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White House Releases Trusted Internet ID Plan
angry tapir writes "From the Computerworld article: 'the U.S. government will coordinate private-sector efforts to create trusted identification systems for the Internet, with the goal of giving consumers and businesses multiple options for authenticating identity online, according to a plan released by President Barack Obama's administration.'"
No way, Barry...
Just like a SSN.
Requires Windows (tm) 7 (tm) Professional (tm) using an Intel (tm) chipset supporting a Trusted Platform Module (tm) with keys in escrow by the issuing authority.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
A few years back my email account got hacked, they got my yahoo contact list and bombarded people with spam. My solution to this problem was to install Enigmail, om to my Thundeerbird. reader. This program allows me to easily digitally sign all messages. Granted the world is full of people not smart enough to verify a PGP signature but at least they know if the signature block isn't there. It is not from me.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Never going to work while the security of home PC's is Swiss cheese.
You missed your snowclone a bit.
A 7-Eleven store is a small grocery store similar to the stores at gas stations, though I've never seen one with gasoline pumps in front of it.
If you do all your banking online, how do you deposit cash or checks that other individuals give you? Do you mail the checks, and buy money orders with the cash and mail those? And do you refuse to take any job that doesn't direct deposit your paycheck?
Lets give controls of the keys to the Homeland Security.
I'm sure we can trust them with our internet.
Items purchased with trusted ID: Washing machine, PS4, Glycerine, Shower tiles cleaner (flagged combo).
Taxes due on purchases $156.00. Forwarding purchase of glycerine and acid product to FBI for examination.
Here is a disaster waiting to happen! Any bets on how long before this system is compromised? :-(
The format of the Trusted ID will be a nine digit number, separated into three groups by dashes...
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This is just another step in the governments plan to control our online lives. John Locke states that the reason for this plan is that 8.1 million people were victims of identity theft in the US last year. What he fails to mention is that only 11% of that 8.1 million were internet or technology related while over 43% were due to theft of purse or wallet, another large chunk were the result of dumpster diving or other unsavory methods.
Remember how we were just talking about the nasty, gaping, holes in the practice of using CAs to verify SSL certs? How the CAs were largely rent-seeking incompetents with strong market incentives to do inadequate verification while simultaneously trumpeting their security? How there were just too many of them, and a compromise at any served to threaten the security of all SSLed connections?
Well, yeah, that kind of sucks because this plan looks very similar: Some kind of public/private key system, with multiple totally trustworthy(tm) private sector vendors, subject to the twin incentives of trying to establish themselves as one of the 'trusted' trusted identity trustees, so that they get the user fees and user data; but also likely to start getting sloppy on the verification side; because everybody hates a cost center...
Mathematically, most of the hard work has already been done, and the engineering required to put some sort of secure hardware widget, while not something to be left to the naive, isn't exactly terra incognita(smart card ICs, and/or the integrated USB+smartcard chip+optional definitely-not-keylogged-keypad are a well established product category some generations old at this point); but the organizational/economic incentives side of this is pretty much certain to be totally, utterly fucked.
It's going to be "voluntary", but soon enough legislation will be passed that makes it so "questionable websites", such as those associated with porn, will be mandated to require an Internet ID for age verification. And simultaneously the government will know what kind of porn you like to look at and can blackmail you whenever they see fit.
Do you think banks and credit cards do not already report you unofficially to the feds? or when asked (and they are not allowed to say they were asked) do you think they will put up any sort of legal fight? Some librarians did, but mega corps who have working control of the aspects of government they want already - I doubt it; they may in fact volunteer or tell the gov to go after somebody... like Wikileaks for example (the state dept seems to work for the corp interests.)
Yes, the Internet has been a pretty big failure so far. :-) What more "full potential" he's talking about?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Don't worry, they point out that use of the system is completely voluntary. Just like owning a mobile phone or participating in interstate commerce.
All the pussies in this country have proven time and again that they will gladly trade privacy for a false sense of security. Idiots. You might as well get ready for this to pass.
Rather than hittin a journalist site, go direct to the source at
http://www.nist.gov/nstic/
You can trust this isn't a rickroll or a goatse because I'm usin' my trusted internet ID of VLM
The headline made me expect a detailed bit level cryptoanalysis of the new protocol complete with flowcharts, etc. Instead it seems to be the tech equivalent of a bunch of hippies high on weed sitting around a campfire and curing all the worlds ills by talking about them.
