for the next 6 months."

Re:*Puts on tinfoil hat*

[DNS-and-BIND]

Imagine an internet where everyone had to sign in as their real name, and trolling became obsolete. Teabaggers could easily be identified, fired from their jobs, and publically ostracized for their disgusting racism. Every American who expressed negative feelings about the President would be suspected of racism [cnn.com]. This would be noted on each citizen's permanent record and easily viewable by anyone who cared to search. How would this be a bad thing, exactly? Freedom of speech is one thing, but freedom of speech doesn't cover hate speech.

Re:Connection Error

[GameboyRMH]

Well since it doesn't matter, why not choose one of the OSes that doesn't have the worst security record by a huge margin? To choose the horribly insecure one would just be stupid right? And if that one with relatively horrible security record costs 3 digits when many of the other options (including those with the best security records) are free, that would be doubly stupid, wouldn't you agree? And if that expensive, insecure OS is also relatively heavy on system resources, for a system that only has to present a very basic GUI and do some basic storage and maybe (ideally not) networking functions, that would be triply stupid, wouldn't it?

Doesn't it look like the GP has a point?

Re:Connection Error

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it does not matter. Electronic voting is ripe for fraud with or without source code. There is no way to check that the machine in front of you runs the code that is listed in the documentation. Not for an expert, not for laymen.

It is important that open source advocates understand that having the source does not solve all possible problems. Electronic voting requires that people trust a machine even though they're not the the ones who select the hardware and install the software. This trust can not be achieved properly without violating important aspects of a democratic election (particularly that you must not be able to prove what you voted.)

Re:Connection Error

[lgw]

How many times do we have to discuss this? The answer is computer-assisted voting.

You go to the machine with the touch screen and the pictures of the candidates and the assistance for the blind and whatever else, and make your choices. The machine then prints a normal ballot, which you review and drop into a normal ballot box. If the machine wants to count votes for a quick report to the press, fine, but that's unofficial. No more questionably-marked ballots, and no need to trust the machine (just look at the printed ballot before casting it). It's so obviously the best of both worlds, it blew me away at first.

Of course, something so obviously right will never be used, but at least we on Slashdot should all understand it.

Re:That's Not How It Works

[Em Adespoton]

Since when have legitimate businesses allowed transactions with anonymous people? If you want my stuff, you have to pay for it, and I have to know to whom to send the stuff, and the banking system has to know whose account to debit before it can credit mine. Illegitimate businesses will continue not to require ID.

Your objection is nonsensical.

This is a bit of a straw man; I have no problem with a legitimate business knowing who I am... I get a little nervous when the government gets to know about every *potential* business transaction I make, however -- which is what this system would do.

See: this ID is virtually identical to the loyalty rewards cards that many businesses use nowadays; they're completely voluntary, but you don't get full access/all the deals/etc. without them, so everyone uses them.

Except in this case, instead of one company having a loyalty card and selling the data to marketing firms, you have the government having the loyalty card, and *all* online businesses using it. It's actually scarily similar to what's happening with FaceBook IDs (I've stumbled across a disturbingly large number of businesses recently that require you to hand over your facebook ID to access some of their site content).