U.S. Considers Microsoft Passport as National ID

An anonymous submitter writes: "Ladies and gents, the endtimes have begun. The Seattle Times is reporting that Mark Forman, associate director of information technology at the White House (or 'America's CIO', as he bills himself) has said the feds are considering the use of Microsoft's Passport technology to ID every citizen and every business seeking access to government services online. This is about as scary as it gets." To be fair, it looks very preliminary. Read the article. So many companies have tried to assist the government in providing services over the Net... but I guess if your lobbyists are good enough, you can be heard at the top.

Comments

Re:Read. The. Article

[sphealey]

I swear to -god- my five year old has better reading comprension than some of you people.

The article mentions that is is for online services three times.

Problem is, once an entity reaches a certain size, it is required to deal with the federal gov't electronically. For example, employers of more than 200 people must file all their tax information electronically. They also must verify that their employees are eligible to work in the US.

It is not a long step (in fact, it is a very very short step) from there to having employers say to you "Ready to start work? Sure - just step up to that HR kiosk, fire up Internet Explorer(tm), and use your Federal Passport(tm) to authenticate who you are.". What? No Microsoft Passport(tm)? Sorry - no paycheck for you. And so on for other "optional" services that allow you to do optional things such as eat.

sPh

I just payed my federal and state taxes online.

[laetus]

And you can (online) in my state and locality:

* pay local traffic tickets,
* renew driver's licenses,
* renew vehicle registrations,
* pay property taxes,
etc.

Once a federal online ID becomes pervasive, it'll be used for every state and local online transaction also, just like SSN's filtered down to the state and local levels. And personally, I don't want M$ having all that info.