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<title>Mark Wahl, CISA</title>
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<description>Discussions on organizing principles for identity systems</description>
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<category>identity</category>
<category>CardSpace</category>
<category>Catalyst</category>
<category>card</category>
<category>Burton</category>
<category>claim</category>
<category>certificate</category>
<category>directory</category>
<category>federation</category>
<category>interoperability</category>
<category>InfoCard</category>
<category>management</category>
<category>metadata</category>
<category>metasystem</category>
<category>OpenID</category>
<category>protocol</category>
<category>SAML</category>
<category>schema</category>
<category>security</category>
<category>standard</category>
<category>trust</category>
<category>Wahl</category>
<category>authentication</category>
<item><title>RSA Conference 2010 (20100227)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20100227_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20100227_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;RSA Conference 2010 (20100227)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Next week I'll be at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, California. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; On Tuesday, March 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt;, there's a keynote on &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/endtoendtrust/conference.aspx"&gt;Creating a Safer, More Trusted Internet&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href="http://www.rsaconference.com/2010/usa/expo.htm"&gt;RSA Conference Expo&lt;/a&gt; opens to all attendees shortly afterward, and the Microsoft booth is just inside the front doors. There's a &lt;a href="http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/edge/8/2/4/8/1/twcrsa1mar2010_edge.wmv"&gt;identity and access management preview video&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/endtoendtrust/conference.aspx"&gt;Microsoft RSA conference page&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Recent publication on ontology-based translation between directory schemas (20090706)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090706_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090706_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Recent publication on ontology-based translation between directory schemas (20090706)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The US patent &lt;a href="http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PALL&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=7558791.PN.&amp;OS=PN/7558791&amp;RS=PN/7558791"&gt;7,558,791&lt;/a&gt; for a &lt;i&gt;System and method for ontology-based translation between directory schemas &lt;/i&gt; is to be published tomorrow. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Recent publications on anomalous directory client activity detection (20090417)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090417_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090417_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Recent publications on anomalous directory client activity detection (20090417)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I saw the US patent application &lt;a href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PG01&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=%2220090100130%22.PGNR.&amp;OS=DN/20090100130&amp;RS=DN/20090100130"&gt;12/287,632&lt;/a&gt; for a &lt;i&gt;system and method for anomalous directory client activity detection&lt;/i&gt; was published yesterday.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This invention describes an approach for parsing an access log generated by a directory server, and constructing a data structure: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090417_1.png" width="627" height="613" /&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Security, identity and access sessions at the 2009 RSA Conference (20090417)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090417_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090417_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Security, identity and access sessions at the 2009 RSA Conference (20090417)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The RSA 2009 conference sessions and keynotes start next Tuesday, April 21, 2009.  &lt;p&gt;In the morning, Scott Charney, Microsoft VP for trustworthy computing, will be giving a keynote &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/endtoendtrust/"&gt;End to End Trust&lt;/a&gt;: A Collaborative Effort&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Mike Jones is on a panel ESS-105 at 1:30 PM on &lt;i&gt;Fostering Collaboration and Opportunities in Identity Management&lt;/i&gt;, and Khaja Ahmed is on a panel NET-105 on &lt;i&gt;The Changing Face of Network Access Control&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Kim Cameron has a session STAR-106 at 3:00 PM on &lt;i&gt;Using Claims to Simplify and Secure User Access to Applications and Services&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;At 5:40 PM, I have a session ESS-108 (in Purple 301) where I'll discuss &lt;i&gt;Building Authorization Into The Enterprise Identity Metasystem&lt;/i&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The emerging claims-based identity metasystem enables enterprises to leverage an identity service for providing authentication controls on access to internal and external websites and services. This talk discusses the next stage, incorporating distributed authorization controls, so that authorization to these resources can be provisioned based on roles and entitlements. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Wednesday morning, JG Chirapurath and Vijay Takanti (Exostar) discuss &lt;i&gt;The Risks and Rewards of Security, Identity and Access Integration&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>2009 TEC (20090326)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090326_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090326_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;2009 TEC (20090326)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Earlier this week I attended &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com"&gt;The Experts Conference&lt;/a&gt; (TEC09) in Henderson, NV.  On Monday I gave the &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/ilm2/"&gt;Identity Lifecycle Manager "2"&lt;/a&gt; portion of the keynote, where I discussed the goals of identity lifecycle management, key features of ILM "2" and its platform, and the &lt;a href="http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/archive/2009/03/24/identity-lifecycle-manager-2-schedule-update.aspx"&gt;schedule update&lt;/a&gt;.  Then I showed the &lt;i&gt;Edge-to-content access control&lt;/i&gt; demo and how it was made, which included ILM "2" automatically &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;provisioning network access in &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/Forefront/edgesecurity/iag/en/us/default.aspx"&gt;IAG&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;provisioning mailing list and security group membership in &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/ida-information-protection.aspx"&gt;AD&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;provisioning access to rights-protected documents, and a new rights policy template in &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/ida-directory-services.aspx"&gt;AD RMS&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;provisioning a new asset group for a VP's computer in &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/stirling/en/us/default.aspx"&gt;Forefront "Stirling"&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I helped Andreas Kjellman with  &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/session_abstracts.php#humanbehavior"&gt;Human Behavior: The Other 90% of the Problem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, and later we held a chalktalk and BOF for ILM, in which we answered questions on the ILM features and roadmap, and gathered extensive real-world feedback to provide to the program managers.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;There were several live-bloggers and twitterers in evidence during the conference, such as this post on the &lt;a href="http://www.ilmbestpractices.com/blog/2009/03/tec-2009-ensynch-identity-bus.html"&gt;Ensynch Identity Bus&lt;/a&gt; by David Lundell, and an extensive summary of &lt;a href="http://eternallyoptimistic.com/2009/03/26/tec-and-the-targeted-conference-value-proposition/"&gt;TEC and the Targeted Conference Value Proposition&lt;/a&gt; by Pamela Dingle.  &lt;/p&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>2009 TEC starts in a week (20090313)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090313_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090313_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;2009 TEC starts in a week (20090313)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Taking place just a few miles from Las Vegas, Nevada, the pre-conference workshops of &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com"&gt;The Experts Conference&lt;/a&gt; (TEC) are on Sunday March 22&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt;, with the &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/index.php"&gt;directory and identity&lt;/a&gt; track sessions kicking off with a keynote on the morning of Monday, March 23&lt;sup&gt;rd&lt;/sup&gt;. During the keynote I'll cover &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/ilm2/"&gt;Identity Lifecycle Manager "2"&lt;/a&gt; on behalf of the product team, Nathan Muggli on AD and Stuart Kwan on "Geneva". &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Immediately afterward, at 10:30 it's &lt;i&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/session_abstracts.php#endtoendacilm2"&gt;End-to-End Access Control with ILM "2"&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, in which I show a brief demo of automatically provisioning users with the correct edge, content, network and application access upon organizational restructuring, and then, most importantly, I explain how it's done. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Then after lunch I join Andreas Kjellman (who presented last year) on stage for ... the &lt;b&gt;Double Bullet Catch&lt;/b&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;No not really, that's &lt;a href="http://www.ilord.com/pennteller.html"&gt;already covered&lt;/a&gt; elsewhere. Much more useful for technology deployments, it's a session on &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/session_abstracts.php#humanbehavior"&gt;Human Behavior: The Other 90% of the Problem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Providing your user community the tools to easily manage their own passwords and distribution lists should remove a huge administrative burden from your IT staff. But putting the tools in place is not the same as having your users put them to use. In this session the ILM product team will discuss the challenges of self-service technology, approaches to self-service deployment, some of the surprising user behaviors that inhibit the use of self-service technologies and how to overcome them. We will also cover the future possibilities of 'user-centric' identity and its impact on identity management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The next day Andreas will cover &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/session_abstracts.php#ilm2itpro"&gt;ILM "2" from an IT Pro's Perspective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, and then there's a chalktalk with the product team.&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>NIST draft SP 800-122 comment period ending (20090307)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090307_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090307_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;NIST draft SP 800-122 comment period ending (20090307)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;NIST draft special publication 800-122, &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/800-122/Draft-SP800-122.pdf"&gt;Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, is nearing the end of its comment period.&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;SP 800-122 is intended to assist Federal organizations in identifying PII and determining what level of protection each instance of PII requires, based on the potential impact of a breach of the PII's confidentiality. The publication also suggests safeguards that may offer appropriate protection for PII and makes recommendations regarding PII data breach handling. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;NIST requests comments on draft SP 800-122 by March 13, 2009. Please submit comments to 800-122comments@nist.gov with "Comments SP 800-122" in the subject line.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun,  8 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>2009 TEC Directory and Identity keynote (20090306)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090306_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090306_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;2009 TEC Directory and Identity keynote (20090306)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Scheduled to appear in the March 23rd &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/index.php"&gt;directory and identity&lt;/a&gt; keynote of the &lt;a href="http://www.quest.com/"&gt;Quest Software&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com"&gt;The Experts Conference&lt;/a&gt; (TEC) in Nevada, are &lt;/p&gt;     &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;on &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/geneva/"&gt;Federation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/speaker_bios.php#kwan"&gt;Stuart Kwan&lt;/a&gt;, Group Program Manager, Federated Identity and Security, Microsoft&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;on &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/active-directory.aspx"&gt;Directory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/speaker_bios.php#muggli"&gt;Nathan Muggli&lt;/a&gt;, Senior Lead Program Manager, Microsoft&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;on &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/ilm2/"&gt;Identity Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;a href="http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/agenda/directory/speaker_bios.php#wahl"&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/a&gt;, CISA, Architect, Identity and Security Division, Microsoft Corporation &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Shortly afterward I also have a session demonstrating how to manage provisioning of consistent edge-to-content access driven by identity policy.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Before this year, TEC was known as DEC: Directory Experts Conference.  (This is not to be confused with &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECUS"&gt;DECUS&lt;/a&gt;, a completely different conference where I presented &lt;a href="http://www.decus.org/la98/udthurs.pdf"&gt;a session on directories&lt;/a&gt; some 10 years ago.)&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat,  7 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Some Microsoft-led sessions on the metasystem scheduled for the 2009 RSA Conference (20090223)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090223_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090223_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Some Microsoft-led sessions on the metasystem scheduled for the 2009 RSA Conference (20090223)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;On Tuesday April 21st, Kim Cameron will introduce &lt;i&gt;Using Claims to Simplify and Secure User Access to Applications and Services&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;tt&gt;STAR-106 - Intermediate&lt;/tt&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Security demands on applications continue to grow. Today's isolated application access silos create challenges for developers and IT to solve these issues. The advent of cloud-based and SOA software is likely to amplify these challenges. Learn how to use the interoperable claims architecture based on the Identity Metasystem vision to simplify user access to applications and services.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Later that afternoon I'll cover &lt;i&gt;Building Authorization Into The Enterprise Identity Metasystem&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;tt&gt;ESS-108 - Advanced&lt;/tt&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The emerging claims-based identity metasystem enables enterprises to leverage an identity service for providing authentication controls on access to internal and external websites and services. This talk discusses the next stage, incorporating distributed authorization controls, so that authorization to these resources can be provisioned based on roles and entitlements. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;On Wednesday, JG Chirapurath talks about &lt;i&gt;The Risks and Rewards of Security, Identity and Access Integration&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;tt&gt;SPO-202 - Intermediate&lt;/tt&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Driven by customer needs, the security industry is evolving into a new phase of development: the convergence and integration of IT security, access, and management around an identity-centric framework. This session will explore the trends driving convergence, outline a vision for identity-centric security and access, discuss the trade-offs, and provide real-world implementation examples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:50:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>New NIST list of security controls (20090211)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090211_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20090211_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;New NIST list of security controls (20090211)&lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Last week &lt;a href="http://csrc.nist.gov"&gt;NIST&lt;/a&gt; released a new &lt;a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsDrafts.html"&gt;draft&lt;/a&gt; of SP 800-53, &lt;i&gt;Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations&lt;/i&gt;.  They write that &lt;q&gt;this is the first major update of Special Publication 800-53 since its initial publication in December 2005&lt;/q&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/800-53/800-53-rev3-IPD.pdf"&gt;draft specification SP800-53 Rev 3&lt;/a&gt; (PDF)  contains an introductory overview of risk management and the selection and use of security controls, and new material on industrial control systems and other topics (there is a summary of changes on page viii), but as before the bulk of the document is the security control catalog, to which has been added a table mapping the controls to &lt;a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=42103"&gt;ISO/IEC 27001&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;NIST are accepting comments until March 27, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Recent publications on network authentication, or how can you be in two places at once? (20081003)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20081003_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20081003_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Recent publications on network authentication, or how can you be in two places at once? (20081003)&lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;I saw that US patent application &lt;a href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PG01&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=%2220080222714%22.PGNR.&amp;OS=DN/20080222714&amp;RS=DN/20080222714"&gt;20080222714&lt;/a&gt; was recently published, which describes an approach for leveraging the identity metasystem in authentication upon (wired or wireless) network attachment.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20081003_1.png" width="482" height="539" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In this approach, an identity selector associated with the supplicant is permitted by the relying party (network service provider) to communicate during an 802.1X authentication exchange with the identity selector's chosen identity provider, by tunneling the interactions between the identity selector and identity provider within an EAP exchange.  Upon completion, the sealed token generated by the identity provider is forwarded in an EAP message from the selector to the relying party, which can extract the user's identity.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20081003_2.png" width="192" height="135" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Also, another component to &lt;i&gt;risk-based authentication&lt;/i&gt; within the enterprise is being able to determine whether a request is originating from a part of the enterprise network where the user is likely to be located, which can be problematic for highly mobile users. The recently published US patent application &lt;a href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PG01&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=%2220080228721%22.PGNR.&amp;OS=DN/20080228721&amp;RS=DN/20080228721"&gt;20080228721&lt;/a&gt; describes an approach in which a user's calendar entries can be read to determine the site or sites where a user is likely to be connecting from at a particular time. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20081003_3.png" width="453" height="580" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri,  3 Oct 2008 05:21:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Recent publication on validation of middleware failover behavior (20080903)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080904_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080904_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Recent publication on validation of middleware failover behavior (20080903)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;US patent application &lt;a href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PG01&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=%2220080215743%22.PGNR.&amp;OS=DN/20080215743&amp;RS=DN/20080215743"&gt;20080215743&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;i&gt;system and method for validation of middleware failover behavior&lt;/i&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;An information processing system containing middleware and backend server software components is augmented with the ability to validate the behavior of the middleware system when one or more backend servers are unavailable, based on dynamic reconfiguration of the network layer protocol software component in the operating system underlying the middleware software component.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Wikidentity provider? (20080903)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080903_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080903_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Wikidentity provider? (20080903)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; From &lt;a href="http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/08/08/072276P.pdf"&gt;US Court of Appeals&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;...The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) initially dismissed her administrative appeal, concluding that Badasa had failed to establish her identity. Badasa moved to reopen her case based on a travel document recently acquired from the Ethiopian government, known as a &lt;i&gt;laissez-passer&lt;/i&gt;, which Badasa alleged would establish her identity. Noting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) concurred in the motion, the BIA reopened the case and remanded it to the [Immigration Judge] for further consideration... On remand, the DHS submitted several documents designed to explain the purpose of a &lt;i&gt;laissez-passer&lt;/i&gt;, and argued that the document did not establish identity and nationality, but rather was "simply the granting of the authorization for an alien to travel to or from that country." After considering evidence presented by the parties, including information submitted by the DHS from an Internet website known as Wikipedia, the [Immigration Judge] found that the &lt;i&gt;laissez-passer&lt;/i&gt; is a single-use, one-way travel document that is issued based on information provided by the applicant...&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager &#x201c;2&#x201d; beta news links (20080614)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080615_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080615_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager &amp;#x201c;2&amp;#x201d; beta news links (20080614)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The first public beta of &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/ilm2"&gt;Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager &amp;#x201c;2&amp;#x201d;&lt;/a&gt; was shown last week at &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/itpros.mspx"&gt;TechEd&lt;/a&gt;. (A Release Candidate is planned for Q4CY2008; RTM in Q1CY2009.)&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;This announcement was covered by blog posts from &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmac/archive/2008/06/12/identity-lifecycle-manager-ilm-2-beta-3-now-available.aspx"&gt;Nick MacKechnie&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://nathanlasnoski.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F7A33F1F9EBD9237!215.entry"&gt;Nathan Lasnoski&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://esthermofet.blogspot.com/2008/06/identity-lifecycle-manager-2-beta.html"&gt;John&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://galego2.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!4D725994D1492A33!593.entry"&gt;Sean Bryson&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://geekvalley.blogspot.com/2008/06/microsoft-identity-lifecycle-management.html"&gt;Sudeep James&lt;/a&gt;, and in articles in &lt;a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/061008-microsoft-beta-ilm.html?hpg1=bn"&gt;Network World&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/Identity-and-Access-Management-in-Enterprise-20/"&gt;eWeek&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.crn.com/software/208403182"&gt;CRN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3752111/Microsoft+Publicly+Betas+ID+Lifecycle+Management.htm"&gt;internetnews.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.itjungle.com/two/two061108-story01.html"&gt;IT Jungle&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Trust vs the Distancing Effect (20080418)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080422_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080422_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Trust vs the Distancing Effect (20080418)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Some categories of attacks on identity systems are subversions of trust relationships, in which one party in the system is caused to act based on an incorrect assumption about its own trust relationships. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin"&gt;Walter Benjamin&lt;/a&gt; wrote in "What is &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_theater"&gt;Epic Theatre&lt;/a&gt;? (second version)"  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;The art of epic theatre consists in arousing astonishment rather than empathy.  To put it as a formula, instead of identifying itself with the hero, the audience is called upon to learn to be astonished at the circumstances within which he has his being.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>RSA Conference 2008 US (20080414)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080414_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080414_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;RSA Conference 2008 US (20080414)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/90557979@N00/2408819646/" border="0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3139/2408819646_99569f1f6b.jpg?v=0" height="329" width="500" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; I was the subject of &lt;a href="http://jacksonshaw.blogspot.com/2008/04/mr-ldap-at-microsoft-now.html"&gt;a recent blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Jackson Shaw; he also took my picture standing next to Angelo at Microsoft Identity and Access stand in the RSA Conference 2008 (US) exhibition:&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_jpua419xcIc/R_31JlcuYiI/AAAAAAAAF4A/8Shf4hYnB5o/s1600-h/038.jpg" border="0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_jpua419xcIc/R_31JlcuYiI/AAAAAAAAF4A/8Shf4hYnB5o/s320/038.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:40:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Peer-To-Patent public community patent application prior-art review and Ontology-based translation between directory schemas (20080324)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080324_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080324_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Peer-To-Patent public community patent application prior-art review and Ontology-based translation between directory schemas (20080324)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The &lt;a href="http://www.uspto.gov/"&gt;US Patent and Trademark Office&lt;/a&gt; is currently participating in a &lt;a href="http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/peerpriorartpilot/"&gt;Peer Reviewed Prior Art Pilot&lt;/a&gt; project, in which applicants for patents classified in the &lt;i&gt;Computer Architecture, Software and Information Security&lt;/i&gt; Technology Center can volunteer their application to be included as one of the 250 applications in the pilot for community (public) review.  The goal of the pilot is to test whether &lt;q&gt;...collaboration can effectively locate prior art that might not otherwise be located by the [Patent] Office during the typical examination process&lt;/q&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;More information on how to participate in finding and reviewing prior art is on the &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/"&gt;www.peertopatent.