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Identity As the Great Enabler
New submitter steve_torquay writes: Last week, President Obama signed a new Executive Order calling for "all agencies making personal data accessible to citizens through digital applications" to "require the use of multiple factors of authentication and an effective identity proofing process." This does not necessarily imply that the government will issue online credentials to all U.S. residents.
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) is working towards a distributed identity ecosystem that facilitates authentication and authorization without compromising privacy. NSTIC points out that this is a great opportunity to leverage the technology to enable a wide array of new citizen-facing digital services while reducing costs and hassles for individuals and government agencies alike.
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) is working towards a distributed identity ecosystem that facilitates authentication and authorization without compromising privacy. NSTIC points out that this is a great opportunity to leverage the technology to enable a wide array of new citizen-facing digital services while reducing costs and hassles for individuals and government agencies alike.
What are all these 'Executive Orders'?
That question could have been answered faster with a Google search than it took you to type it.
Is the USA a dictatorship run by the President, or a democracy run by Congress, or a schizophrenic mixup?
That is a much more open-ended question and you will find all sorts of theories on the inter-tubes that will attempt to sway you to their particular world view. Good luck making sense of the cacophony of opinions you will find.
The short answer: This Executive Order is instructions to the executive branch (people that work for him) to ask for more secure forms of ID before giving them money or personal information.