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Sun Announces Passport Competitor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the papers-please dept.

mjankows writes: "Sun, and other people today announced the Liberty Alliance Project. Definitely an answer to passport/hailstorm. Maybe Mono/DotGNU can benefit/assist/use/help this..." Yay, yet another way to be tracked on the Internet.

4 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Someone might look at the page before posting by PCM2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This, from the Libery Alliance FAQ:


    Q: What are the objectives of the Liberty Alliance Project?
    A: The Alliance has three main objectives. 1) To enable consumers and businesses to maintain personal information securely. 2) To provide a universal, open standard for single sign-on with decentralized authentication and open authorization from multiple providers. 3) To provide an open standard for network identity spanning all network-connected devices.


    Q: Who are the members of the Liberty Alliance Project? A: Charter members include ActivCard, American Airlines, the Apache Software Foundation, Bank of America, Bell Canada Enterprises, Cingular Wireless, Cisco Systems, CollabNet, Dun and Bradstreet, eBay, Entrust, Fidelity Investments, Gemplus, GM, Global Crossing, i2, Intuit, Liberate Technologies, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, OpenWave, O'Reilly and Associates, RealNetworks, RSA Security, Sabre, Schlumberger, Sony Corporation, Sprint, Sun Microsystems, Travelocity, United Airlines, Verisign, Vodafone and More.

    ...

    So it seems it's more than just a Sun effort, and they claim it's not about another company holding onto everyone's personal info. The goal appears to be a method for single sign-on where each individual company maintains customer data relevant to its own business. They describe it as a decentralized, federated system built on an open standard.

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  2. Re:That means by jiheison · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why have multiple points of potential failure when you can just have one?

    Because putting your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Sure, this is convenient for users: all your data is in one place, easy to change and maintain. Now, look at it from the point of view of an identity theif. One stop shopping. Now look at it from the point of view of law enforcement. One place to go to scrutinze every transaction that you make.

    Personally, I prefer to have several accounts attached to different usernames, e-mail accounts etc. It doesn't prevent abuse, but it makes you a harder target to hit.

  3. What about XNS? by johnseq · · Score: 2, Informative

    Doesn't an open alternative to Passport already exist at www.xns.org? I'm familiar with what they're trying to do, but not why they haven't really gained much traction (besides a mention in the economist.)

    Anyone know enough to compare the two?

  4. Here are some articles by StikyPad · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is an insightful article which compares the Liberty Alliance vs. Passport over on ZDNet. There's also a commentary as well.

    Don't mind me, just doing a little karma whoring.

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