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; web site:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Peer-to-Patent involves 1) review and discussion of posted patent applications, 2) research to locate prior art references 3) uploading prior art references relevant to the claims, 4) annotating and evaluating submitted prior art, and 5) top ten references, along with commentary, forwarded to the USPTO. The goal of this pilot is to prove that organized public participation can improve the quality of issued patents.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Anyone in the public can participate as a reviewer, a patent application facilitator, and by sharing information about the pilot with others. Inventors can submit a qualified patent application for open review. Public participation is crucial to demonstrating the value of openness and making the case for greater USPTO accountability to the technical community. A successful pilot will also make a case for expanding to other subject matter.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One of the patent applications open for community discussion on the peer-to-patent web site&lt;/a&gt; is my &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/patent/20080027981/activity"&gt;System and method for ontology-based translation between directory schemas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, which will be available for comments in this pilot for approximately two more months.  The application describes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;An information processing system comprising a translation from a directory or individuals input source to a state database containing resource description triples, a mapping of the triples in the state database from one ontology class to another, and a translation from the triples in the state database to a directory or individuals output sink.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/patent/20080027981/overview"&gt;specification&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/patent/20080027981/illustrations"&gt;illustrations&lt;/a&gt; and information disclosure statements  (&lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/images/ids/20080027981/large/11881893.IDS.1.png"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/images/ids/20080027981/large/11881893.IDS.2.png"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.peertopatent.org/images/ids/20080027981/large/11881893.IDS.3.png"&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) are included on the site as well.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;br /&gt; &lt;object type="image/svg+xml" data="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080324_drawing.svg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080324_drawing.svg" type="image/svg+xml" alt="drawing sheet 1" /&gt;&lt;/object&gt; &lt;br /&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:40:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Documenting microformats processes (20080203)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080203_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080203_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Documenting microformats processes (20080203)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The first book I've seen on microformats is &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.microformatique.com/book/"&gt;Microformats: empowering your markup for Web 2.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; by John Allsopp, published last year. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The bulk of the book walks through examples of applying many of the existing microformat specification guideliness to annotate typical web page HTML (as shown in a &lt;a href="http://www.friendsofed.com/samples/1590598148.pdf"&gt;sample chapter provided by the publisher&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;tt&gt;GEO&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;ADR&lt;/tt&gt; microformats).  One strength of the book is in describing the use of microformats to drive the use of CSS for visual layout of elements. However, some limitations lurk below the surface.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Adding metadata structure to a web site should be driven by value it provides to the intended consumers of that metadata, in making the site easier to locate, navigate or access.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In particular, as with the other web 2.0 technologies, microformats are still in their deployment infancy, and for many of the microformat specifications there are few tools which generate them, and fewer sites that make effective use of them.  As microformats.org exhorts the guideline of &lt;q&gt;humans first and machines second&lt;/q&gt;, it can be difficult to show the value of adding microformat-defined markup to existing HTML content when there are hardly any machine readers which would make use of that content.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Secondly, early in the book, the author points out the wide proliferation of identifier names, used across on web sites in HTML elements which relate the elements to CSS style definitions, as a motivation for microformats.  However, this proliferation also could indicate that there is a broad potential for additional models beyond those described by the existing microformat specifications covered in this book.    Unfortunately, the book only provides a few pages of advice on the process of creating a new microformat specification.  To me, this part of microformat process can be the most confusing for someone who is focused on industry-specific content.  &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon,  4 Feb 2008 02:40:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Metadata in Personal Content Experience (20080128)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080127_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080127_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Metadata in Personal Content Experience (20080128)&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Historically, the idea of managing "metadata" in computer systems has primarily been of interest to practicioners of data warehousing or &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_01.shtml"&gt;professional multimedia content producers&lt;/a&gt;.  Recently, the book &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470034645.html"&gt;Personal Content Experience: Managing Digital Life in the Mobile Age&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; by Juha Lehikoinen, Antti Aaltonen, Pertti Huuskonen and Ilkka Salminen, published in 2007 as &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ABooksources&amp;isbn=978-0-470-03464-4"&gt;paperback&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ABooksources&amp;isbn=978-0-470-51101-5"&gt;Adobe&lt;/a&gt;, argued for the importance of a broader understanding of the value which metadata provides to emerging applications: 2 of the 8 chapters in a book on mobile multimedia application have "metadata" in the title. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In one motivating scenario they present, an artist has been taking hundreds of pictures with a digital camera, and frequently uploads her pictures to a photo sharing web site.  While uploading, she adds descriptive labels and notes to her photos as they're going onto that site.  Later, the company that provided the photo sharing web site ceases business.  She still has all of her photos stored in her computer, but the labels and notes are gone and she has no way of searching her photos: it wasn't clear to her that the metadata she was entering wasn't going to be part of her copy of the image files.  It's unlikely that she'll go through the process of re-tagging all of the images, and now they're just wasted space: directories full of files with arbitrary names &lt;tt&gt;IMG_nnnn.jpg&lt;/tt&gt; without any context.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The authors suggest that the traditional models for categorizing and administering metadata have a 'library sciences' flavor that doesn't mesh with the demographics for use of today's media in need of metadata.  The &lt;q&gt;iPod-toting youngsters&lt;/q&gt; are looking for audio files indexed by metadata attributes such as &lt;i&gt;Genre&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;Energy&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;Hipness&lt;/i&gt;, not &lt;i&gt;Compression algorithm&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;i&gt;Rightsholder&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a key problem in their environment, smart phones and other mobile devices, is that the likelihood of someone manually entering any significant amount of metadata while they're importing content (downloading a song, taking a picture) to the device is basically nil, since they user is likely to be (a) on the move, (b) using a device with a greatly reduced keyboard, and (c) not interested or motivated to do so.  However, many existing implementations for automated metadata extraction have been oriented to details not of interest to this category of user. The authors suggest that in particular &lt;i&gt;relational&lt;/i&gt; categories of metadata, which link two or more objects together, and the &lt;i&gt;context of interaction&lt;/i&gt; have not been fully appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 27 Jan 2008 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Information Assurance for CS undergrads at UT Austin (20080104)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080104_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080104_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Information Assurance for CS undergrads at UT Austin (20080104) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In 2004 the &lt;a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/oea/services/media_relations/utcs_spotlights/2004/cias/index.shtml"&gt;Center for Information Assurance and Security&lt;/a&gt; (CIAS) was founded at UT Austin. Their plans included having UT Austin become &lt;q&gt;a National Academic Center of Excellence in Information Assurance Education, participate in a multi-university cybersecurity exercise and competition, and increase collaborations with business, government and academia&lt;/q&gt;.  In the &lt;a href="http://www.nsa.gov/ia/academia/acade00001.cfm"&gt;NSA's National IA Education and Training Program&lt;/a&gt;, institutions wishing to be designated as a &lt;i&gt;National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education&lt;/i&gt; are required to be certified for providing courses covering the material of &lt;a href="http://www.cnss.gov/Assets/pdf/nstissi_4011.pdf"&gt;NSTISSI 4011&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;i&gt;National Training Standard for INFOSEC Professionals&lt;/i&gt;) and &lt;a href="http://www.cnss.gov/instructions.html"&gt;one other CNSS standard&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;p&gt;In September 2005 the CIAS director &lt;a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/%7Echang"&gt;Dr. Fred Chang&lt;/a&gt; left UT Austin to be &lt;a href="http://www.itoc.usma.edu/Workshop/2006/Program/Speakers/Chang.htm"&gt;Director of Research at the NSA&lt;/a&gt;, and so I came in to write and teach a new course, CS 378: &lt;i&gt;Information Assurance and Security&lt;/i&gt;, to help the university meet the courseware requirements for NSTISSI 4011. I followed this in the spring of 2006 with another new CS 378 course &lt;i&gt;Computer Security Auditing and Certification&lt;/i&gt; for the requirements of the CNSS standard &lt;a href="http://www.cnss.gov/Assets/pdf/nstissi_4015.pdf"&gt;NSTISSI 4015&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;i&gt;National Training Standard for System Certifiers&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Even though the these standards had been established with the goal of training specialists charged with protecting the information processing systems of US federal government agencies and incorporated many terms and elements which aren't found outside of this domain, in my first lecture of each class I discussed why I felt that awareness of the concepts and approach Information Assurance was basic knowledge for practicing computer security scientists and engineers, regardless of whether they were working with government or industry systems:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Information Assurance includes considerations for non-security threats that could impact information systems, such as acts of nature, and the process of recovery from incidents.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Information Assurance has an emphasis on management, process, and human involvement, and is not focused exclusively on technology.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Deployments of Information Assurance may incorporate multiple disciplines of security, not just computer security but also communications security, operations security, and in some cases emanations or transmission security.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, in my course for meeting the training requirement of the "certifier" role in the &lt;a href="http://www.cnss.gov/Assets/pdf/nstissi_1000.pdf"&gt;certification and acredentiation of federal computer systems&lt;/a&gt;, I presented a sceptical approach that &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;...introduces students to a new approach to computer security: How to look beyond the scare tactics and hype surrounding security and determine how to assess security vulnerabilities and threats, diagnose, and effectively defend against them. The course covers the techniques organizations will use to recognize threats, vulnerabilities and attacks in computer networks. The projects in this course will provide the students with hands-on experience with expert open source tools that are widely used for analyzing networks and detecting intruders, insider attacks and performing computer forensics.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   &lt;p&gt;A mapping of the material from my two courses and &lt;a href="http://www.cias.utexas.edu/iacoursescontent.html"&gt;related prerequisite CS courses&lt;/a&gt; was submitted to the NSA for review, and in April 2007 the NSA IAD &lt;a href="http://www.nsa.gov/ia/academia/iace.cfm?MenuID=10.1.1.1"&gt;Information Assurance Courseware Evaluation&lt;/a&gt; Review committee notified the &lt;a href="http://www.cias.utexas.edu/"&gt;UT CIAS&lt;/a&gt; that they had achieved courseware certification.