Commentary by Mark Wahl, CISA
Organizing principles for identity systems:
Digital ID World: Convergence of Internet-scale Identity Systems (20070924)
I'll be on a panel entitled "The Convergence of Internet-scale Identity Systems" at the DIDW conference (DIDW2007).
A lot of folks refer to it as "the big bang" - that anticipated moment when interoperability and convergence happen around internet-scale identity systems. Some claim the big bang is right around the corner, others aren't so sure.
The panel will be discussing several exemplary scenarios that significantly affect the future of digital identity and identity systems. These scenarios were derived from a planning activity reviewing possible future events documented and characterized at a meeting of the ID Futures proto-working-group of the Identity Commons. These events are not predictions, but merely tools for enabling further discussion:
- networks of trusted individuals compete with corporations as players in identity-dependent transactions
- personal data on US citizens anchored to trustees when used in European Union transactions
- virtual world contact addresses are accepted as commercial billing addresses
- the wide deployance of facial recognition limits public anonymity
- Internet access legislated by many countries to be authenticated and so cannot be anonymous
- forgeries of government-defined digital identities lead to lack of confidence