More like "whitehouse releases a plan to create a plan for a trusted internet ID plan"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It completely dispenses with the password. It is your responsibility to protect your username. If anyone from Nigeria to Nantucket know your identification code, it means they are authorized to do any financial transaction on your behalf. This breakthrough technology makes it possible for the people creating new and exciting contracts under 409 clause to not only draw money from your bank, but also from your brokerage account, and also change your network log in id and to rearrange your netflix queue and use ftp to open your garage doors Imagine! The New possibilities!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
what i dont trust is the internets.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Sounds about right for liberals. You have to have an ID to use the Internet, but not to vote.
People complain about identity theft, people complain about efforts to verify ID.
I just RTFA... and the only question that comes to mind is.... HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT THAN OPENID ?!
Another solution, where there is no problem. Except if you are the government and those pesky humans are doing something that needs to be taxed / regulated / or subsidized.
There are, at current best estimate, at least 200 million fully-compromised systems on the Internet. That number has been monotonically increasing for most of a decade, and there is no reason to expect that trend to change. (And many reasons to expect it to continue.) Not all of those are in the US, of course, but a lot of them are. This is turn means that any credentials present on those systems are now the property of their REAL owners, not the people who mistakenly believe they own them. Which means that even if such a universal ID system was properly designed (unlikely) properly built (unlikely) and properly deployed (extremely unlikely) that its first major effect will be handing over a large number of those IDs to The Bad Guys. The second major effect will be providing major incentives to The Bad Guys to compromise more systems, as the value of such increases with both their usefulness and the value of the data stored on them. The third major effect will be providing major incentives to The Bad Guys to go after any system where these IDs are stored or used, since they now have widespread usefulness, not just localized usefulness. They will be successful some of the time, of course, and we will once again get to hear the refrain of the professional liars who call themselves "spokespeople", as they solemnly intone "Nobody could have foreseen..." I think the biggest usefulness of this scheme will be filtering: anyone supporting it is clearly marking themselves as a security imbecile, should be fired on the spot, blacklisted for life, and never permitted to speak in public again on the topic of security. That won't happen of course. They'll get bonuses. That's how we reward sufficiently grandiose failure in this society.
If people can't see this: http://msgboard.snopes.com/politics/graphics/birth.jpg, realize that birth announcements were made in the local papers, and notice that multiple agencies have put investigating it's legitimacy and found it real, then no amount of convincing that trustedID is trustable is going to convince them.
If I have to bring at least two newspaper articles, several sworn officials, several in depth investigations and court rulings in support of my identity to prove myself for an amazon purchase and it is still not enough, I don't think I am going to adopt that system.
if you get a cheque, you go to an ATM at the bank and deposit it
ATMs in my town won't take deposits for other banks, including online-only or otherwise out-of-town banks.
One Authentication to rule them all
One Authentication to find them
One Authentication to bring them all
and in darkness to bind them
or maybe
One government to rule them all
One government to find them
One government to bring them all
and in darkness to bind them
But you don't have to give it to anyone - of course they don't have to do business with you if you don't.
Trusted ID? Is that like Obama's much talked about trusted birth certificate?
as soon as you'll need to use it to pay taxes. Many of the taxes that are collected are collected not to keep revenue stream going but to ensure that the information records keep flowing. As soon as you can't pay your taxes online without one of these, it will be over. Since the burden of preparing taxes only keeps going up, most people will gravitate towards the electronic solutions which assist in tax-record preparation. Using this thing will be seen as just part of the cost of doing business.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The new version more explicitly emphasizes that the private sector will drive forward the trusted ID market, with government playing a coordinating role, administration officials said.
In other words, it's a Mussolini-style Fascism model.
Consumer participation in trusted ID technologies will be voluntary, they added.
Because nobody is going to force you to use a bank, shop on-line, or send email that will actually make it to somebody else's inbox. Sorry about all those on-line government services that you won't be able to use. You can always hike to one of the brick-and-mortar offices and present your papers in person.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Having a way to authenticate a person as unique is a missing brick in many web applications, especially all the voting applications. I see it as a good thing and I have a hard time seeing how such a tech makes bad scenarios more likely.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Why not just brand everybody with a unique id, and stamp "666" or their foreheads?
I strongly doubt that the Obama administration would be willing to push a plan that eliminates the "business need" for RSA certificates so I guess I will oppose this plan.