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This spring, &lt;a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~byoung/"&gt;Dr. Bill Young&lt;/a&gt;, who is also teaching CS 361 &lt;i&gt;Introduction to Computer Security&lt;/i&gt;, will again be teaching &lt;a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~byoung/cs378/syllabus378.html"&gt; an Information Assurance course&lt;/a&gt;. He writes in the syllabus that:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Our approach will be to cover selected topics from this very broad area of study with the goal of preparing the student to think critically about security from a wholistic perspective, rather than a purely technical perspective. Topics may include:&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;1. Introduction to Information Assurance&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;2. Metrics for Information Assurance&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;3. Networking and Cryptography&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;4. Information Assurance Planning and Deployment&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;5. Vulnerabilities and Protection&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;6. Identity and Trust Technologies&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;7. Verification and Evaluation&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;8. Incident Response&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;9. Human Factors&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;10. Legal, Ethical, and Social Implications &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat,  5 Jan 2008 05:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>digital identity book recommendation for 2007 (20080102)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080102_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20080102_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;digital identity book recommendation for 2007 (20080102) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For 2007:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;2007: &lt;a href="http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/"&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Future of reputation: gossip, rumor and privacy on the internet&lt;/i&gt; by Daniel J. Solove&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;table&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;img src="http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/images/book.jpg" height="366" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;i&gt;&lt;q&gt;Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cyber mobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Longstanding notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance among privacy, free speech, and anonymity, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   &lt;p&gt;For previous years:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt;  &lt;li&gt;2006: &lt;a href="http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&amp;pid=1441306"&gt;&lt;i&gt;Identity Crisis&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;table&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.catostore.org/images/products/identity-crisis_130.jpg" height="197" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;i&gt;&lt;q&gt;...Jim Harper takes readers inside identification-a process everyone uses every day but few people have ever thought about. Using stories and examples from movies, television, and classic literature, Harper dissects identification processes and technologies, showing how identification works when it works and how it fails when it fails. Harper exposes the myth that identification can protect against future terrorist attacks.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;2005:  &lt;a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/digidentity/index.html"&gt;&lt;i&gt;Digital Identity&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;table border="0"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/covers/0596008783_cat.gif" height="236" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;i&gt;&lt;q&gt;Network-based, automated services have changed the way businesses operate, but not always for the better. Many companies are more concerned with risk than opportunity. Digital Identity shows how an enterprise-wide identity management architecture can provide security while ensuring that interactions with customers, employees, partners and suppliers are richer and more flexible. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;2003: &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_02.shtml"&gt;&lt;i&gt;Hello World: A life in Ham Radio&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;table&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_t1.gif" height="375" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;i&gt;&lt;q&gt;Whenever hams connect on the air for the first time, they exchange specially designed postcards in the mail. These QSL cards are physical proof that the radio contact actually took place. Each ham's card is different, featuring the call sign for his station, details about the call and the gear used, and words and pictures that tell more about himself and his home. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;/li&gt;   &lt;li&gt;1997: &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/Life-Screen-Identity-Age-Internet/dp/0684833484/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1199338214&amp;sr=1-1"&gt;&lt;i&gt;Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;table border="0"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/LifeonScreen.jpeg" height="240" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;i&gt;&lt;q&gt;Life on the Screen traces a set of boundary negotiations, telling the story of the changing impact of the computer on our psychological lives and our evolving ideas about minds, bodies, and machines. What is emerging, Turkle says, is a new sense of identity--as de-centered and multiple. She describes trends in computer design, in artificial intelligence, and in people's experiences of virtual environments that confirm a dramatic shift in our notions of self, other, machine, and world. The computer emerges as an object that brings postmodernism down to earth.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;/li&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu,  3 Jan 2008 05:50:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>(fwd) i-card hero ROCKS!!!! (20071230)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071230_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071230_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;(fwd) i-card hero ROCKS!!!! (20071230) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt; A thank you note email I received this week: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;i&gt;Dear Mark,&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;i&gt;Thank you very much for getting me the icard hero video game for Xmas!!    i know a lot of my friends have also got it, but i'm not sure how many are really playing it much   &lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;i&gt;when i started playing i sucked pretty bad and i just kept practicing pressing the password-on-a-postit button on the controller over and over each time a login came up... but then the "disclosed personal identifying information" stuff started appearing and the Phish Meter went way UP!&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;i&gt;anyway i'm getting much better now with all the other authenticators...I can even do chords where I have to use two of them at the same time&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071230_i3.jpg" height="514" width="686" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;i&gt;My fav one is where you're logged into your work with a vpn but then you have to book personal air travel, and then blog about it at an OpenID-enabled site...  but i'm still having trouble with that bridge in it where the airline sends ya over to the car rental site...&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;so thanks - i have to go practice some more - conor is coming over and he says he can play like 237 different identities in a row so we'll see!&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071230_i6.jpg" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:59:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Assimilation (20071128)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071128_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071128_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Assimilation (20071128) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Organization change: I am now a &lt;i&gt;Senior PM Architect&lt;/i&gt; for identity lifecycle management (part of the &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/idm/default.mspx"&gt;identity and access product suite&lt;/a&gt;) at &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/"&gt;Microsoft Corporation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2007 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>7,302,439 (20071127)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071127_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071127_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;7,302,439 (20071127) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Information model mapping with shared directory tree representations &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;A registry service is described which uses a partitioned publisher assertion recording and accessing scheme. A publisher assertion regarding a relationship between entities (e.g., business or other types of entities) is encoded within a directory information tree in a memory. The publisher assertion includes publisher assertion part nodes corresponding to entity nodes in the directory information tree. The publisher assertion is complete if all publisher assertion parts corresponding to entities in the relationship are present in the directory information tree. The service may include a network including directory servers and registry servers. The publisher assertions are manipulated by authorized publishers and accessed by users using a variety of techniques, the operations of which are performed by such parties and/or are encoded upon computer-readable media.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;table border="0"&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Inventors:&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Gadbois; David Gregory (Austin, TX), Wahl; Mark (Austin, TX)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Assignee:&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Filed:&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;June 28, 2002&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Bob Blakley on outsourcing to the identity oracle (20071122)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071122_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071122_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Bob Blakley on outsourcing to the identity oracle (20071122) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://notabob.blogspot.com/"&gt;Bob Blakley&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com/"&gt;Burton Group&lt;/a&gt; was recently interviewed by &lt;a href="http://www.forumone.com/"&gt;Forum One Communications&lt;/a&gt; on "&lt;a href="http://interviews.forumone.com/content/interview/detail/729/"&gt;User-centric identity: Platforms, trade-offs, and next steps&lt;/a&gt;".  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; He was asked how the Identity Oracle approach might succeed where previous attempts to operate outsourced identity providers (&lt;a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3649/is_200009/ai_n8923067"&gt;Tidepoint?&lt;/a&gt;) have not been successful: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Compliance mandates create financial risk for organizations which collect identity data but don't protect it. This means that there is now - for the first time really - a business cost to the collection and use of identity information. The core notion behind the Identity Oracle is that the [Identity] Oracle can be a business which specializes in handling identity information, and because it specializes it can do a better job than its customers, and because it does a better job it can do the job at a lower cost, and because it can do the job at a lower cost, it can charge its customers less than they would pay to do the job in-house and still make a profit.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:10:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Closing ICANN Comment Period on WHOIS (20071027)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071027_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071027_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Closing ICANN Comment Period on WHOIS (20071027) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; From the &lt;a href="http://www.icann.org/public_comment/#whois-comments-2007"&gt;ICANN public comment page&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;Explanation: A Whois taskforce convened in June 2005 completed its work and sent a final report to the GNSO Council in March 2007. In that report, a majority of members endorsed a proposal called the "Operational Point of Contact" (OPOC). Under OPOC, every registrant would identify a new operational point of contact and the registrant's postal address, city, and postal code would no longer be displayed. The operational point of contact's name and contact information would be displayed instead, and it would replace the administrative and technical contacts.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Expanding on that work, the GNSO Council in March created a Whois working group to examine three issues and make recommendations on them ... The &lt;a href="http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/icann-whois-wg-report-final-1-9.pdf"&gt;working group's report&lt;/a&gt; [pdf] was published on 20 August 2007. On 6 September 2007, the GNSO Council approved a resolution for further public comment on the report with the intention to lead to a vote on the issue on 31 October 2007 during the Los Angeles ICANN meeting... Public comments are invited on both of the GNSO Council's Whois reports and recommendations referenced above and summarized in the Final Staff Overview of Recent GNSO WHOIS Activity of 11 October. Please comment on the Whois Task Force and Working Group Reports, the 11 October &lt;a href="http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/icann-staff-overview-of-whois11oct07.pdf"&gt;Final Staff overview of Recent GNSO Whois Activities &lt;/a&gt;[pdf] and the 11 October &lt;a href="http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/gnso-whoiswg-report-staff-implementation-notes-11oct07.pdf"&gt;Staff Implementation Notes on the Whois Working Group Report &lt;/a&gt;[pdf] .&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://forum.icann.org/lists/whois-comments-2007/"&gt;Comments&lt;/a&gt; will be taken until 00:00 UTC (17:00 PDT) on 30 October 2007.&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>52 What-ifs of Identity Science Fiction (20071004)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071004_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071004_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; 52 What-ifs of Identity Science Fiction (20071004) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The &lt;a href="http://wiki.