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Postal Service Pilots 'Federal Cloud Credential Exchange'

Posted by Unknown on from the trading-krbtgts dept.

CowboyRobot writes with news about a federal initiative to support federated authentication for government services. From the article: "The U.S. Postal Service will be the guinea pig for a White House-led effort to accelerate government adoption of technologies that allow federal agencies to accept third-party identity credentials for online services. The program involves using services ... through standards like OpenID rather than requiring users to create government usernames and passwords. ... The federated identity effort, known as the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange, is just one piece of a broader Obama administration online identity initiative: the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), which aims to catalyze private sector-led development of a secure, digital 'identity ecosystem' to better protect identities online. ... The Postal Service pilot is but one of several different pilots that are part of NSTIC. There are also three cryptography pilots and two non-cryptographic privacy pilots in the works. Each of those pilots is being carried out by multiple private sector organizations ranging from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to AOL to AARP to Aetna."

17 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Coming soon: by Pseudonym+Authority · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pay your taxes with facebook credits!

    1. Re:Coming soon: by Rogerborg · · Score: 2

      I hear the IRS audit random events in FarmVille 2 are brutal.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  2. Canada by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Informative

    Canada has been working on something like this as well, using banks, etc, as external providers and SAML.

  3. OpenID? Yeah. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This being a government project, those running it are going to be looking for ID sources that are backed up a company with serious resources, that can be depended upon to remain in business for the next decade at least, and idealy that has some existing history of cooperation with the US government. OpenID meets all these criteria, but Facebook and Google accounts meet them even more strongly. We might joke about 'paying your taxes on facebook' right now, but it is entirely plausible in a few years that may well be a common thing to do.

    1. Re:OpenID? Yeah. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Both of those have a 'real names only' policy. The reason you can open an account with little personal identification is purely down to the practical difficulties of enforcing that policy.

    2. Re:OpenID? Yeah. by bmo · · Score: 2

      As far as Google and FB are concerned, I am an owl, with a greek first name and latinized second name. (on here, I am a drunk on a steam driven luxury liner). Indeed, FB didn't like my first choice of alias, which was more plausible, but then accepted a scientific name for a particular kind of owl as my name.

      The last time an online service required an actual photocopy of an ID, it was the Chebucto Freenet back in the early 90s. This was because back then you could be more trusting - the environment was much more collegial. Now? I've seen so many news stories about the disregard for users' personal information that I will rather simply do without than provide any actual proof of who I really am.

      The people who matter already know my online alias(es) and have no problems contacting me whatsoever.

      --
      BMO - "where there's smoke, there's work."

  4. Private sector? by sgunhouse · · Score: 2

    I didn't know that a state DMV qualified as a "private sector organization". Sure it's not part of the federal government, but it's still public sector.

    1. Re:Private sector? by Yebyen · · Score: 2

      Why do you think it's gone up to $75 to simply take your picture and mail you a new license? The DMV is responsible to pay 100% of its own overhead from the fees that are charged to their patrons/visitors.

      Here's what Google has to say on the matter:

      private sector
      Noun
      The part of the national economy that is not under direct government control.

      I think you're on the right direction, the DMV is a public _service_, but I don't think that makes it definitively public sector. Their records might also be public records. Their employees might be required to take the civil service exam. All of this is more meaningful than trying to pigeonhole the whole organization one way or the other, of course. There are no elected officials at the DMV.

      --
      Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
    2. Re:Private sector? by uberdilligaff · · Score: 2

      You are mistaken. The DMV is completely public sector -- it is a Department of a state (or commonwealth) government. The DMV is a direct agency of the state that identifies, tests, authorizes, licenses, and taxes drivers and vehicles -- any "public service" you get is collateral to their mission. DMV is absolutely an arm of the government. Their top officials are typically appointed by the elected governor.

      --
      Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
  5. About time! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    The USPS should have gotten into certificates a long time ago. Is it any wonder they're going under?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:About time! by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The USPS should have gotten into certificates a long time ago. Is it any wonder they're going under?

      They're going under because they are facing the same pressures as the Royal Mail in the UK - private companies can pick and choose profitable delivery while dumping the unprofitable stuff on the national mail carrier who simply *must* take on the stuff that private companies would ignore as unprofitable. The USPS has it slightly better than the Royal Mail because third party carriers can't put things in your mailbox (there is no such restriction here), but parcel delivery companies are seriously squeezing them.

      Also because you can send something across the whole US for a buck or so and be almost certain it will get there in a couple of days, come rain or shine.

    2. Re:About time! by g1powermac · · Score: 5, Informative

      As a rural mail carrier, I can tell you that the USPS isn't going under because of lack of parcels or profit from them. Actually, parcel volume is way up and profiting quite well. The arrangements we have with both Fedex and UPS for 'last mile' runs of their packages actually works well. Us carriers _have_ to go on our routes anyway, so the extra volume in packages we get costs the post office very little yet makes them a decent profit from both of the other national carriers. What is hurting the post office is two fold. One, regular letter volume is way down due to the advent of online bill payments over the years. And two, the federal gov't is requiring the post office to prepay retirements way ahead of people even coming close to retirement. This is far and beyond any corporation or other federal agency is required to do. This is the biggest problem the post office has at the moment.

    3. Re:About time! by g1powermac · · Score: 2

      The thing is, the USPS is no longer supported by tax dollars. That changed quite a while ago. The postal service has been mandated to at least break even during the subsequent years by congress. And if it wasn't for declining first class mail volume (ie, bill statements and checks going back and forth) and the insane prepayment of retirement mandated by congress, the USPS would be in pretty good shape. On a side note, USPS is not technically a US Federal government agency. It is controlled by congress at the highest level, but otherwise is not supported by the gov't. Even the employees are not true federal employees (I should know, since I happen to be a mail carrier). We do get access to some of the benefits of federal employees, however.

    4. Re:About time! by g1powermac · · Score: 2

      You're right with the profitability of both the packages and bulk mail (officially can't call it 'junk' mail as a carrier). However, both the parcels volume has increased and the bulk mail has stayed roughly the same in volume, despite the move to the internet. And as for first class mail, it isn't so much that it costs more to deliver, its more that they're just not getting enough volume like they used to. Of course they could raise prices on first class to make up for volume, but that would probably cause even less volume. Now the thing here with the monopoly on the mailbox is fairly simple. Reliability of you actually getting your mail delivered would drop if the box is filled with junk from every local business who wants to stick stuff in your box. If the box is full or blocked, we have no requirement to deliver, and so you'd have to go to the post office to pick it up. That would then tarnish the post office's reputation, making it less useful for people. Now I definitely agree there should be more emphasis on getting high speed internet access to the rural areas in this country, but without a 'last mile' postal service, many areas in this country wouldn't get any delivery service at all. Just like with the mandates on getting electricity to everyone, there must be some option to get mail and packages to everyone, hence the postal service.

    5. Re:About time! by blackraven14250 · · Score: 2

      You also forgot to mention that the USPS has to fund retirement accounts for the next 75 years using their current revenues, which is a crippling blow when you consider that no private organization has to do that, and the employees on the tail end of that range haven't been born yet.

  6. Postal Service Pilots by rossdee · · Score: 2

    The USPS has its own planes? That sounds innefficient, no wonder they are losing money.

  7. USPS email address? by cockpitcomp · · Score: 2

    Does this lead to email via USPS, having all the reliability and legal implications as paper mail? Sounds good to me, I do trust them more than the email provided by my ISP and having to buy a stamp would really help with the spam.