I trust VISA and my bank more than I trust my government. I will keep voting my conscience and hopefully one day that will work out.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Arguably, "Identity" is the wrong target(or, if you think that it is the right target, I consider your motives suspect) for many applications:
"Identity" is a polite euphemism for a lot of personal information. For most purposes, it is utter overkill to achieve legitimate ends. Say that I'm buying some booze online. You don't actually need to know my name, age, appearance, etc, etc. You simply need to know that my age > legal age and that my payment is valid. To log into an email account, you don't need to know who I am, you just need to know that I have the key for the account.
There are, in fact, relatively few situations where the entire bundle of information that falls under "Identity" is relevant. Unfortunately, there are virtually no situations where the person you are transacting with wouldn't be happy to have the entire thing, if only for marketing purposes(or worse).
This scheme had better include some interesting zero-knowledge proof related stuff, or it is little more than a privacy giveaway to a number of private sector actors(and, no doubt, the members of the 'intelligence community' with whom they are oh so cooperative).
this shouldn't be possible and regulation is a good way of addressing this, for example by forbidding businesses from using SSNs as record identifiers
Governments are very two-faced on this one, on the one hand they get their panties in a bunch about it yet on the other hand they require it in so many places. Here in Norway I have a unique id assigned to me by the government. Employers report income to the authorities for income tax, so all HR positions have to have it. I can't open a bank account without one. I can't trade stocks or funds without one. Car registry, property registry, pretty much every registry that requires a unique id uses it. There's a central registry that I have to report in when I move, so I get all the local voting rights, pay the right local taxes and so on. Even the card that gives me 3% off at the grocery store and pays out when it reaches a certain amount has to have that ID, because even those 20$ are reported to the government as my asset. Along with audit requirements that means many, many people past and present have to know it. That it's also written on my drivers license in my wallet is the least of my worries. Of course the explanations are all the usual ones, tax fraud, money laundering, mistaken identities and so on. Fair enough but you can't both have your cake and eat it too, if so many people know it then it's not a very well kept secret.
It's not a secret, well kept or otherwise, anymore than your date of birth is. But I am pretty sure that someone cannot create a bank account or get a credit card in your name just because he has found out that non-secret number. The problem they have in the US is that with no national id and with many people not having a passport, companies resort to all sorts of bizarre things to identify people (including the social security number, which was never meant for that purpose, or absurdities like your mother's maiden name, or an electricity bill delivered to your address).
We just transfer money between accounts securely, conveniently and relatively speedily.
You didn't say cheaply. How much do the source bank and destination bank charge for each such transfer?
It is not wise to mail cash. Or did you mean go to the post office and buy a money order? Or did you mean spend all the cash people give you on grocery store gift cards?
Right. So wedding announcement is enough to file for divorce? Or do you actually need a legal document like a marriage certificate? How about posting a necrology in a newspaper? is that enough to claim an inheritance? Or maybe you should get a death certificate first? Most people do think he was born in Hawaii. What irritates people is this arrogant attitude that he is above the law. That he is special and doesn't have to show his papers. At least Bush and Clinton tried to claim executive privilege when they tried to hide documents. This guy is claiming nothing. He just doesn't think that millions of people deserve to have their question answered. Riddle me this: do you not think his birth certificate is now a national historical document? It doesn't contain any private information (no medical records, no legal records, etc.) So why not put a historical document in national archives. It's 1 piece of paper. I don't think giving up a piece of paper which of so little consequence is that much to ask of a President. Especially, since it puts him in a murky legal position. His lack of desire to be as clear and as transparent as possible is the most annoying thing about this whole "birther" issue. Oh, and before you try to assign some false claim to me, something along the lines of (he is just another birther), I am more certain that Obama was born in the US than that McCain was born in the US. Because McCain was born on a military base in Panama. But if we have an administration going around creating new national identification standards, the lease the President can do is lead by example and show his own paperwork.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
People who "go to 7-11 to pay bills" are actually getting money orders to pay for things.
Because they don't want or can't have a bank account.
There are various reasons for each category of such people and the reasons may or may not be valid, but the primary one is because if certain folks have a bank account, it can be attached for past taxes, legal judgments or back child support.
I think I have a Facebook account that will do all that and more.