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/IdFutures"&gt;Id Futures&lt;/a&gt; ad-hoc working group of the &lt;a href="http://wiki.identitycommons.net/"&gt;Identity Commons 2&lt;/a&gt; currently has a list of 52 possible events on its Wiki. This list was used to shape a discussion of &lt;i&gt;The Future of Convergence in Internet-Scale Identity Systems&lt;/i&gt; at the recent Digital ID World.  These events are &lt;b&gt;not&lt;/b&gt; intended to be predictions or even necessarily desirable outcomes, merely tools for scenario planning. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu,  4 Oct 2007 16:10:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>OT Frivolous Blog and Clothing Store (20071003)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071003_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071003_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; OT Frivolous Blog and Clothing Store (20071003) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I'm moving topics which are not relevant to identity management to a  &lt;a href="http://www.zetona.org/markwahl/"&gt;Mark Wahl frivolous blog&lt;/a&gt; &amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.zetona.org/markwahl/rss.xml"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/xml.gif" border="0" alt="RSS" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="http://www.zetona.org/markwahl/sioc.xml"&gt;&lt;img src="http://sioc-project.org/files/sioc_button.gif" border="0" alt="SIOC" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Also in honor of the anniversary of the launch of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1"&gt;Спутник-1&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href="http://www.zetona.com/"&gt;Zetona Clothing&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.zetona.com/bigscience/"&gt;Big Science and Little Kids&lt;/a&gt; clothing store offers for sale infant and toddler clothing with a space exploration theme.  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.zetona.com/bigscience/"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.zetona.com/bigscience/img/bsalk20071001f.jpg" alt="infant clothing" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed,  3 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Gartner Magic Quadrants for User Provisioning (20071002)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071002_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20071002_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Gartner Magic Quadrants for User Provisioning (20071002) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The "Gartner Magic Quadrant for User Provisioning, 2H07" published last August is online in both &lt;a href="http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/150475.html"&gt;HTML&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.sun.com/software/products/identity/2h07.pdf"&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Two areas of "market immaturity" that Gartner highlighted which are technical limitations of many existing user provisioning products are role management, and user-provisioning audit and reporting.&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue,  2 Oct 2007 15:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World presentation on CardSpace in credit card txns (20070925)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_06.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_06.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World presentation on CardSpace in credit card txns (20070925) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Sid Sidner of ACI Worldwide presented "Online Payments using Information Cards" at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;).  This presentation followed from a post &lt;a href="http://tootallsid.blogspot.com/2006/12/infocard-and-e-commerce.html"&gt;"InfoCard and e-Commerce"&lt;/a&gt; he made to &lt;a href="http://tootallsid.blogspot.com/"&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt; in December 2006.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;He mentioned several enhancements he had requested of Microsoft individuals to be made in future versions of the InfoCard protocols, such as &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the use of the "question mark" symbol in URIs should terminate matching, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;multiple issuers should be allowed in a WS-SecurityPolicy element.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World presentation on LDAP in media asset metadata management (20070925)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_05.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_05.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World presentation on LDAP in media asset metadata management (20070925) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Chuck Hurst of Scripps Networks presented "Assigning Identities to Enterprise Assets" at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;).  As a media company (HGTV, Food Network, etc.), they observed that they were likely to experience an exponential growth of media "object" assets in the next few years, even though they were anticipating only linear growth in the number of TV episodes they manage. (A single episode might incorporate many snippets of different forms of media objects: video clips, music, stills, graphics, etc., and many of these objects are valuable as they can be reused). At the time, they had 2.5 million objects for 50,000 archived episodes.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The approach to manage these objects use the &lt;a href="http://dublincore.org/"&gt;Dublin Core&lt;/a&gt; for the basis of their media object metadata model, and they store the index in an LDAP directory service. They chose LDAP over a relational database approach due to the directory server's fast search, built-in replication, and other reasons. In their pilot scale testing of 9 physical server systems running eDirectory 8.8 storing 100 million objects, they saw they could achieve a sustained rate of 9000 reads/sec, or 33 modifies/sec.  Their custom directory-enabled management application, the Scripps Asset Registry (SAR), is deployed with the spring framework in a servlet container, and they tested their application could perform 3000 reads/sec. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Their production deployment has 160,000 broadcast assets as of March 2007, and are in the process of merging 20,000 non-linear assets in October 2007.  Their SAR deployment is integrated in their enterprise search infrastructure, and they are considering integrating with the nonlinear editing software tools in the future.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An advantage of this system is that a particular media asset might have multiple identifiers assigned to it.  For example, external content providers might have assigned their own identifiers to media objects they license to Scripps Networks.  &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:20:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World keynote by Jamie Lewis (20070925)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_04.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_04.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World keynote by Jamie Lewis (20070925) &lt;/h3&gt;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com/AboutUs/ExecMgt.aspx"&gt;Jamie Lewis&lt;/a&gt; of the Burton Group provided the second day keynote at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;).   Some of the observations included that&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The starting point for an enterprise beginning an identity management deployment is still the same, as most products require a directory infrastructure, and &lt;q&gt;data linking and cleansing is relevant to any IdM project&lt;/q&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the provisioning space, there's no product that provides data synchronization and workflow equally well, and provisioning deployed primarily for compliance won't necessarily provide an enterprise account management function.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identity-as-a-service within the organization has a few deployments, but is inhibited by governance issues and lack of mandate. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The applicability of federation has been overstated in the market, as &lt;q&gt;ubiquity is preposterous with today's technologies&lt;/q&gt;, due to these technologies' requirements for tight cross-party coordination hindering scale, and their trust issues.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Claims (in theory) could help with deployment, as they could allow authoritative sources to emerge, but coordination and trust problems remain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emerging authentication technology is still being designed and positioned for tech-saavy users, and the user experience might not be appropriate for the typical web users, as he illustrated with &lt;a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9807/df980703.jpg"&gt;the Doctor Fun cartoon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9807/df980703.jpg" width="640" height="480"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;      </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:12:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World Liberty Alliance IDDY Awards (20070925)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_03.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World Liberty Alliance IDDY Awards (20070925) &lt;/h3&gt;    &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.projectliberty.org/"&gt;Liberty Alliance&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,185202.shtml"&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;) the four winners of the 2007 Identity Deployment of the Year (IDDY) award: eBIZ.mobility, the New Zealand Government, NTT Labs and Rearden Commerce. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/07365195237862694751"&gt;Chuck Mortimore&lt;/a&gt; accepted the award on behalf of &lt;a href="http://www.reardencommerce.com/"&gt;Rearden Commerce&lt;/a&gt;.  Congratulations, Chuck!&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:40:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World and OpenID URLs (20070925)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World and OpenID URLs (20070925) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; There were numerous blog announcements of France Telecom mentioning support for OpenID in their session "Advanced Identity Management in Telco environnement: Challenges of multi-play Identity Convergence" at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;).  Some of the caveats discussed did not seem to find their way into some of the existing blog posts, such as  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;France Telecom/Orange have not yet announced their support for OpenID to their DSL or mobile customers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ability to get an OpenID is likely to be marketed just to the &lt;q&gt;techie&lt;/q&gt; subsegment (~15%) of their customers, and it is anticipated that some segments of their customer base will never be interested in OpenID, in particular as the idea of having to remember and enter a long, arbitrary URL in web forms is a significant barrier to gaining access to a service, as compared to behind-the-scenes SSO the customers might be more familiar with. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That OpenID require the user to enter a personally-identifying URL at arbitrary Relying Party web sites raised privacy concerns to France Telecom. France Telecom did not auto-assign OpenIDs to their customers, as it would have exposed their existing customers' user identifiers (currently private to the customer-FT relationship).  A customer might not wish to be required to have their userid become exposed in an OpenID URL.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 'right hand side' user-specific identifiers in France Telecom OpenID URLs will be short text words, and these will be assigned on a first-come-first-served basis with no correlation required to the customer's identifier they use at FT/Orange web sites.  The first France Telecom customer who decides to get the OpenID URL "...&lt;tt&gt;/john&lt;/tt&gt;" will get to have "&lt;tt&gt;/john&lt;/tt&gt;".  It was predicted that there will be "trading of the France Telecom OpenIDs on eBay", so it's not particularly clear what value these OpenIDs will provide to relying party sites for authentication purposes over any other arbitrary OpenID identity provider. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:20:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World and an EAP-SIM PoC (20070925)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070925_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World and an EAP-SIM PoC (20070925) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;At the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href="http://conorcahill.blogspot.com/"&gt;Conor Cahill&lt;/a&gt; of Intel  presented the &lt;a href="http://www.intel.com/technology/systems/stl/"&gt;Intel system technology lab&lt;/a&gt; project "Identity Capable Platform" (&lt;a href="http://download.intel.com/technology/systems/icp_project_brief.pdf"&gt;ICP&lt;/a&gt;), which could participate in one or more identity metasystem protocol models.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href="http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/content/download/2740/18393/file/IntelIdentityCapablePlatform.pdf"&gt;a 2005 presentation&lt;/a&gt;, the ICP is a trusted environment adjoining the desktop/device operating system, comprising an identity manager and one or more managable identities (iMIDs).  Multiple iMIDs, for biometric, smartcard, username/password etc, could be 'stacked' to provide multi-factor authentication.   The identity manager could provide identity sources to an InfoCard identity selector, by enumerating the iMIDs on the platform which meet the requirements for WS-Trust.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;He mentioned a BT/HP/Intel joint Proof-of-Concept exercise in which the trusted module was a soft-SIM.  In this PoC, a laptop automatically authenticates to wireless access points using &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAP-SIM"&gt;EAP-SIM&lt;/a&gt;, without needing user interaction (although the user could be involved if required, eg., by stacking an iMID which involves entering a PIN). &lt;/p&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:40:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World panel on interoperability partners, and developer difficulties (20070924)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_05.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_05.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World panel on interoperability partners, and developer difficulties (20070924) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A panel on (Microsoft-centric) &lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/30.php"&gt;"Identity Interoperability: A Discussion of Partners"&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;) highlighted one of the failings of the identity management technology industry as a whole: the developer interfaces.