Next step for OpenID: Adaption by the Government

After OpenID being well accepted by Google, AOL, Yahoo, Facebook, and many others, it seems it convinced the US government to seriously consider for use in logging into government agency websites.

OpenID will definitely be utilized to pave the way for a US national ID card. At the most basic level, this would mean that anyone can login with a Google or Facebook or OpenID any other OpenID into government sites. Also not to mention, OpenID will become a single sign on for all systems (Finance, Social Security, etc).

Many people reject the idea of unifying credentials and such, due to the fact that it will not give the person the ability to disclose as much identity or personal information as is needed for a given transaction. You will definitely don’t want to share the same information you do with IRS and Facebook.

As for me, I think it is very crucial for me to be able to control the flow information about me. And if I am about to give it to some party, then I need to know if I can trust that party.

I think what is needed most of all to preserve the freedom for internet users is “proper information” about different authentication / activity tracking schemes ~ let’s say, what could be the consequences of using them? it’s like the information about phishing sites, if you know enough about phishers’ techniques you will be able to avoid being cheated.

Currently we are going through de facto, but weak and broken, ID elements ~ Most critical is our social security number. Since SSN is not authenticated, anyone can claim your id, which leads to identity theft and other problems. By the way, last year alone, theft was more than $50 billion…

But anyway, here is my conclusion about this whole Big Sam and less privacy. I can see possible consequences with tying a knot a National ID with OpenID, but I can see the convinence of such a thing too. Just think about how useful it will be to authenticate that you are who you are and not some Joe Doe.

I can see why people would be paranoid about privacy, but to be honest, I think the privacy fears are overblown and becoming extra-dramatic (thanks to Hollywood?). It is the nature of digital age that everything is traceable and obtainable. People behavior habits will always be monitored to generate revenue out of it (targeted marketing?).