I have a hard time trusting a proposal like this that comes from an administration that includes a lot of former RIAA and MPAA associates.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Gets your "trusted" credentials, that would be more damaging, right? Kind of like now -- someone pairing your ss# to your full name is much more dangerous because of the trust factor placed in that. Whereas if they get your Yahoo Mail login they spam all your friends until you close the account or get control of it. I think I would like this to be optional for sure. Let's see how well it works or what a disaster it is before everyone is required to use it to do business with say PayPal -- Google -- etc.
Obama administration wants to remove the anonymity from the internet so they can track everyone for whatever reason.
They have already attempted to make law that you cannot "fake" post on the web.
If the Internets managed to get some sort of unified, 'secure" (rofl) ID of mine, here's what'd happen:
- Slashdot people would sign me up for crap because I use Windows and can't stand the blathering of Linux fanboys.
- 4chan would sign me up for transsexual-based porn, for the lulz, you see.
- Nigerians would ensure that I give my bank account details to several 'princes'.
I trust fully that this would happen; and I trust fully that these side effects are minor compared to what the bumbling government would do.
(Enforcement of use taxes; the death of basic anonymity; tracking of mundane (eg, 'interesting') purchases; et cetera.)
I just want to point out that private industry created the credit reporting service, and now I have to spend money to protect my interest against the shoddy practices of this industry. I don't think it is that fact that people will commit fraud that worries me, but the poor practices that the industry follows that provides no protection against fraud.
The creation of a government credit ID that has anti-fraud measures might be the first step in battling this issue. The second step would be making the credit reporting companies responsible for bearing the cost of cleaning up the effects of identity theft.
I would only support the idea of an Internet ID if I wasn't responsible for undoing the message associated with fraud committed against my ID.
Did anyone else read the title like this at first glace?
Here you go. It's been verified by the proper officials. Read at the bottom where it says 'This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.' That's it. That's all that needs to be provided. So what is it you are looking for? What could the man possibly be 'hiding'? The man's name already has Hussein and Obama in it. What evil thing do you think he did when he was born? Did he have a tail? He won't deny it.
If you take issue with his policy by all means debate it. Address the issues and debate the merits of your argument. If your going to create bogeyman to chase after then don't be surprised when people 'assign some false claim' to you.
It will be the greatest system ever devised!
Provided it doesn't cost too much, or impact jobs.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
If he's accepting payment by such archaic methods then by definition he isn't doing all his banking online.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
First of all, the link you give is broken. And 2nd, enough playing of these games. He is not being asked to prove a negative (as you suggest). No one is asking him to provide evidence that he never molested children. Simply put the original of a historical document in national archives. It's not that big a request to produce that big a controversy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
What I like about the current mess of different usernames and passwords for different sites, entrust card, RSA tokens etc is that any identity theft is likely to be rather limited. With a Internet ID plan it makes it possible for someone to take an entire identity in one hit, along with all your money and likely better lock you out of getting it back.
This is going become prime target for identity theft, I can tell by the lack of language even acknoledging security issues let alone addressing how it may be kept safe.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Copy the link and paste it in your browser - it seems that Snopes doesn't like hotlinking their images. The legal proof is in that image there. Why should anything more be needed?
'This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.'
I am unaware of anyone who questions the fact that Obama was born. What they question is where he was born, what hospital was he born at? There are an amazing paucity of records concerning the life of the "most transparent President in history," not just his birth certificate.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It lists where he was born. Under Location of Birth it lists Honolulu. It is a legal document and is recognized by congress who is given the duty of verifying such things. There's no requirement that President's be born in a hospital, thus there is no requirement to produce a hospital birth certificate. It's an idiotic argument that has never been brought up for a white president.
There is an official birth certificate, verified by the Republican governor of HI. There are multiple paper copies that have been found of the birth announcement in the local paper. Sure, a birth announcement isn't sufficient to prove citizenship, but it's still incontrovertible proof. There is lots of evidence that he was born in HI, and none he was born elsewhere.
Additionally, he's an American born to an American mother. Even if born in Kenya, he's an American by birth. There have been multiple answers to the location of his birth, and no one could ever offer any evidence at all that the released information was not true.
Learn to love Alaska
The problem with federated trust used in this way is that it does not give the end user any confidence they are communicating with the party they think they are.
Yea great so you can use the same credentials to login everywhere... Except what happens when a malicious site masquerading as your favorite online store starts accepting open id credentials?
All of the current federated systems as deployed right now rely on SSL CAs to establish trust.. They don't actually solve any security problems in their own right or address any of the core trust issues surrounding CAs.