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Historically, an ISV/third party application developer that wished to do something other than maintain its own embedded username/password database, something that would ease the process of deploying their application in large enterprises,  would be told to "just get the data from LDAP".  The LDAP API was comparatively simple, SDKs were available on multiple platforms, and an application could get by with just an &lt;tt&gt;ldap_open()&lt;/tt&gt; and a &lt;tt&gt;ldap_search()&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;ldap_bind()&lt;/tt&gt; call (although there were numerous subtles and gotchas).  With a little bit of work, the ISV could build their product that would be functionally independent of whether the enterprise had a Sun directory server, a Microsoft directory server, or something else.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Today, there is a proliferation of models (Liberty, Shibboleth, OpenID, InfoCard) with distinct protocols, that provide advanced functionality for authentication and attribute/claims transfer, and these models are intended to support applications that might be deployed as an Internet service.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Until recently, an application developer that wished to develop an application that was aware of these services would need to first come up to speed on the language of federation technologies, even if federation in its traditional sense would not be of interest to the developer.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Some open questions:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much does an application developer need to know about the low-level aspects, such as key exchange, digital signatures, certificate paths, underlying the emerging identity protocols OpenID/SAML/WS-*?  Are there interfaces sufficient that an application developer can be unaware of these aspects of a protocol and still build a successful, interoperable and auditable identity-aware application?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What interfaces will be available in the popular development languages that are identity-protocol-agnostic?  Hardcoding OpenID, or SAML, or WS-* interchanges in an application seems to be as problematic as hardcoding LDAP calls. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The panel discussed the use of security token service (STS) components for claims transformation.  It is not yet known what the difficulty will be of implementing and deploying a STS to support a particular application.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href="http://bobmorgan.org/"&gt;RL "Bob" Morgan&lt;/a&gt; has reminded us, claims transformers are gateways, and &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;q&gt;No message was ever improved by a gateway.&lt;/q&gt; -- Einar Stefferud&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:20:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World: Convergence of Internet-scale Identity Systems (20070924)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_04.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_04.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World: Convergence of Internet-scale Identity Systems (20070924) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I'll be on a panel entitled &lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/30.php#24R3-1405"&gt;"The Convergence of Internet-scale Identity Systems"&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;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.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;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 &lt;a href="http://wiki.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/IdFutures"&gt;ID Futures&lt;/a&gt; proto-working-group of the Identity Commons.  These events are not predictions, but merely tools for enabling further discussion:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;networks of trusted individuals compete with corporations as players in identity-dependent transactions&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;personal data on US citizens anchored to trustees when used in European Union transactions&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;virtual world contact addresses are accepted as commercial billing addresses&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;the wide deployance of facial recognition limits public anonymity&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;Internet access legislated by many countries to be authenticated and so cannot be anonymous &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;forgeries of government-defined digital identities lead to lack of confidence&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:20:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World keynote: Kim Cameron on claims (20070924)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_03.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World keynote: Kim Cameron on claims (20070924) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Kim Cameron of Microsoft presents "Why Claims will Change Everything" at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Traditionally, the enterprise identity management system has been a "single source of truth".  This capability is limited, however, by the numerous silos: silos by operating system, by application, by enterprise, by services, by networks, and by access control subsystems. Other problems he mentions inherent in this silo/mesh model include:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;that entities such as users &lt;q&gt;want to obtain a service, not be defined by a service&lt;/q&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;end-to-end policy-based controls are incompatible with silos, and&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;needlessly difficult to combine services from multiple systems.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Mr. Cameron proposes applying the "WS-* combinational pattern" to identity.  As Dave Kearns wrote earlier on a &lt;a href="http://www.identityblog.com/?p=767"&gt;"toy model"&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;So by creating a Legonic Identity System (LIS?) we have one which can put together identity data in various ways to fit the conditions of the moment. Relying Parties, Identity Providers and User Agents can work together to construct sets of Identity Claims from all of the available pieces of identity data.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;with his goals being&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;enabling claims-based application data to cross enterprise boundaries, in which assertions might be detached from the trust infrastructure, &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;supporting cross-vendor architectures, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;meeting requirements for user-centered systems to simplify mashups and transfer of control.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;He describes "convertible claims" as &lt;q&gt;an assertion which is in doubt&lt;/q&gt;, as there may be multiple sources of claims being presented at a component, and that through the intervention of claims transformers, some of these claims are converted into "actionable claims", those claims that a component are willing to act upon after an evaluation step.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; His taxonomy of claims includes &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;static claims&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;for traditional attribute types&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;relationship claims&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;indicating connections between entities&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;derived claims&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;less "leaky" than static claims&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;capability claims&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;claims for authorization&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;meta-claims&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;claims about the subject&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The claims vision suggests that claims transformers could perform transformations on the format of claims (e.g., chainging a claim of one form to another (e.g., such as "24 years old" to "over 18"), on their contents, as well as on their trust points (e.g., changing a claim to be sourced by one authority to be sourced by another authority recognized by a relying party).  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;However, even though these tie into the InfoCard transaction model (in particular that the RP, IdP and Identity Selector components are joining responsible for a transaction, as there are mutual vetos for claims), this convertible claim model is somewhat beyond what is achievable with deployed InfoCard technology.  While InfoCard protocols and guideline documents mention the use of Relying Party Security Token Services (RP-STS) agent services on the Internet, these services operate under the control of the Relying Party, and only transform claims on behalf of the Relying Party web server or web service.  There is not yet a model in InfoCard for claims transformation on behalf of the identity selector or identity provider services, independent of the relying party. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the claims representation in InfoCard is still very limited as compared to a SAML assertion, in particular that there is not yet standards for the metadata about claim types, or the ability to describe the relationships between claims (e.g., that a claim "am over 18" is derived from a claim "is 24 years old" without needing to reveal the content of the source claim).  I also observed that there wasn't a taxonomic category in their slides for dynamic and time-limited claims, so representing dynamic data in the claims format might still be problematic for some time to come.  &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:20:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World keynote: Managing the Decentralization of Identity (20070924)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World keynote: Managing the Decentralization of Identity (20070924) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.searls.com/dochome.html#Bio"&gt;Doc Searls&lt;/a&gt;, in his presentation on "Managing the Decentralization of Identity" at the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;), presented several vendor relationship issues affecting digital identity, including &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;private social networks do not make a marketplace&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;First, that existing social networks are &lt;q&gt;walled gardens&lt;/q&gt;.  Second, the "users" in most major social networking services are not the customers: the collection of users is merely the enabler for the relationship between the social networking service and the advertisers.  Thus, activities enabling better user-driven integration between services might undercut this actual customer relationship. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;own the customer&lt;/q&gt; is analogous to slavery&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; In a marketplace, the independence of the customers is their ability to make choices between vendors, which runs counter to the idea of customer lock-in.  In the VRM model, Mr. Searls suggests that building relationships between customers and vendors will be a better foundation for defining tools that enable markets, than tools driven by transactions or traditional CRM. &lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World opening keynote (20070924)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070924_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Digital ID World opening keynote (20070924) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;At the &lt;a href="http://www.digitalidworld.com" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW&lt;/a&gt; conference (&lt;a href="http://conference.digitalidworld.com/2007/" rel="tag"&gt;DIDW2007&lt;/a&gt;, co-hosted by &lt;a href="http://www.csoonline.com/"&gt;CSO&lt;/a&gt;), Phil Becker in his opening keynote discusses his "three waves of digital identity in the enterprise": &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;the first wave&lt;/i&gt; (past): location, as determined by physical presence-based security and private networks, is an implicit "proxy" for security, and identity is submerged in email address books and networks, &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;the second wave&lt;/i&gt; (present): the growth of public networking decreases the capability of location to be used to provide security, but identity transforms security from a "siege mentality" to "allow access by authorized users", and with digital identity adding stronger authentication and providing increased visibility for meeting compliance requirements, and starts to enable end-user self-service, and&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;the third wave&lt;/i&gt; (future): drivers of promiscous interconnection of networks and self-service lead to interconnections of identity systems and drives the use of &lt;i&gt;managed but decentralized digital identities&lt;/i&gt; to support new experience-driven applications.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Anti-utopian social networking #3 - the real world and its online representation (20070917)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070917_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070917_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Anti-utopian social networking #3 - the real world and its online representation (20070917) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://danbri.org/foaf.rdf#danbri"&gt;Dan Brickley&lt;/a&gt; who blogs at  &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://danbri.org/words/"&gt;danbri's foaf stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; wrote last week in his post &lt;a href="http://danbri.org/words/2007/09/13/194"&gt;"The World is now closed"&lt;/a&gt; that one problem with popular social networking service sites such as Facebook is that their software is making the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_world_assumption"&gt;closed world assumption&lt;/a&gt;: anything the service didn't already have in their database, was false, rather than "unknown".  This assumption causes a service to have a view of the world that an individual didn't exist until that individual became a member of that service.   This is of course incorrect:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;A description of me and my friends hosted by a big Web site isn't "my social network". Those sites are just a database containing claims made by different people, some verified, some not. And with, inevitably, lots missing.