Slashdot Mirror
The US DoD and the GSA Join the Liberty Project
An anonymous reader writes "The Liberty Alliance Project announced today that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have joined the Liberty Alliance in its pursuit to develop open and interoperable standards for electronically managing identity information."
It's gotta be..
This early post for Ida! w00t!
U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have joined the Liberty Alliance
Great, that should really speed things up...
The government supporting privacy kinda sounds like silicone implants supporting healthy breasts.
The instant someone finds a security hole in this authentication system, everyone is vulnerable.
The opportunity for fraud in a universal system like this is just waiting to be exploited.
I have been pwned because my
The government's going to replace travelocity.com!
My travel worries are over!
Seriously, this stuff scares the crap out of me.
How long until you need to sign up for the Federal Identify Network to get a credit card? A drivers license? A job?
-Brett
I just watched the flash demo on their website. Their demo was all about being able to link up your data on various websites. Their example was linking your airlines account to a rental car account. This really just sounds like improved data mining couched in convenience to the consumer.
In the future, we'll all hafta have like microchips in our brain for this stuff. THAT's how determined they are to know who were are/what we're thinking.
DARPA has a history of doing things the right way and at light speed for a govn't orginization
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Now we can make sure the all of our information from the government's Total Information Awareness project are available in a compatible format to any corporation who pays enough. Okay, I'm half joking.
who cares?
...all US citizens are fat and ugly.
And as with most slashdot readers I didn't even *look* at the article! Hah! But Government = Creepy.. that's for sure!
-=SiGH=-
Who can't wait to signup? I'm filing this in league with the PATRIOT Act. Everyone needs federally regulated standards on network indentification. I'm envisioning a future where my permanant v6 ip address is on the back of my living/driving/working/eating license, and I can thank the LIBERTY Alliance for that!!! Ahh, I can taste the freedom.
So you make a system without flaws. It can be done.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
the Total Information Awareness project. Gotta keep track of you somehow..
sadly...
In addition to the information you knowingly provide us, we keep track of the domains and IP numbers from which people visit us. We also collect site usage statistics such as web browser types and page requests and track users' movements. This data is not personally identifiable and is used to more efficiently operate our business, prepare for network load demands, promote the services and administer the site. To the extent this information is associated with a particular user, that information will be considered personally identifiable information and will be protected accordingly.
Aha! a website that actually prepares itself for the slashdot effect!
I'm glad to see the US government supporting an industry consortimum instead of endoring the single vendor solution from Microsoft (Passport). I hope MS' stock gets knocked down on Monday.
links:
0 7003 0 0.asp
http://www.idg.com.hk/cw/readstory.asp?aid=200303
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109730,
about Liberty Alliance as something like it's some sort of individual tagging system? I thought it was some sort of alternative cross-site authentication system to challenge Microsoft's Passport technology?
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Tattoos on the arm and geometric symbols worn on the chest.
But aligning himself and the whole US government with Jerry Falwell is really a violation of the Constitutional separation of Church and State.
This road that the country is heading down is worrisome to me.
I have been pwned because my
Whoa, the Gay Straight Alliance joining forces with the Department of Justice? Now I'm worried.
The government needs to monitor the people to make sure they are obeying the law to prevent terrorism. Of course this is all silly when they don't do the most common sense thing and ban the private ownership of guns. The people have no legitimate need for guns but the various police agencies should be very well armed.
If I had a chip in my head running Win3000, if I started muttering "Dr Watson has detected an access violation at 0x054f2c42, reason code 0x0005" while I whacked off on a park bench, folks would just think it was some more run-of-the-mill Microsoft code!
But what did you thought Passport really is?
God Bless This Land of Liberty
Isn't it amazing how the DARPA TIA program gets limboized by congress, is effectively DOA, and then the DOD just HAPPENS to jump onto the Liberty Project? What's Poindexters new position, DOD rep. to the Liberty Project?
LOL, I mean JESUS, just how stupid do they think we ar... mmmm, donuts....
-rt
c'mon, shake that /. ass!!!!!
I dream that I will be able to get health insurence, open bank accounts, go to college, get a job, and retire without using that *** ** **** social security number. I dream that we get rid of it and the ponzi retirement scheme that comes along with it.
I dream that my license will actually be linked to my prooven ability to drive safely, and not other issues like child support or failure to file state taxes, drinking a beer in the dorms, etc.... And that I won't be tracked and stored in massive centralized gov databases that have almost always prooven to be totally screwed up. (getting rid of frivolous tickets wile you're at it would be nice too)
I dream that I won't be harassed when I try to buy beer, ciggarates, and spray paint (one time I was even carded because I tried to buy a cigarette lighter).