Because it is no longer a legal question. It's become a question akin to Nixon's WH tapes. All the legal maneuvering Nixon did to try to limit access to them only reinforced the wide-spread belief that he was hiding something. If something like 40% of the nation is convinced that a document does not exist and the existence of that document is necessary for the President to be legitimate, it no longer matters if he fulfilled the minimum legal standard. This has now become a historical document. There is absolutely no arguing this point. And if it's a historical document, keeping it a secret creates an appearance of impropriety. He is not on trial here. The standard he has to satisfy is not the minimum legal standard. If he doesn't release the document into national archives, he will be remembered with mistrust for the next 50 years. I, for one, don't want to hear about it anymore. Both sides, as far as I am concern are correct here. The left is correct that he satisfied the legal standard and the right is correct that he has to go a step further to assuage curiosity (and more than occasional fears). He is not a private person. He is an elected public figure. So the public has a right to know more about him than it would about an ordinary person. By the nature of his position he has public trust. The public has a right to demand that he deserve that trust. Since, again, this document doesn't reveal any private information, not releasing it has a "let the public be damned" whiff about it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I mean, this isn't; Al Gore's White House. Did Obama sweat out this scheme? Was it planned in the White House? Reading on a few paragraphs one sees "Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an NSTIC release event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce". So it was actually the Dept of Commerce. Sure, they announced it at the White House, but so what? That's hardly the most important thing, why put it in the headline?
This tendency of Americans to characterise every act of the Federal Government as "Barack Obama" is quite weird, almost medieval. And misleading, I think. It's pretty likely most policies are created and executed by career bureaucrats, the Commence Secretary who announced it and the President (who is probably barely aware of it) have basically nothing to do with it.
Let me actually say even more. Since 40% of the country doesn't believe that he can produce an actual birth certificate (I won't rehash why that's different from a certificate of live birth -- it may be sufficient legally, but it's not the same thing and that's that), that means that 40% of the country effectively believes that we are living under consequences of a coup de tat. Even if only half of those people (20%) make this connection, do you have any idea what that to voluntary law compliance? Removing reasons for such a large portion of the population to doubt legitimacy (not effectiveness, but legitimacy) of the government is probably something that should be considered part of proper leadership. So to sum up, not removing this doubt carries a huge cost for the country. The cost is expressed in reducing voluntary law compliance as well as deepening the belief that public officials do not have any checks or oversight. I ask you this, what is the cost of showing the certificate in a permanent manner (such as by putting it in national archives)?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Defeating this will be as simple as starting a "grass roots" (astroturfing) campaign declaring this an Orwellian Obama conspiracy against freedom. It would be dirt simple to get the ultra-right charged up about this, especially if a Muslim conspiracy could be worked in or at a minimum declare the program anti-Christian (think mark of the beast). This should get most of the know-nothing Teabag simpletons onboard. It's time these morons were actually put to _good_ use, rather than just destroying the US. It would be worth the PR some young-Earther, keep-America-white-and-pure dipshit would get leading this movement to defeat this idea resoundingly.
does anyone actually even trust the white house / us government
Somewhere around 0% of the nation thinks the existence of the document is necessary for the president to be legitimate. If they thought that, they would have long ago leapt to the conclusion that the document doesn't exist (i.e. they would have ignored all the evidence), and if they did that, then they would have come to the conclusion that the president isn't legit. And if they thought that, they would have acted. 0% of the population is taking that idea that seriously. That's how you know they're posturing and don't really believe. They're not drinking the koolaide; they're merely offering it to passersby.
It's not that the claims the president was born outside the US are merely incorrect; it's that it's a lie. It could even theoretically be true, but the people saying it don't believe it. They're trolling.
When you look at it that way, the president is being very smart to not release any extra documents other than what the state of Hawaii has already released. If Republicans are talking about this issue instead of real politics, then they'll be discreited and likely to have their shit together in elections. It is in every anti-Republicans' interest that birthers' trolling be continue. If you want Republicans to lose elections, then birthers are your friend. The president wants Republicans to lose elections. So he's doing the right thing.
And the birth cert is definitely not a serious historical document. It is trivia. And it can always be released later, if people want to study Obama's infant footprints 100 years from now as part of their infant-foot-size vs presidential success papers.
No! Read any pre-2000 conservative or liberal manifesto and you're not going to see anything even vaguely related to this issue (ignore any new (at the time) statements made in response to concerns about the governator running for president). There is no left/right aspect to the issue.
