National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued $2.4 million for testing a government-based online identity system in Michigan and Pennsylvania.The initiative was developed under the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” program for years and now is rolled-out for field testing.
“The goal is to put to bed once and for all our current ineffective and tedious system of using passwords for online authentication, which itself was a cure for the even more ineffective and tedious process of walking into a brick-and-mortar building and presenting a human being with two forms of paper identification,” reporter Meghan Neal wrote for VICE’s Motherboard website on Tuesday this week. Neal also expressed that it will help curb the problem of fraud which causes loses in billions for the US government.
“The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania pilot will offer residents the opportunity to obtain a secure, privacy-enhancing credential to conduct online transactions with a number of participating agencies including the departments of Public Welfare and Health,” NIST said when they awarded the grant to the Keystone State.
“Citizens will be able to register just once to access a variety of services, eliminating the need to create multiple accounts and to validate their identity multiple times.”
It can bring convenience for many and that is the central idea of this project. However, it will also give more control to the government and that could be good or bad depending on what government decides to do with it. Thus, the stakes are too high according to Electronic Privacy Information Center associate director Lillie Coney.
Coney said in 2011:
“Look at it this way: You can have one key that opens every lock for everything you might need online in your daily life, or, would you rather have a key ring that would allow you to open some things but not others?”
This will also open new opportunities for the hackers as well. Once they have access to your cyber ID they can access everything. Neal also shared same thoughts this week:
“Then there’s the problem of putting all your security eggs in one vulnerable basket. If a hacker gets their hands on your cyber ID, they have the keys to everything.”
9 Comments
SCREW THIS! THIS IS A HUGE INVASION OF PRIVACY!
this wont work its almost impossible to monitor all internet traffic and wont belong before mobile service replaces standard home internet .. there is always a way to circumvention the government just needs to step down and let the company’s handle this themselves and this is our problem its in governments to protect company’s so it gets money back not from its people and takes people out of power with our own money ..
something new to hack. Great.
If websites have any sense, even if this becomes law they will still require a unique password even after accepting the user’s license to help preserve the privacy of their client and the security of their website.
Yea, this would be able to allow everyone to authenticate with something they have, the ID. They will still need to couple it with something they know; like pin, favorite quote, answer a simple question only you would know, etc…
Let’s see how this unfolds…. Might help stop “cyber bullying” or at least reduce it. However it will have to implemented bay all ISP or the internet as a whole…. Don’t think the US owns the entire internet……
This will either get bypassed or a neonet will emerge and people will be bailing from the internet to the neonet.
Sorry the USG does not own the internet………
What a horrible idea, n passwords down to one id that is privy to getting hacked as computer computational power (especially with cloud computing) become greater. This is not something that they should be investing/wasting money on. This has a huge security flaw.
so in another term total anarchy ?