I've sometimes been of two minds about OpenID.  I've always seen it as alluring because of its simplicity and openness.  It seemed perfect for simple web applications. But in my darker moments, I worried about some of the system's usability and security issues.  In particular, I was concerned about how easy ...

The success of the Identity Metasystem depends heavily on having products available from multiple vendors that are proven to interoperate and ready to deploy.  Kantara Initiative and Liberty Alliance have contributed significantly to this by helping test products against specific profiles.  Kudos to everyone involved with the definition, organization and testing of the ...

John Fontana writes about the SAML interoperability test in ComputerWorld, turning quite a bit of his attention to Microsoft: "Microsoft completed its first SAML interoperability test and the results are in: Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 software received a passing grade. "Microsoft's federated identity platform passed its first SAML 2.0 interoperability test with favorable ...

Back from vacation and catching up on some blogs I found this piece by Felix Gaehtgens at Kuppinger Cole in Germany:   A good year ago, Microsoft acquired an innovative company called U-Prove. That company, founded by visionary Stephan Brandt, had come up with a privacy-enabling technology that effectively allows users to safely transmit the minimum ...

One of the people whose work has most influenced the world of security - a brilliant researcher who is also gifted with a sense of irony and humor - received this email and sent it on to a group of us.   He didn't specify why he thought we would find it useful...   At any rate, the content boggles ...

Here's the most beautiful take yet on the Seven Laws of Identity - put together by Karon and Katrika, who even saw how the Laws connect with the Perception of Ailatan.  In the past people have asked why I didn't do a Laws of Identity poster - this must be it.  Click to ...

I'll lose a few minutes less sleep each night worrying about Electronic Eternity - thanks to the serendipitous appearance of  John Markoff's recent piece on Vanish in the New York Times Science section: A group of computer scientists at the University of Washington has developed a way to make electronic messages “self destruct” after ...

I'm writing this post in case your version of my email address has "windows.microsoft.com" in it. The "windows.microsoft.com" domain is being repurposed for some higher good.  So going forward, please write to me with the usual address (same local-part) but at "@microsoft.com" instead of "@windows.microsoft.com").

From the Useful Spam Department :  I got an advertisement from a robot at "complianceonline.com" that works for a business addressing the problem of data retention on the web from the corporate point of view.  We've all read plenty about the dangers of teenagers publishing their party revels only to find themselves rejected by a ...

I'm writing this post in case your version of my email address has "windows.microsoft.com" in it. The "windows.microsoft.com" domain is being repurposed for higher purposes.  So going forward, please write to me at "@microsoft.com" instead.

China Daily posted this opinion piece by Chen Weihua that provides context on how the Green Dam proposal could ever have emerged.  I found it striking because it brings to the fore the relationship of the initiative to the First Law of Identity (User Control).  As in so many cases where the Laws are broken, the result is passionate opposition and ...

The Chinese Government's Green Dam sets an important precedent:  government trying to achieve its purposes by taking control over the technology installed on peoples' personal computers.  Here's how the Chinese Government's explained its initiative: 'In order to create a green, healthy, and harmonious internet environment, to avoid exposing youth to the harmful effects of bad information, The Ministry of ...

Enhanced driver's licences too smart for their own good appeared in the Toronto Star recently.  It was written by Roch Tassé (coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group) and Stuart Trew (The Council of Canadians' trade campaigner).  A common refrain coming out of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's visit to Ottawa and ...

Today I am posting a new paper called, Proposal for a Common Identity Framework: A User-Centric Identity Metasystem. Good news: it doesn’t propose a new protocol! Instead, it attempts to crisply articulate the requirements in creating a privacy-protecting identity layer for the Internet, and sets out a formal model for such a ...

Britian's Enterprise Privacy Group is starting a new series of workshops that deal squarely with ethics.  While specialists in ethics have achieved a signficant role in professions like medicine, this is one of the first workshops I've seen that takes on equivalent issues in our field of work.  Perhaps that's why it is ...

The Proposal for a Common Identity Framework begins by explaining the termnology it uses.  This wasn't intended to open up old wounds or provoke ontological debate.  We just wanted to reduce ambiguity about what we actually mean to say in the rest of the paper.  To do this, we did think very carefully about what we were going to ...

Since one of my goals is to introduce people to Information Cards - and because I used to get mountains of spam comments and worse (!) - I require people to either write to me or use an Information Card when leaving comments on my blog.  (This blog is hosted for me by Joyent, and ...

The recent European Identity Conference, hosted in Munich by the analyst firm Kuppinger Cole, had great content inspiring an ongoing stream of interesting conversations.   Importantly, attendance was up despite the economic climate, an outcome Tim Cole pointed out was predictable since identity technology is so key to efficiency in IT. One of the people I met in ...

Dave Kearns continues to whack me for some of my terminology in discussing data correlation.  He says:  'In responding to my "violent agreement" post, Kim Cameron goes a long way towards beginning to define the parameters for correlating data and transactions. I'd urge all of you to jump into the discussion. 'But - and it's a ...

Dave Kearns' comment in Another Violent Agreement convinces me I've got to apply the scalpel to the way I talk about correlation handles.  Dave writes: 'I took Kim at his word when he talked "about the need to prevent correlation handles and assembly of information across contexts..." That does sound like "banning the tools." 'So I'm ...