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White House unveils cyber ID proposal
“By making online transactions more trustworthy and better protecting privacy, we will prevent costly crime, we will give businesses and consumers new confidence, and we will foster growth and untold innovation,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.
“That’s why this initiative is so important for our economy.”
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) proposes to create secure and reliable online credentials that would be available to consumers who want to use them.
It would be private-sector driven and participation would be voluntary.
The system would involve using a single credential — unique software on a smartphone, a smart card or a token that generates a one-time digital password — and would eliminate the need to remember multiple passwords.
“The consumer can use their single credential to log into any website, with more security than passwords alone provide,” the White House said.
“Consumers can use their credential to prove their identity when they’re carrying out sensitive transactions, like banking, and can stay anonymous when they are not.”
In making online transactions more secure, the White House said the goal was to give businesses and consumers “more confidence in conducting business online.”
“The Internet has transformed how we communicate and do business, opening up markets, and connecting our society as never before,” Obama said. “But it has also led to new challenges, like online fraud and identity theft, that harm consumers and cost billions of dollars each year.”
The proposed “identity ecosystem” would also provide better privacy protections.
“Today, a vast amount of information about consumers is collected as they surf the Internet and conduct transactions,” the White House said. “How organizations handle that information can vary greatly, and more often than not, it is difficult for consumers to understand how their privacy will (or will not) be protected.
“The NSTIC seeks to drive the development of privacy-enhancing policies as well as innovative privacy-enhancing technologies to ensure that the ecosystem provides strong privacy protections for consumers,” it added.
(c) 2011 AFP
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