Feds to Let Citizens Log In With Yahoo, Google, Paypal Accounts | Wired.com — Apparently all these government websites are going to require ID in the form of your Paypal account or other confirmed ID system. They don’t want you anonymously browsing their information. This is tracking, pure and simple.
The U.S. government pilot program will allow people to interact with various government websites using an OpenID or an Information Card, two of the most popular emerging technologies for web users to manage their identities across multiple websites, the nation’s information technology officer will announce Wednesday.
This author writes about this as if it is some great positive idea.
Found by john Stec.
Reading the wired article, it sounds like the government wants to use OpenID as a way for people to log in and communicate on government hosted forums. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t look like you’ll need to login just to be able to see basic info on a .gov site.
Frankly, I think you’re blowing this out of proportion. It certainly doesn’t look a “Big Brother” tracking ploy.
I don’t know who to distrust more: the overreaching data collecting opaque government I am saddled with, or the paranoid unreasonable mispresenting editors of JCD.
Certainly, “the truth” has to lie between these two polar opposites?==or could it reside elsewhere entirely?
You provided your real name and something other than a throwaway email address to OpenID or one of those other Net ID schemes? Really?
It doesn’t matter anyway. Only the IP address is important and if you don’t use a cut-out, as far as ‘…tracking, pure and simple.’ goes, you’re screwed whether or not you signed up for an OpenID or an Information Card account.
They are irrelevant. Only the IP address is important.
This initiative has been guided by Vivek Kundra from the beginning. Some of the other digital identity providers will be Citi, Equifax, and Acxiom. My question is why do we need to “log in” to government websites in the first place? Don’t we have a right to anonymity anymore?
Should attract the “social” internet people who seem to have no qualms about leaving pictures, information etc. about themselves on the internet.
Already have a lot trained by Facebook, Twitter, Myspace et al.
and off topic
Gratz John on making #3 on the PC World’s Top Ten Blowhards on the Web list.
http://pcworld.com/article/171612/gassers.html?tk=rss_news
I have to put in an e-mail address to post this comment. Who’s tracking who?
No one said it had to be a real email address. Getting your real info is the whole point of OpenID.
Doesn’t anyone have throw-away or false info accounts anymore?
I almost never give out my primary or real email address. I have dozens of them that I use for specific applications…
Someone is trying to stir the pot…
While you were sleeping, they turns the USA into another China.
Nothing to see here.
You can use your existing accounts to logon to a government website and interact. There is no requirement to login for non-interactive sites… you just want to browse info, no login required.
This is actually good… one less distinct new separate user account and password, just use one that you already have.
Someone just doesn’t understand the basics of technology anymore!
Your privacy left town a long time ago, and marketing is the greatest culprit. The government can screw you over a million ways from Sunday already. What are they going to do on their website? It isn’t as if they’ll have porn there to trap you.
TOR people.
Learn it, live it, love it.
Zero yourself out and Join The Blanks.
Cursor_
#7 Usagi
From Guilherme Cherman’s ‘book’ on how to get rich from a blog (rough translation):
“When people come to your site, the first thing you have to do is capture them. In the Internet world, this means getting your email.”
“Another advantage of having a mailing list is you can contact them about anything, is a new site that is launching, or something you want to think about readers, etc.. Understand? This is the great secret of making money online. You capture the emails of people interested in his subject and offers products affiliated with these people. It’s simple and seemingly obvious, but I see almost no blogger doing.”
This sounds like our government (or Congress) just wants to help big business make money off a previously free service. So with this ID system, you’d have to have an official account with Amazon.com or Yahoo/Microsoft. Which would make money either by charging for this “service”. Or thru the advertising it does, on your PC screen and in your mailbox. Try and opt out of that!
This won’t stop terrorists, as they’ll just forge fake IDs somehow. I can still remember when I use to be able to go to our local library and log on to the internet, without IDing who I was. After 9-11, that changed. So Disk Cheney’s America was made safer from people bitching about his reign, without being traceable. I feel so much safer.
Maybe after they push this crap thru, they’ll start billing citizens for gov. information requests and website usage. ‘Freedom of Information [Act]”, only means you’re free to ask. Not that it’s free to receive it.
What else would you expect from fans of Marxism/government run everything but KGB type tracking?
log in with your paypal account? Daemn that’s a little extreme isn’t it?
And I have to say it… Who in their world drew that awful illustration up top? Friends dont let friends use Illustrator drunk
Chi’s original response is perfect. Go to the CIT page, for example. There’s sections of it that require a login. You can’t see them without providing a username. Other sections are public, and you can.
All that is happening is they’re adopting OpenID as a way to login to the already required account.
Come on, JCD, I expect more from you. Save the tinfoil hat for when you and Adam are ranting…
Yeah it is another form of tracking from the goverment that will be another way to control people… Something we don’t need.