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Suppose Alice and Bob got married in the 1970s.  A social networking service Foo starts operation in 2006. Alice joins the Foo service June 2007; Bob joins that same service Foo in July 2007, and in August 2007 Alice and Bob decide to add the 'spouse' links between their accounts in Foo's database.  Unfortunately, it is likely that Foo will immediately afterward send out an announcement to all of Alice and Bob's friends who have accounts in Foo that "&lt;tt&gt;Alice and Bob are now married. Congratulations!&lt;/tt&gt;".  Mr. Brickley writes &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Syndicating descriptions of the changeable properties of the world, on the other hand, is more slippery since you need to have all other relevant facts to be able to say how the world is right now (or implicitly, how it used to be, before).&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Through &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DataSharingSummit"&gt;data sharing protocols and mechanisms&lt;/a&gt;, it may become possible for services to assemble better pictures of their subscriber's interactions, by exchanging data with the other services through which their subscribers interacts.  But this approach is still limited in what it can provide, and social networking services that assume that everything is going to be available on the web will present a fantasy role-playing game view of the real world, since there's no &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Test_Action_Group"&gt;JTAG&lt;/a&gt; interface to the minds of individuals, where the social networking 'raw data' resides. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I agree with his recommendation that &lt;q&gt;We need better UI that reflects what's really going on....what we're most missing is a style of end-user UI here that educates users about this world that spans websites, couching things in terms of claims hosted in sites, rather than in absolutist terms&lt;/q&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;However, while joining a new service and having it pronounce "&lt;tt&gt;you do not have any friends!&lt;/tt&gt;" is disconcerting, might it also be disconcerting for a &lt;i&gt;too accurate&lt;/i&gt; view of real world social networks to be presented?  Most individuals are not used to there being a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_columnist"&gt;gossip column&lt;/a&gt; maintained about their life.  Furthermore, might there be an "&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley"&gt;uncanny valley&lt;/a&gt;" for social networking services, in which humans reject software that appears to "know too much" about the activity of humans?  The closer the software reaches to actual social skills in its attempts to provide a human-like social ability, the further it might appear to be.   Jean Baudrillard in the paper "&lt;a href="http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-simulacra-and-simulation-11-holograms.html"&gt;Holograms&lt;/a&gt;" in  &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation"&gt;Simulacra and Simulation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; writes  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;The social, the social phantasmagoria, is now nothing but a special effect, obtained by the design of participating networks converging in emptiness under the spectral image of collective happiness.   Three-dimensionality of the simulacrum - why would the simulacrum with three dimensions be closer to the real than the one with two dimensions? It claims to be, but paradoxically, it has the opposite effect: to render us sensitive to the fourth dimension as a hidden truth, a secret dimension of everything, which suddenly takes on all the force of evidence. The closer one gets to the perfection of the simulacrum..., the more evident it becomes ... how everything escapes representation, escapes its own double and its resemblance.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;      </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Data Sharing and fault tolerance (20070909)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070909_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070909_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Data Sharing and fault tolerance (20070909) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One topic which has not seen as wide discussion in the context of the &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DataSharingSummit" rel="tag"&gt;DataSharingSummit&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href="http://www.datasharingsummit.com"&gt;wiki&lt;/a&gt;) has been the ability for data sharing to help provide the users with fault tolerance for social networking services they rely upon.  This is a problem worth addressing as currently a single &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070724_01.shtml"&gt;hosting center outage&lt;/a&gt; can shut down multiple independently-operated social network services. Furthermore, that outage shut down an OpenID identity provider (OP), and thus the users of that OP were no longer able to use their OpenIDs to log into services elsewhere which were still online. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In a fault tolerant distributed system, the system as a whole continues to operate, perhaps in a degraded mode, even when one or more of the components of the system have failed.  Some of the failure modes might include: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;A temporary outage of one or more services as a backhoe takes out the power or network connectivity to the hosting center.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;A component service disappears, never to return, and any data maintained in there is lost.  For example, the Walmart Hub social networking site went away only a few months after it was launched.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;A component service experiences a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance"&gt;Byzantine failure&lt;/a&gt; and issues erroneous data.  &lt;a href="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/about/"&gt;Pamela Dingle&lt;/a&gt; discussed this in her post &lt;a href="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/mystery-solved-questions-abound/"&gt;"Mystery Solved; Questions Abound"&lt;/a&gt; that for a few hours in July 2007 &lt;q&gt;the wordpress.com staff installed software that mixed RSS feeds up for some unknown number of blog accounts, resulting in content from one persons' blog being published under the name of someone else&lt;/q&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the techniques worth considering would include:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Ensure that relying parties (RPs) allow their users to associate multiple independent identities with their 'accounts' at the relying party.  Just a person in the real world might carry a fallback credit card or ATM card from different issuing bank than their primary card's issuing bank in case their primary bank blocks their account, a backup identity would permit a user to continue to access their RP even when their primary identity provider (IdP) is unavailable. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;For portal sites which primarily aggregate a user's web data held by sites not affiliated with the portal, permit a page description to be exported to and held by the user on their local devices, so that the user can easily import their page description into a different portal should that become necessary. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;Many of the deployment models today assume that the user must trust their IdPs OP and RPs, and will 'just switch' to a better party should the IdP or RP misbehave.  Unfortunately, these assumptions are not viable in the real world.  An evil site will not advertise that it is evil.  A well-intentioned site might occasionally experience errors or attacks that cause it to behave badly.  A site might decide to change its policies but the user still has a large volume of data maintained there.  In particular, when a site impersonates one of its users, today this is indistinguishable from the user's own behavior, and these activities can wreck a social network.  Is there a way of recovering trust in a user after a service has impersonated that user?  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun,  9 Sep 2007 18:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity Schema Value Syntax Restrictions at Data Sharing Summit Day 2 (20070908)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070908_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070908_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Identity Schema Value Syntax Restrictions at Data Sharing Summit Day 2 (20070908) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;During the second day of the &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DataSharingSummit" rel="tag"&gt;DataSharingSummit&lt;/a&gt; the  &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070908_01.shtml"&gt;discussion of the initial set of identity schema metadata properties &lt;/a&gt; was continued with a focus on the metadata for an attribute to express restrictions on the value syntax.    &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Use cases for value syntax restrictions include&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;validating attribute values being entered by an end user in a form,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;validating of identity attribute values exchanged between services,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;transformation of identity attribute values exchanged between services, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;display control: improving the formatting of the display of values based on known constraints of the values.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For an initial specification of the minimal set of identity schema metadata properties, the low-hanging fruit is providing human and machine readable descriptions of the contents of simple, string-valued attributes in order to support validation of input based on patterns, and information for developers to learn more about how to format values of the attribute.  There is no one format for encoding this description.  Instead, there are several options which might be viable: regular expressions, XBNF and XML schema formats (of which there are several). &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;XBNF is a proposal by Marty Schlieff for encouraging reuse between formal language specifications of formal languages derived from &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form"&gt;BNF&lt;/a&gt;, which uses XRI "dollar notation" to provide unique names to symbols.  A specification for this is still under development.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The discussion also highlighted the value in adding to the set of metadata &lt;i&gt;test case values&lt;/i&gt; as specialized forms of example values which contain edge cases. &lt;/p&gt;  </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat,  8 Sep 2007 20:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity Schema Metadata at Data Sharing Summit Day 1 (20070908)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070908_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070908_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Identity Schema Metadata at Data Sharing Summit Day 1 (20070908) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;During a discussion at the &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DataSharingSummit" rel="tag"&gt;DataSharingSummit&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href="http://www.equalsdrummond.name/"&gt;Drummond Reed&lt;/a&gt;, Paul Trevithick and others, I proposed an initial set of identity schema metadata properties chosen from the set listed at the &lt;a href="http://idschemas.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/MetaData"&gt;identity schema metadata wiki page&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Those properties which have a native pre-existing RDF representation:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;label&lt;/tt&gt;: one line descriptions of the schema element (localizable).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Suitable for display to an end user.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;comment&lt;/tt&gt;: multi-line descriptions of the schema element (localizable).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Primarily for use by application developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;equivalence: identifiers of other schema elements of the same kind as this one which are equivalent, differing only in their identifier.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is to support mapping between organizations which have redefined schemas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;seeAlso&lt;/tt&gt;: identifiers of related attributes of interest.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Primarily for use by application developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;obsolete/deprecation: an indication of when a schema element was made obsolete by its originator.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Primarily of use for application developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;subtype and supertype relations: for indicating specialization of attribute or claim types in a D.A.G.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example, applications can use this property to determine if a more-specific attribute or claim can be provided to a relying party that is requesting a less-specific attribute.  E.g., a 'mobile telephone number' might be suitable for a relying party requesting merely a 'telephone number'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Those properties which are common across many identity systems (e.g., LDAP, OpenID AX, InfoCard):&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;cardinality: how many values of this attribute or claim can be present in a record holding this attribute/claim.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example, a minimum and maximum nubmer of values.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;value syntax: an identifier of the syntax of this value.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;This would indicate whether a value is a 'string', what form of date, a binary blob, or a complex type which requires specialized encoders/decoders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;value syntax restriction: for string-valued attributes, a constraint on the pattern of acceptable values.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Constraints on the choice of characters or strings forming the values.  For example, this might be a regular expression or other machine-verifiable pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;The schema metadata properties originally proposed for use in OpenID AX:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;sample value: an example value of this attribute.