I dream that my right to bear arms won't be nickled and dimed to death by people wanting to register me in govt databases like the Nazi's had before they confiscated all privately owned guns from its citizens.
I dream that my credit will only be checked when I want a loan from the bank, and not when I just want a debit card, not when a bank wants to send me a credit card offer that I half to shred before I throw out, and not when I try to get auto insurance.
Can you think of any others...
Ironic that they would call a "tracking system" the "Liberty Project". If anything this REMOVES personal liberty.
Identity information basically means "government tracking".
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
The Girl Scouts of America are entering the Homeland Security field? Who will sell the cookies?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
To all the people who are freaking out about this "evil" technology, please keep in mind, the Liberty Alliance is developing an OPEN alternative to Microsoft's own "Passport" system. So, the gummit getting behind Liberty Alliance is a Good Thing(tm), relatively speaking. They could be getting behind Passport instead. And then, instead of just needing to have your Liberty Alliance ID tatooed on your forehead, you would have to have your MS-Passport ID tatooed on your forehead, and you would be legally forbidden to run anything but MS-Winders, since only MS-Winders would come with the proper drivers to scan and process the information tatooed on your forehead.
Liberty university is Jerry Fallwell's college. If you don't get the joke, don't mod it down as "Offtopic"
If there was an "Unfunny" category, then mod him down, because it was.
If there is to be an open standard regarding how identity related information is to be aquired and used, you can be sure that the government will want a hand in it .
When Microsoft introduced Passport, everyone complained. When Government announced support for a system that is a credible alternative to Passport, everyone complains again.
Idiots.
Would you rather government mandated Microsoft Passport?
A system that allows you to login only once is desired in the market place. A standard is desired. This market demand will be fulfilled whether you like it or not. Which entity do you trust the most to implement this standard? Or are you naive enough to think that we won't have a federated identity on the net in the near future?
Because THEY will be the ones, the corporations, the government and the DOD, who control our indentities. Any digital identity should exist to empower the individual to become a better, more informed customer, not a manipulated consumer.
I highly recommend you read Doc Searles and David Wienbergers views on this to see why any implementation of DigID that is corporate centered rather than individual centered is PURE EVIL, and will be used for all sorts of nefarois things, from total erasure of shopping anonymonity, total profiling, and even BLACKLISTING. This is bad stuff, pure and simple.
Planet P Blog
www.enthea.org
essential security for temporary Liberty deserve neither.
sulli
RTFJ.
Q: What is the Liberty Alliance Project?
A: The vision of the Liberty Alliance Project is to enable a networked world in which individuals and businesses can more easily conduct transactions while protecting the privacy and security of vital identity information. To accomplish its vision, the Liberty Alliance will establish an open standard for federated network identity through open technical specifications that will:
Support a broad range of identity-based products and services
Enable commercial and non-commercial organizations to realize new revenue and cost saving opportunities that economically leverage their relationships with customers, business partners, and employees
Provide consumers with choice of identity provider(s), the ability to link accounts through account federation, and the convenience of single sign-on, when using any network of connected services and devices
Increase ease-of-use for consumers to help stimulate e-commerce
Yeah, yeah. The gub'ment gonna undermine all those goals and blah blah conspiracy blah blah.
This is going to happen, and it's best it emerge as an open standard. Sane citizens of the 21st century want a secure and verifiable identity for e-commerce (which extends past the net, swiping your card for a bag of Doritos at the 7-11 really crosses into e-commerce)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'll bet the University of Texas is eager to get in on this project too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
the first time I read it I thought it said BSA. I'm so glad I was wrong- we'd all be doomed!
An example. Let's say you want to register yourself as a sole proprietor sales company. There's a myriad of organizations you will ultimately have to deal with, from OSHA to federal and state income and sales tax agencies to warranting that you're a drug-free employer or a nondiscriminatory one or whatever the latest law is. You'd like a one-stop shopping location, perhaps NewBusiness.gov, which acts a front-end to all these agencies at all levels and pulls it all together for you. Now that'd be nice, wouldn't it? Or how about one-stop location for handling all the stuff that deals with disasters? Or moving to Michigan? Or going to grad school, complete with Pell Grants and checks for available assistantships?
This is what the government wants to do. They know that they are fractured into little beaucracies beyond usefulness to the average citizen. So there is a major MAJOR initiative, fronted by the Bush White House, to make the government work together so it can be more responsive and helpful to you. National Science Foundation, GSA, a bunch of groups are working on this. They want to move the government into the twentieth century at least, much less the twenty-first!
