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

OK guys, for real now...

[sphealey]

If this bothers you (and to me it is VERY disturbing), please put pen to paper and write your Congresspersons expressing in firm, polite language why you oppose this idea. Please.

sPh

Re:OK guys, for real now...

[misfit13b]

Click here for contact info.

Re:OK guys, for real now...

[blankmange]

Or email them. Or fax them, but yes - do something!!!! Don't just sit around and post you gripes here and there --- contact your representatives!!!!

Re:OK guys, for real now...

[FortKnox]

When doing so make sure you put your address in your signature (and make sure its YOUR rep)! That ensures them that you are one of their constituents, not just a random person somewhere in america.

Quickest way to get their attention is for them to know that they are YOUR representative!

Re:OK guys, for real now...

[revscat]

It's fairly well known now that email is mostly ignored by Congresscritters. They can't tell for sure if the email is coming from one of their constituents, it's too easy to do, and they get too many of them. Faxes are better, stamped snail mail is best.

Actually cold hard cash is best, but we're talking above the table methods here.

Re:OK guys, for real now...

[daviddennis]

From what I've heard ...

• Be civil. Nobody likes to hear flaming, and your representative will almost certainly toss flames in the trash.

• Be brief. These are busy people you're writing to. Heck, even the person hired to read your letter is a busy person, since he gets whole sacks of these things.

• Don't use someone else's words. It's easy to rely on others to write letters for you. But the more identical letters they receive, the more likely it is that they'll feel this is an organized lobbying campaign instead of something from the grass roots. You want people to think your letter is genuine, so proceed accordingly. A relatively small number of sincere, well-written, DISTINCT letters are going to be as effective as hundreds of identical screeds.

• Proofread. This should go without saying, but, judging by what I see on Slashdot, many of us have lost the habit.

• Write a paper letter. They know how easy it is to bat out an email, so they don't give them much weight. In any event, nobody has time to wade through the millions of emails they get, so they sit unread.

• You may even want to hand write it instead of using a computer. That will make it more of a novelty, and it will be obvious you are /really/ willing to put in an effort. Perhaps "I have to write in longhand so Microsoft's goons won't get me if I do it in Word their spies in Redmond will get it." Okay, that was a joke, but you get the idea.

For this issue specifically, it might be worth checking out how controversial Microsoft Government has been elsewhere. If you want an idea of what this is going to look like, check out this article in The Register (UK). You may also want to do a few more searches over there since there's lots of meaty material.

Hope that helps.

D

It was bad enough when I couldn't get into MSDN

[Brento]

Now I can't imagine being unable to reenter the country because the Passport servers were down again. Grrrreat.

Re:It was bad enough when I couldn't get into MSDN

[dattaway]

We have detected a virus on your card and you will be detained until we release a patch.

Worst Idea Ever

[Hamshrew]

So they're going to trust the information of every single citizen to a corporation that has a known criminal track record? That's intelligent. What next, find a crack dealer to handle international trade?

Yes, I realize the offenses are different... but this is still stupid. It federally mandates giving Microsoft business. Well, not really... if an alternate ID is available, they should accept that.

Re:Worst Idea Ever

[nachoman]

Does this mean when they sell our email addresses to spam companies the it becomes our constitutional right to receive spam?

Re:Worst Idea Ever

[yatest5]

So they're going to trust the information of every single citizen to a corporation that has a known criminal track record

Er, the government has a known criminal track record...

OK, take a deep breath...

[YouAreFatMan]

Let's get beyond the FUD here. Passport is being considered as a means to authenticate users of US government services online. Nothing more. This is a far cry from a "national ID," which implies that citizens are required to have it. When was the last time you used US government services online? If the government wants to select Microsoft as a vendor for a particular service, I may think it's a bad business decision, but I don't think I can claim my rights are being violated.

Read. The. Article

[Karen_Frito]

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.

Quotes, with revelant words bolded for those of you who haven't finished 5th grade English yet.

"Microsoft's Passport is being considered as a way to authenticate users of the Web sites, said Mark Forman, associate director of information technology at the White House."

"The White House is instead pursuing an "e-identification" initiative, an effort to develop ways to authenticate people and businesses online who already have government identification numbers such as Social Security, business-registration and employer-identification numbers. "

"At the government-leaders conference, attended by representatives of 75 countries, Microsoft presented a blueprint for its "e-government" strategy that suggests they use Passport to verify the identity of visitors to their Web sites. It also suggested that its bCentral business Web site could be used to process business tax payments and that citizens could use its MSN Web site to handle address changes and voter registration"

---

Yes, its an amazingly laughable idea -- but its not the Big Brother in cahoots with Evil Bill Gates to steal all our privacy that the orignal poster makes it out to be.

