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.

Comments

What's with the name?

[Zwack]

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.

Re:Someone might look at the page before posting

[Jayde Stargunner]

"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.

More than just "being tracked"

[SysKoll]

Michael writes:
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.

-- SysKoll