Trouble is, how does the government know it's you who's applying for the Pell grant, as opposed to Joe Fraud who's stolen your identity? They need some kind of potent self-identification. But right now the government is scared spitless about using even cookies on its websites for fear that privacy spooks will start rumors that they're tracking your every move and a congressman will immediately put them out of work.
So the government is also trying to find ways to make it possible for you to manage, distribute in a protected fashion, verify, and guarantee your identity, or even act anonymously in a way you know they can't reasonably crack. Otherwise citizens will never ever use these services. They know this.
Commercial crap like MSN Passport just aint' gonna cut it. Passport has a dismal privacy record. Hence the interest in Liberty Alliance etc.
Yes, the Total Information Awareness project is scary (though anyone who's involved in the project can tell you it basically has no teeth at all -- it's a paper tiger). And various spook agencies are impressive at digging into your private live: well, at least the one in Maryland is anyway. But what's going on in this iniative is, in fact, totally benign. The government wants to really give you your bang for the tax buck, and are trying to figure out how they can do so without scarying you spitless on the privacy side.
There are in fact people in the government who are there because they want to help make the world better, you know! Not many. But they're there.
-- a researcher in the DC area...
Thye owner of isonews was due in court today for sentencing...
Anyone know what David Rocci aka "Krazy8" got sentenced to today?
I can't find any articles on it...
They're looking for a "federated" network identity, where "federated" means a level of intrinsic decentralization. To me, that sounds like there is a single "federal" (not to be confused with "federal government") information registry that keeps a bare minimum of information, and websites maintain their own private databases that collect their own information beyond the federated minimum. The central database essentially just makes sure that the private databases don't have redundant entries.
But how "federated" are they thinking here? Federated as in 1803 USA, or federated as in 2003 USA? How centrallized will this whole thing be, and who has a say in who controls how much? Will the central database really keep only a bare minimum of information, allowing most of the data maintenance to be performed by the interested parties, or will it be federated in name only, with the central database controlling everything, giving third parties the ability to collect extraneous BS "if they want to?"
(Ironicly enough, involving the DoD may help keep things relatively decentrallized. They're not all that keen on single points of failure.)
Is not having knee-jerk FUD-filled conspiracy reaction, and seems to actually understand the story.
Not only that, he probably uses windows.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
the 'gay straight alliance'? GSA? Ohhh I get it...GSA can also stand for 'gay straight alliance' instead of General Services Administration! LOL you are such a card! you're so witty and smart. the next time i have a party, i want YOU to come and tell funny jokes!!
go fuck yourself.
The DoD is very interested in having easy identification for the 1.3 million military personnel in the United States. This means pay information, service records, ratings, training, specializations. Medical records. Retirement information.If it's tracked, they want to have it all referenced to a single identity, cross-referenced on different systems.
They were working for a while on smartcards for all military personnel, and that's actually gone pretty far along.
But they've probably learned that there's too much to stick on a smartcard, and you can't get good enough security to put confidential information on the smartcard that you give to 1.3 million people. Too many will lose them, and then you have problems.
So they want to have the records, and have them easily tied to individuals. And have them available in the different commands, on different servers scattered thoroughout the DoD command structure.
They are very interested in something like the Liberty Alliance, and making sure that they can use it for their purposes. Keeping this diverse array of information for 1.3 million people is just what this project is made for.
Seems good that the DoD became aware of it, and decided to participate. And I'm reassured that they didn't decide to just go with the Microsoft solution without considering the options. (Maybe they learned from the problems the Navy has been having with NMCI.)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
In many provences, all citizens look somewhat alike (black hair, light build, similar facial feature). This has always been a problem to ID criminal elements and dealing with False Identity.
There is a huge market for this overseas, representing some 1 billion peoples.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Liberty = Big Brother knows all
Freedom = Imprisonment
Life = Death
Hello, I work for the Liberty Alliance Project. We don't actually RUN this place, but we have an understanding with those that do...
...European soap consumption has dropped to an all-time low.
some good reading here
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
CONFI'NEMENT, n.
a aa
1. Restraint within limits; imprisonment; any restraint of liberty by force or other obstacle or necessity; as the confinement of a debtor or criminal to a prison, or of troops to a besieged town.
2. Voluntary restraint; seclusion; as the confinement of a man to his house, or to his studies.
3. Voluntary restraint in action or practice; as confinement to a particular diet.
4. Restraint from going abroad by sickness, particularly by child-birth.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
LIB'ERTY, n. [L. libertas, from liber, free.]