If we went back in time 10 years and then I were to run a poll saying that a birthplace question were to come up in 2084 but I don't mention the party that the "accused" is a member of, and please answer these two questions:
there is just no way you would see any correlation between the birther issue and politics. The left and right do not have positions on this; this is completely about the membership of (or opposition to) the party of the current president. If we were talking about a president of a different party, the situation would be different.
So please, phrase it as
Calling the birthers or their opponents left or right is a perversion. None of them are talking about politics. The government's role in peoples' lives, positive-vs-negative liberties, social vs personal responsibility -- birth certs aren't related to any of these things.
This is not a problem the government should be solving. I think businesses should be responsible for keeping their customers' information secure through robust implementations. For instance, use a site-supplied on-screen keyboard that rearranges itself with every mouse click for a password that sends the information encrypted. Whenever any action is taken on the account, the password needs to be supplied through that interface. It's a PITA for the user, but it prevents most common attempts at hacking an account because in order for them to change account information or perform any action with the account would require them to know the password. Keyloggers (or things that record mouse positioning and clicks) won't work, and they'd have to intercept the encrypted password and unencrypt it in order to really do any damage. Even stealing session credentials wouldn't get a hacker very far because they'd still need to know the password to do anything.
I guess it might be possible to steal the traffic and inject different information while keeping the password intact, but I'm pretty sure that can be avoided based on clever encryption key generation (the encryption key could be generated differently based on which type of action you're performing, and the content of information being sent, like using a hashing algorithm on the contents or something).
I'm no computer security expert, but this seems way more secure than what the government is proposing.
"The facts of life are conservative." Margaret Thatcher
"The facts of life are progressive." History
What if the President 'admitted' he didn't have a birth certificate and that he had in fact been born in a house in Hawaii. As you have said, he has met the minimum legal standard and that wouldn't change. At that point I'm sure there would an investigation into whether he had said he was born specifically in a hospital, while under oath, thus perjuring himself. Then there could be an impeachment for the perjury. Then probably nothing.
Is this really even in the top ten things the country should be focusing on? Forty percent of the country usually has a problem with the President. It's not grounds for invalidating a President just because it's the other guy's turn to screw things up.
In what country do even children get their allowance through direct deposit, and lemonade stands take plastic or other electronic payment? And what's its immigration policy like?
No, it should not be a thing the country should focus on at all. But until there is a resolution to this story, it will only go on. The mystery takes on life of its own as imaginations run wild. The problem is not that 40% have a problem with the President. The problem is that 40% think the country may have already been dismantled.
To be honest, even if he hasn't met the legal standard of having been born in the US and it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, he'd remain the President. The Constitution provides for only 1 way of removing a President from power. And the standard for impeachment is "bribes, high crimes or misdemeanors." Lying about your place of birth doesn't rise up to any of these. Especially since it might not be lying, but could be a simple mistake. I know that most people assume that the legal system works in such a way that any mistake which is made must be immediately reversed, however, the way the Constitution is written, he couldn't become President, but once he did, he would not stop being President. For example, if the votes in Florida were privately counted and it turned out that Gore unequivocally won, Bush still would have remained the President despite the fact that in that hypothetical scenario he would have lost the election. Constitution provides no way for correcting this type of mistake after the fact.
I don't think he'd be brought up for impeachment on perjury charges. First, because one isn't a witness (noun) to one's birth. So one cannot witness (verb) to it. Second, because perjury had been shown not to rise to the standard of impeachable offense in Clinton's case.
My personal opinion on the matter is that he is keeping the document closed in order to deflect attention towards this minor controversy and away from larger problems that his administration is facing. But it's having a very heavy toll on the nation at large. People not liking a President doesn't cause them to view the country as having fallen apart. People thinking that the principles, the very principles on which the country is based, are no longer the relevant causes these people to completely (rather than partially) lose stake in national cohesion. The origin of the word "outlaw" is that it is someone who is outside of the social contract which is the law. This meme of the President not being legitimate hasn't had its time to ferment yet. If it does, it will cause grave damage to the national cohesion.
Lastly, now is the best time to actually take a position one way or another. To either release the document or to state that it isn't available. It will give enough time for it to blow over before the election. I don't want this to be an election issue. If he's beaten, it should be because the country takes a stand against his policies -- not because of a gimmick.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.