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

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