1. Freedom from restraint, in a general sense, and applicable to the body, or to the will or mind. The body is at liberty, when not confined; the will or mind is at liberty, when not checked or controlled. A man enjoys liberty, when no physical force operates to restrain his actions or volitions.
2. Natural liberty, consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is a state of exemption from the control of others, and from positive laws and the institutions of social life. This liberty is abridged by the establishment of government.
3. Civil liberty, is the liberty of men in a state of society, or natural liberty, so far only abridged and restrained, as is necessary and expedient for the safety and interest of the society, state or nation. A restraint of natural liberty, not necessary or expedient for the public, is tyranny or oppression. civil liberty is an exemption from the arbitrary will of others, which exemption is secured by established laws, which restrain every man from injuring or controlling another. Hence the restraints of law are essential to civil liberty.
The liberty of one depends not so much on the removal of all restraint from him, as on the due restraint upon the liberty of others.
In this sentence, the latter word liberty denotes natural liberty.
4. Political liberty, is sometimes used as synonymous with civil liberty. But it more properly designates the liberty of a nation, the freedom of a nation or state from all unjust abridgment of its rights and independence by another nation. Hence we often speak of the political liberties of Europe, or the nations of Europe.
5. Religious liberty, is the free right of adopting and enjoying opinions on religious subjects, and of worshiping the Supreme Being according to the dictates of conscience, without external control.
6. Liberty, in metaphysics, as opposed to necessity, is the power of an agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, by which either is preferred to the other.
Freedom of the will; exemption from compulsion or restraint in willing or volition.
7. Privilege; exemption; immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant; with a plural. Thus we speak of the liberties of the commercial cities of Europe.
8. Leave; permission granted. The witness obtained liberty to leave the court.
9. A space in which one is permitted to pass without restraint, and beyond which he may not lawfully pass; with a plural; as the liberties of a prison.
10. Freedom of action or speech beyond the ordinary bounds of civility or decorum. Females should repel all improper liberties.
To take the liberty to do or say any thing, to use freedom not specially granted.
To set at liberty, to deliver from confinement; to release from restraint.
To be at liberty, to be free from restraint.
Liberty of the press, is freedom from any restriction on the power to publish books; the free power of publishing what one pleases, subject only to punishment for abusing the privilege, or publishing what is mischievous to the public or injurious to individuals.
I don't get how you rant about how Evil the Liberty Alliance is in one sentence and in the same breath claim what we need is individual centered and empowered standard - when that is what the Liberty Alliance is trying to provide!!
The whole point of the Liberty Alliance, from casual reading and demos I have seen, is to provide a federated storage of identity data - so you, the customer, can choose a provider to store your full set of identity information (one hopes that would include even an individual being able to hold his information on a local server, but even so it means it's not just Microsoft holding the data in a giant juicy target somewhere). Then anywhere you go where you want to make use of the data, you get to choose what part of your identity you want revealed - for instance you could expose an address but not a credit card number.
It's no good to rant about all forms of digital identification without understanding the form of what you are ranting against. This kind of witchhuntery is just the sort of thing that will give Passport a leg up and REALLY give you something to cry about!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is exactly why the government is interested in using this standard - all of the people that want government to support open source, this is how to make that happen, by making good open standard that can have a number of good open source implementations.
From what I've read so far here, a number people who would normally be all excited about the government supporting open standards and open source turn ultra-luddite when the words "government" and "identity" come together!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As Big Brother-ish as the whole thing sounds, it's not even the tip of the ice berg. Part of the new PKI-X standard includes a way for your government to issue you a digital ID. As efficient as the DMV and social security office are now, I can only imaine how much fun it's going to be to have to get a digital ID - Yes, could you pee in the cup? Oh, and we'll need to swap your cheek for DNA. Blood drawing is at the next station. The last stop will be the retina scan and hand scanner. Don't forget to get your transponder implant on the way out!
HDGary secures my bank
I was using slashdot way back when users were below 5000. Since then, I have visited the site from time to time, watching it fall from mediocre news system to a playground of cunning trolls and over-confident under-sexed geeks.
I have followed the birth and Dying of *BSD, the times when Beowulf cluster posts were all modded up for being Funny, I have revelled in the delights of jokers from signal11 to klerck, and even tittered at the most successful recent trolls: the "special report" articles from Afghanistan, et al.
But to this day, I have never been able to find out exactly who Ida is/was. Can you tell me, please?
