A current draft of the \"National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace\

Question

A current draft of the "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" has been posted by the Department of Homeland Security. This question is not asking about privacy or constitutionality, but about how this act will impact developers' business models and development strategies.

When the post was made I was reminded of Jeff's November blog post regarding an internet driver's license. Whether that is a perfect model or not, both approaches are attempting to handle a shared problem (of both developers and end users): How do we establish an online identity?

The question I ask here is, with respect to the various burdens that would be imposed on developers and users, what are some of the major, foreseeable implementation issues that will arise from the current U.S. Government's proposed solution?

For a quick primer on the setup, jump to page 12 for infrastructure components, here are two stand-outs:

An Identity Provider (IDP) is responsible for the processes associated with enrolling a subject, and establishing and maintaining the digital identity associated with an individual or NPE. These processes include identity vetting and proofing, as well as revocation, suspension, and recovery of the digital identity. The IDP is responsible for issuing a credential, the information object or device used during a transaction to provide evidence of the subject

Explanation / Answer

To me the idea sounds a lot like OpenID, and I don't believe there is any mandate that anybody use it. I don't think users will be required to sign up for it, and I certainly don't think they can force every website to implement it at this point.

Action 9 in particular makes it seem like they're trying to persuade people to use it rather than mandating that everybody use it. So I think it would be safe to ignore it unless your users want to use this identity system to access your site. It's going to have the same problems as OpenID in getting web developers to implement it.

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