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

Re:Um

[Drizzten]

Take a look around FirstGov and realize the wealth of information available on federal government websites. I visit several of them on a weekly basis for statistics and data that I can't get elsewhere. Putting some sort of chancy identity authentication scheme in the way of accessing these sites freely would most certainly affect my browsing there. I worry about this because:

...the government plans to begin testing Web sites where businesses can pay taxes and citizens can learn about benefits and social services

My emphasis. It bothers me they want to restrict our free access to this information.

Which is worse here - Microsoft or Goverment ?

[wnknisely]

So I can't read the article - the Seattle site seems to be already slashdotted...

But what exactly is going on here? I already see people worrying and having heart palpitations. The story submission says "Microsoft Passport technology" not Microsoft Passport.

In priniciple this just means that Goverment is going to start tracking people as they access goverment online services... kinda like they already do using our Social Security numbers in meat-space - and/or cookies set by goverment servers in cyber-space. (I think it would be foolishly naive to imagine that people aren't already being tracked.)

This is just a logical extension of what is already going on.

Good questions to ask: "Can a user opt out?" "What about users from other countries and locales?" "What is going to be done with the info?".

Who was it who said "Privacy is dead already - all we have anymore is obscurity." (Or something like that.) Obviously this is the direction we've been heading for quite sometime. Now we see clearly - before we saw through a glass darkly...

This is the usual way to get things passed

[PW2]

...suggest something truely undesirable and then fall back to what was desired by some in government in the first place but wouldn't have normally been accepted by the public -- a national ID

so, instead...

[walong]

So, what are they supposed to use, a really big passwd file? OpenLDAP? Novell NDS? A big Oracle database? Why should we even care what the technology is, as long as it works?

But, the idea that you'll need to register in order to read government documents, now THAT is interesting, and somewhat troubling. But I couldn't care less what technology they use.

Unfortunately, all the Microsoft-hating government pawns around here seem to have missed the real point of the article.

In the year 2020...

[FurryFeet]

Washington, D.C. (AP).- In a surprising turn of events, Americans have elected Bill Gates as President of the United States.
After a recount of all votes, Gates received 89 percent of all votes, leaving oponents Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks with 3 and 2 percent each.
"It's hardly a surprise", said Steve Ballmer, campaign manager for Gates, "Bill has showed great leadership skills and built the greatest company in American history".
Ballmer then made a turnaround in his position about the infamous "Mother's Day documents", and admitted "there might be some truth to them".
The documents were published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an underground group that has been described as the political arm of hackers and ciberterrorists, and wer purported to have been obtained from Microsoft's internal servers. Gates and Ballmer denounced them as a fabrication.
"I guess we can tell you the truth now", said Ballmer, after Gates' voctory was official, "there might be something there".
The documents include a series of emails in which Gates, Ballmer and Microsoft's VP of legal affairs, John Ashcroft, discuss several courses of action in they won the election. Among them were: Change the countrys name to Microsoft States of América, change Gates's title from President to Chief Architect of Everything, and outlaw the use of any software not certified as "secure" by Microsoft Corp.
Critics have pointed to the posibility of electoral fraud, but the governmente has refuted the posibility.
"It's ridiculous. Preposterous", said a spokesman from the Electronics Elections Office. "We used Windows CE doubleplussecure 2018 for the polls machines, and Microsoft XXP Security-Above-All Server for the counting. These are the most secure systems in the world, and they're incapable of errors".
After being questioned on the possibility of a bug in the system, the spokesman refused to answer, pointing out that the recently passed Corporations Antidefamation Act expresely prohibits the discussion of any possible flaws in software products, lest they be used for ciberterrorism purposes.

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.

Dear Congressman Bob...

[ackthpt]

Dear Representative {Insert Their Name Here},

Thank you for taking your valuable time away from being wined, dined and brainwashed by lobbyists to read this letter. I strongly oppose the U.S. Federal Government setting precedent in support of a known and guilty monopolist. Please insist upon an Open Standard, arrived at by a broad spectrum of those with strong experience in the areas of Preservation of Individual Privacy and Integrity & Security of Data. Do not allow this perceived opportunity to lock the people of the United States of America into a closed standard which has proven non-secure in the past and the goals of the provider so transparent.

Regards, {Insert Your Name Here}

Good job!

[CaptainPhong]

Gee, that sounds like the perfect way to punish someone who abuses their Monopoly power - give them a big contract!