Yours sincerely,
-- Anonymous Coward
...ask what you can do for your government, to paraphrase a well known Fed. The US Government is not a monolithic block of Poindexters committed to stealing our personal liberties. Only a few want that and they are often just implimenting misguided legislation from the boneheads you and I elect. There are many more policy makers and technologists within Government who believe in the openess and freedom designed into the Internet. But if we don't find simple, effective ways to authenticate and secure our communications when they need to be secure, the open nature of the Internet is in jeopardy. That is because there are those in the Government (and a heck of a lot more in some of your corporations) who will point to the insecurity of their particular communications as an indictment of the Net in general. And from that point of view comes the increasing call for building structural controls into the fiber of the network - including the monitoring and oversight many of us dread.
The contingents from GSA and DoD participating in the Liberty ALliance are among the good guys. They believe in an open Internet and in open standards. They released their Certificate Arbitrator Module (CAM) under an open source license. They want to see the Internet work for everyone so it isn't hijacked for a few.
[growls]
It's a pack of gum!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Who's the dickhead who came up with the name "Liberty project"? And what's so surprising that an entity that's desperate to have us all stamped, enumerated, taxed, and locked away is eager to help these "liberty" loving standards developers (who are themselves among the scum of the earth)?
Remember the "stovepipe" that Mr. Poindexter thinks needs to be broken down? This is it, folks. Don't be too happy about it.
"But the quickest paths in outer space are all toll roads (it costs a lot of rocket fuel to use them), while you can ride the Interplanetary Superhighway almost for free. Gravity does the driving, so the system is really more like an elaborate set of Hot Wheels tracks. All you have to do is let go of the car at the right place."
Enough already! Hot wheels tracks, Interplanetary Superhighway, toll roads - unless this article was written for nickelodeon.com it's ridiculous, and even then kids would have to do the same thing I did, wade through the crap for the content.
Sorry, got a little frustrated.
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
Not only does it keep your information where you want it, but it also keeps your teeth healthy to boot!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hehehe.
Anonymous Coward writes: You have no right to anonymity, it's not even reasonable to expect it. Not so long as you live in this society.
Funny stuff.
I'll leave you with a question:
When I exchange things ov value with another person, what gives you the right to know anything about that transaction?
I forget what 8 was for.
this is a UBA schema guide. so isp, busineses, airporst, subways, busses, taxis. have a way of recording and object and collecting statistics, locations, gps location, then put that info in a format that is compadiable with the goverment people tracking db. that is what this is, you will be forced to swipe you card everywhere you go, everywhere you shop. I see card trading becoming more a reality, kinda like the little grocery discount key cards, to avoid tracking a specific user, if enough people do this, the system is full of usless/incorrect information, worthless...... that would be a good day in my datebook. illegal card swapping gatherings...
Yeah, that would really help. Not only are guns not usually used in terrorism (they like bombs which private citizens do not own), but an armed citizen might be able to stop a terrorist before more people are hurt.
Seriously, how often is a bomb stopped by an commoner with a gun? Heck, if you'd look at some of the IRA bombs in Northern Ireland, and you'll see bombs work against military outports that have both guns *and* training. Are you telling me Joe Sixpack will do better? By the time he's shooting he'll either be:
a) Blown away by the bomb already
b) Panicked when trying to fire his gun, and shot
c) Shot by the other terrorist behind him.
d) 9/11: Decompress plane at cruise altitude
e) Shoot the bomb too and set it off
f) Shoot the terrorist, but the bomb is timed and goes off anyway
Seriously, I've heard some decent arguments for having guns, but this is not one of them...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
http://www.acadian.com/internet_news/2003/integrat edsolutionsrelease.htm
- fails to employ reasonable and appropriate measures to protect privacy and confidentiality
- fails to provide better security than your run-of-the-mill online transaction
- collected personally identifiable sign-on history, contrary to claims in its privacy policy
That was an easy call, MS-Passport cannot be made secure even in theory, but it's reassuring that the FTC is more up to speed than the PTO.In regards to single-signon there is probably a lot that can be done with certificates and or keys to estabilish a consistent online identity, but with a minimum of personal data. The personal data, if needed at all, has no need to be kept together with the keys.
Corporations have now gotten to the point where they must be obliged to respect the Bill of Rights and other legislation just as governments. They [proven] risk and damage from abuse is just to harmful otherwise.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Q: Why shouldn't I simply delete the stuff I never use, it's just taking up
space?
A: This question is in the category of Famous Last Words..
-- From the Frequently Unasked Questions
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