January 7, 2011 4:31 PM

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans

By
Declan McCullagh
Topics

This story originally appeared on CNET

(Credit: istockphoto.com)

STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

The Obama administration is currently drafting what it's calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)

"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said.

Details about the "trusted identity" project are remarkably scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.

Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential, if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.

Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology, who spoke later at the event, said any Internet ID must be created by the private sector--and also voluntary and competitive.

"The government cannot create that identity infrastructure," Dempsey said. "If it tried to, it wouldn't be trusted."

Inter-agency rivalries to claim authority over cybersecurity have existed ever since many responsibilities were centralized in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its creation nine years ago. Three years ago, proposals were circulating in Washington to transfer authority to the secretive NSA, which is part of the U.S. Defense Department.

In March 2009, Rod Beckström, director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center, resigned through a letter that gave a rare public glimpse into the competition for budgetary dollars and cybersecurity authority. Beckstrom said at the time that the NSA "effectively controls DHS cyberefforts through detailees, technology insertions," and has proposed moving some functions to the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

One of the NSA's missions is, of course, information assurance. But its normally lustrous star in the political firmament has dimmed a bit due to Wikileaks-related revelations.

Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who is accused of liberating hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents from military networks and sending them to Wikileaks, apparently joked about the NSA's incompetence in an online chat last spring.

"I even asked the NSA guy if he could find any suspicious activity coming out of local networks," Manning reportedly said in a chat transcript provided by ex-hacker Adrian Lamo. "He shrugged and said, 'It's not a priority.'"


  • Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

Add a Comment See all 645 Comments
by hapticz January 30, 2012 6:49 PM EST
kiss your anonymity bye bye!
Reply to this comment
by jgisme January 24, 2012 10:21 PM EST
This is madness. Poor ge556 has been fighting the entire United States in his efforts to see the rest of us in lock step with Obama.

Which by the process of elimination leads me to suspect that ge556 is Obama!!

I am so disgusted with the United States these days. I think anyone who's a Christian has to be, Why?, because we see the abortions, the judges who tear down courthouses to prevent showing a copy of the Ten Commandments, with schools that suspend kids for praying, with families that murder/suicide, this is all madness.

And folks, it's no longer true that we are a nation blessed by God. Today we're a nation that is paying the price for allowing homosexuality and jut plain turning away from the God of the Bible.

But never fear!, Obama is here. If only he were a US citizen.
Reply to this comment
by ge556 January 24, 2012 11:10 PM EST
I'm just trying to keep people honest. There's not much honesty in the fear mongering here.
by WiseAsOwl January 23, 2012 10:45 PM EST
Are you paying attention, Obama fans?? Come on.. Tell us you think this is okay...
Reply to this comment
by ge556 January 24, 2012 12:06 AM EST
I don't see a problem with it. Are you against all optional IDs, or only ones that Obama supports?
by Megatap January 22, 2012 5:00 PM EST
Oh, so its OK for an Internet ID but heaven forbid anything whatsoever to do with a voter ID because unauthorized people according to the US constitution will not be able to vote in favor of Obama! Kinda a two faced ponzi scheme for more government control and invasion of privacy. But, that's the way Obama likes it after all isn't it! He'd rather get people murdered allowing guns, money and drugs to go over borders and give people of his own race a break for violating the Constitution and voting laws. But he sees no problem with that as he already threw the constitution in the crapper!
Reply to this comment
by ge556 January 22, 2012 8:45 PM EST
It's fine to have an optional Internet ID. It's fine to have an optional voter ID, not that there's much point to it. Making either one mandatory is a problem.

What does this have to do with a ponzi scheme, or violation of the Constitution?
by blue922 January 18, 2012 3:20 PM EST
You can tell when a government becomes useless, it keeps inventing things that are not needed, that the people do not want, that are just ways to spend your money and give the government some veiled/false reason for it's existence. Time to move on from DC and get back to the vision of the founding fathers. Ron Paul FTW.
Reply to this comment
by longdrycreek January 15, 2012 9:12 PM EST
Any activity overtakening by government planning is a guarantee to
fraud or inefficiency or ignorance. Remember some months ago when the FCC was going to test the one call does all from the White House, and the system did not work. Apparently, the planners gave up. The problem was beyond them in spite of the millions they spent.
The Internet is fine without the fine touch of Obama and any of the czars. The czars are academics with boundless hypotheses and none of them work well. That is what it means to be an ivory-tower academic: dense and impractical.
Reply to this comment
by NYCwoman January 15, 2012 7:36 PM EST
Seems to me all the government needs to do is get your Facebook ID or align itself with Facebook to keep tabs on where you go online. Most everyone in the world is there anyway, and Facebook is getting more and more connected to everything else you do online, so it seems like a natural progression. I'm still on Facebook but I don't like how it's infiltrated and become integrated with so many other online sites.
Reply to this comment
by flerchjj January 22, 2012 1:30 AM EST
OpenID accounts seem to work well in general. For example to post here I can click on "Google" or "Facebook" (or any OpenID authenticator) and BAM, by the power of OpenID I can type without registering for another account. Of course the initial service still needs to be secured. I wished more internet companies gave this option instead of just IP logging/filtering. Maybe then I could watch Hulu or Netflicks while traveling overseas.
by NYCwoman January 15, 2012 7:13 PM EST
I have a new PC made by HP and it already has fingerprint technology that remembers passwords. I find it rather annoying but this technology is already available in computers and soon it will probably be available in more computers. So why do we need the Dept. of Commerce to get involved in something private PC makers have already figured out so we can have an internet ID?

This is just a mirage to erode more of our freedoms. I'm not going to knock Obama because Bush started allowing wiretaps of Americans under the Patriot Act. There is no democracy anymore, just the appearance of one, and when the next President is elected, whether it's in 2012 or 2016, it will be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" all over again.

We got as close as we're going to get to a cultural or other revolution in this country during the Vietnam war. Now we're all too complacent to do anything more than type out our frustrations online instead of actually doing something about them. The media is keeping us entertained, and the powers that be are laughing while people blame either the liberals or the right when it's all the same, because we're not going to do anything about anything except complain! If they can take our ability to communicate so we can't share information they don't want us to have, that's next. And it won't matter whether it's a Democrat or Republican in office. They're all working for the corporations, banks and rich elitists in the world. Wake up, people!
Reply to this comment
by Work2SnowSki January 20, 2012 9:25 PM EST
I've had a Toshiba Laptop with fingerprint ID for almost 5 years now that has been excellent with all login's, I'd be lost without it. When I do need a password that I've forgotten, I simply swipe my finger and bring up the "Vault" of stored sign on's and then ask it to show which one I need.
What the Government wants is a way to take money from you, hence the "Commerce Dept." and from there it will be a snap to track your $$ and whereabouts. They, through Homeland Sec. are already watching what people say via posts and blogs, with GPS they will know everywhere you go and have been. Very Scary
by NYCwoman January 15, 2012 6:29 PM EST
As long as we are paying for internet to our internet service providers, where does the government get off believing it has the right to demand everyone register for a government issued internet use ID? They should tax us for it first and make it free at least, damn it!
Reply to this comment
by ge556 January 15, 2012 8:44 PM EST
Read the article. It says no such thing.
by NYCwoman January 15, 2012 6:21 PM EST
If this goes through, when someone gives birth they'll have to apply for an internet ID as well as a social security number. What a crock!
Reply to this comment
by ge556 January 15, 2012 8:47 PM EST
You're just making up more nonsense.
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