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Sun Announces Passport Competitor
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.
It looks like Microsoft wants to join as well, so it might not actually be a Passport "competitor".
From the article: "Microsoft Corp., which said last week it would expand its own Passport Net identification system to other enterprises, is in talks to join the alliance."
Ahh.. the old "if you haven't done anything wrong then you don't have anything to hide" arguement.
Nice in theory, pants in practice. If it was that simple then there would be no need for *any* civil liberty protections since only the "bad" people would be prosicuted.
SARCASM>
As we know, the authorities have NEVER wrongly prosicuted anyone, they've never made mistakes, they've never abused power. Nah. Not in America.
/SARCASM
Ok, MS is going to implement Hailstorm, which nobody asked for, nor do they want, and they're going to shove it down our throats along with Passport and take away our privacy and security. So Sun's reasoning is if we have a choice of being screwed by Sun or MS, we'll choose Sun.
Well, I guess I probably would prefer getting screwed by somebody different now and then. Although I think I'd rather have a choice of "none of the above".
Hmmm, which service that I don't want will I choose...
The name "liberty alliance" and the domain "projectliberty" both imply that the goal is somehow connected with freedom.
The only freedom that I can see from this is the freedom of having yet another repository of my personal information. I can't imagine websites giving us the choice between "passport", "project liberty" or "anonymous consumer".
I read the FAQ and it doesn't mention anything much about how they are planning on divulging the contents of this "consumer database" to people. I can't imagine that they are all doing this for altruistic reasons, so I guess I'd rather avoid using it.
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
I believe that we need to have a competitor for Passport. Well, that is nothing new. I would highly appreciate if Project Liberty has the guts to build private credentials (you might want to look here for more Info by Adam Shostack). This would be THE alternative for specialized identification (you have to be of legal age to see this page, you have to be Mr. Smith to view your taxes, ...). We need identification, but it needs to be untraceable and there must be no way to collect and combine information.
banking records
medical history
shopping trends, even though they are pretty boring
family information
machine setup/configuration at home
get the point? if not, then why don't you just post the above information...let's start with your salary
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
"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."
Yay... So, sintead of Microsoft having my information... Sun, a bunch of media companies, a bunch of companies that want to sell me crap, and a few financial institutions can all pour over my info. Yippe.
Does anyone but me see the danger of allowing such a wide range on companies with many, many goal to all be involved in a project that is basically used to track people and collect personal information?
Seems like yet another excuse to have ads, "targeted marketing", and undue pressure put on my by big business. At least Microsoft is singular, and they aren't in the position to sell me a car, book plane tickets, give me a loan, or offer me a long-distance plan.
What's a sig?
Yay, yet another way to be tracked on the Internet
Well, a tool such as Passport or LAP can be used to track users, that's true. No one said tools cannot be misused. But remember: Programs don't track people, marketdroids do.
The keyword here is convenience. The only way of protecting our information on the Internet is through encryption. Which implies passwords and key management. Something that 99% of users are not willing to do.
Unfortunately, this unwillingness to use the Net securely affects all of us. Cool products and services that could be available today are not offered because of lack of good security models. If they are offered at all, they are either too cumbersome to use, or rely on such simplistic security that they cannot be trusted (Hotmail anyone?)
This is an old problem. An analog is the credit card industry. Even if you carefully protect your credit card info, you're still paying for all the people who get their CC number and expiry date stolen. CC companies past the cost to all of us clients.
So we need ease of use for security products, or they won't get used. If LAP can spread the use of a safe, easy-to-use, one-time Internet-wide authentication, then it's welcome.
Did anyone notice that French company Gemplus is among the LAP supporters? This company provides smart cards. Several projects touting smart cards for web authentication have already been proposed. Maybe we'll see a new, more successful approach this time. It's certainly easier to carry a smart card and enter a 4-digit PIN than to remember and type 20 different passwords.
I am not saying that this new LAP initiative is going to solve all authentication and privacy problems. But these problems are real and need to be addressed. It doesn't boil down just to marketdroid tracking us.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I've seen a number of times people have said this is just a big corporation which is maybe trustworthy (Sun) competing with one which is most likely not trustworthy (Microsoft). The Liberty folks, while led by Sun, are not exclusively Sun. On their site, they list the charter members which include big nasty corporations and some players who are more likely to be loved than hated on Slashdot. For instance, the Apache Software Foundation and O'Reilly & Associates.
Sun probably orchestrated this. Why? Not because they want your data, but because they passionately hate Microsoft and don't want to risk letting Microsoft take over a large chunk of the web. They are trying to Liberate a web that has yet to be enslaved by Microsoft, but one which they are scared will be. Other comments regarding the charter members:
Microsoft enemy AOL-TimeWarner is not there
Microsoft enemy RealNetworks is
eBay is a charter member - which is interesting since they were one of the first to sign up for passport. Second thoughts perhaps?
What I'm trying to say is that this is not Sun vs Microsoft round 6000, there are a number of companies here who will hopefully keep one another honest.