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Primarily for use by application developers to have data suitable for testing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;acquisition source: an identifier of an Internet service where a value of this internet can be obtained.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Primarily for use in applications which are presenting an RP's requirements to the end user.  For example, a site requiring a Yahoo ID might indicate that such an ID can be obtained from Yahoo.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;authority: if there is only a small number of parties on the Internet that can legitimately issue values of this attribute. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example, a 'bigco-employee-number' attribute only is suitable for consideration if issued by a 'bigco' organization service.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Metadata properties for use in change control:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;originator of the schema: what party proposed the schema definition.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;change history: for example, who made a change, the timestamp of the change, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Drummond Reed, Andy Dale and others also were interested in defining support for properties to support attributes with non-URI identifiers, and indicators for the community consensus on particular sets of schemas.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Also, Marty Schleiff requested properties for matching rule id: the identifiers of the matching rules for values of this attribute.&lt;/p&gt;  </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat,  8 Sep 2007 17:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity schema element metadata in RDFa (20070906)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070906_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070906_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Identity schema element metadata in RDFa (20070906) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; I've uploaded two specifications for review by the &lt;a href="http://idschemas.idcommons.net"&gt;Identity Schemas working group&lt;/a&gt; of Identity Commons and the &lt;a href="http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs"&gt;OpenID specifications discussions mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The document "&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schema-metadata-basic-retrieval-1_0-01.html"&gt;Identity Schema Element Metadata: Basic Retrieval&lt;/a&gt;" defines a procedure by which a retriever can obtain a description of an identity attribute type, an identity claim type, or an identity schema, from a web site.  This procedure is applicable for some InfoCard claim types, OpenID AX attribute types, and SAML attribute types.  The returned metadata of the identity schema or schema element is described using RDF and is encoded in RDF/XML or RDFa.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The document "&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schema-metadata-existing-specs-1_0-00.html"&gt;Identity Schema Element Metadata: Existing Specifications&lt;/a&gt;" specifies how existing RDF predicate definitions can be used for describing identity schemas and schema elements.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Still to be published is "Identity Schema Element Metadata: New Specification", which defines the predicates for the &lt;a href="http://idschemas.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/MetaData"&gt;identity schema metadata&lt;/a&gt; for which there is no suitable existing specification. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An example RDFa-encoded identity schema is this XHTML, with the RDFa markup in bold&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;?xml version="1.0"?&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&lt;br /&gt; &lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:higgins="http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/ontologies/2006/higgins.owl#"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;head &lt;b&gt;about=""&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;title &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:label"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;Example schema containing two attribute types.&amp;lt;/title&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;meta &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:comment"&lt;/b&gt; xml:lang="en" content="This schema has two attribute type definitions: patronymic and age." /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;meta &lt;b&gt;property="owl:versionInfo"&lt;/b&gt; xml:lang="en" content="$1.1$" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;link rel="rdf:type" href="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#Ontology" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;link rel="owl:imports" href="http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/ontologies/2006/higgins.owl" /&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/head&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;body&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;ul &lt;b&gt;about="#patronymic"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:label"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;Patryonymic&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;This is an &amp;lt;a &lt;b&gt;rel="rdf:type"&lt;/b&gt; href="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#ObjectProperty"&amp;gt;OWL ObjectProperty&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;This is a sub-property of a&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;a &lt;b&gt;rel="rdfs:subPropertyOf"&lt;/b&gt; href="http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/ontologies/2006/higgins.owl#attribute"&amp;gt;Higgins attribute&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/ul&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;ul &lt;b&gt;about="#age"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:label"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;Age&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:label"&lt;/b&gt; lang="de"&amp;gt;Alter&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; (German)&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:label"&lt;/b&gt; lang="fr"&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#xC2;ge&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; (French)&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;Comment: &amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="rdfs:comment"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;How old a person is (in years)&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;This is an &amp;lt;a &lt;b&gt;rel="rdf:type"&lt;/b&gt; href="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#ObjectProperty"&amp;gt;OWL ObjectProperty&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;This is a sub-property of a&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;a &lt;b&gt;rel="rdfs:subPropertyOf"&lt;/b&gt; href="http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/ontologies/2006/higgins.owl#attribute"&amp;gt;Higgins attribute&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/ul&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/body&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/html&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Also, I uploaded a revised draft of the specification "&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/openid-value-lang-1_0-01.html"&gt;Language Tags for OpenID Values&lt;/a&gt;". That document defines a mechanism by which a party in an identity system using the OpenID protocols can associate a language tag with a string. The input to the mechanism is a language tag and a string value. The output from the mechanism is a UTF-8 encoding of a combination of the language tag and the value. &lt;/p&gt;  </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri,  7 Sep 2007 01:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Timeline of WHOIS, the original Internet social network service (20070824)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070824_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070824_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Timeline of WHOIS, the original Internet social network service (20070824) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHOIS"&gt;WHOIS&lt;/a&gt; is a very simple protocol, currently defined by Draft Standard &lt;a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3912"&gt;RFC 3912 "WHOIS Protocol Specification"&lt;/a&gt; from September 2004.  The client opens a TCP connection to a WHOIS server, sends a single line of text of a request (e.g., a name such as "Smith"), and receives back a human-readable text response.  The original purpose of WHOIS, as it originated in 1982, was to allow anyone on the ARPANET network to search the list of the ARPANET's users, stored in the Network Information Center (NIC) database.  This database was maintained by SRI International on behalf of the US Dept. of Defense: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;[The Defense Communications Agency] requests that each individual ... who is capable of passing traffic across the ARPANET, be registered in the NIC Identification Data Base.  To register, send full name, middle initial, U.S. mailing address (including mail stop and full explanation of abbreviations and acronyms), ZIP code, telephone (including Autovon and FTS, if available), and one network mailbox, via electronic mail to NIC@SRI-NIC.&lt;/q&gt; (RFC 812) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Privacy was not a significant concern at the time as the network was under single administrative control with fewer than 50 non-military computers attached to it.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Today, the WHOIS-accessible database is distributed and encompasses the registration details for second-level Internet domain names.  Each domain has one or more points of contacts: people or organizations who have authority over the domain. Currently, these points of contacts are public: anyone can lookup a domain name and view the names, addresses and phone numbers of the contact people and/or organizations.  As such, the database has been the subject of significant debate over its accuracy (updating obsolete or obviously bogus registration data) and privacy concerns (who should be permitted to view a registration, and under what circumstances?).  Follow-on protocols have been developed to provide richer semantics than WHOIS, e.g. the &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3982.txt"&gt;RFC 3982 "Domain Registry Type for the Internet Registry Information Service"&lt;/a&gt; protocol defines queries such as &lt;tt&gt;findDomainsByContact&lt;/tt&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  The &lt;a href="http://www.ncdnhc.org/"&gt;web site of the noncommercial users constituency&lt;/a&gt; (NCUC) of ICANN Generic Name Supporting Organization participating organizations has a mirror of a &lt;a href="http://www.ncdnhc.org/Whois-timeline.htm"&gt;WHOIS timeline&lt;/a&gt; prepared by  &lt;a href="http://www.internetgovernance.org/people-mueller.html"&gt;Dr. Milton Mueller&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://icannwiki.org/Mawaki_Chango"&gt;Mawaki Chango&lt;/a&gt; of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies.  The timeline covers from the first publication of the WHOIS protocol in &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0812.txt"&gt;RFC 812&lt;/a&gt; (March 1, 1982), to the &lt;a href="http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/8/22/3174023.html"&gt;contentious&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/icann-whois-wg-report-final-1-9.pdf"&gt;final outcomes report&lt;/a&gt; of the ICANN WHOIS Working Group 2007 (August 20, 2007), with links to relevant documents in the evolution of WHOIS-fronted data services. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 25 Aug 2007 03:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity research presentations at Hotsec: Horton, user-based attestation and opportunistic personas (20070823)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070823_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070823_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Identity research presentations at Hotsec: Horton, user-based attestation and opportunistic personas (20070823) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; One of the presentations at the recent &lt;a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/hotsec07/"&gt;2nd USENIX workshop on Hot topics in security (Hotsec 2007)&lt;/a&gt; was on &lt;a href="http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/horton/"&gt;Horton&lt;/a&gt;. Horton is a part of an &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-capability_model"&gt;object capability&lt;/a&gt; system and provides &lt;q&gt;identity-based tracking and control for delegating responsibility with authority&lt;/q&gt; (from the &lt;a href="http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/horton/paper/index.html"&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;). In the &lt;a href="http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/horton/horton-talk.pdf"&gt;presentation "Delegating Responsibility in Digital Systems: Horton's "Who Done It?""&lt;/a&gt;, Mark S. Miller (Google Research), Jed Donnelley (LBNL/NERSC) and Alan H. Karp (HP Labs) discuss scenarios in which pairs of &lt;q&gt;identity tunnels&lt;/q&gt; (e.g., Alice - Bob and Alice - Carol), can be used to build a new tunnel (Alice introduces Carol to Bob, so that Bob - Carol).  Carol might however believe that Bob is merely a pseudonym for Alice, and additional parties are used to disaggregate Bob and Alice (Dave has tunnels to Carol and to Bob, and from this Carol joins the "Bob" identity she heard from Alice with the "Bob" identity she heard from Dave). &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The paper "Turtles all the way down: research challenges in user-based attestation" by Jonathan M. McCune, Adrian Perrig, and Arvind Seshadri (CMU/CyLaB) and Leendert van Doorn (AMD) highlights a problem with the TCG remote attestation model.  A client system connects to a server system somewhere on the Internet.  The server can determine that the client is out of conformance (e.g., wrong software, malware present), but does not have a way of informing the client's user of this situation, since any such malware on the client could ignore the warning message from the server and display a "all OK, type in your password" message to fool the user.  The authors propose a hypothetical "iTurtle" device, such as USB fob, which the user plugs in to each of their client systems.  The iTurtle verifies the client system's configuration, displays the status of that system's verification to the user (e.g., a red LED lights for "bad"), and possibly could act as a boot disk to restore an infected client system to a known good state.) &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In &lt;a href="http://www.icir.org/mallman/papers/opp-personas-hotsec07.pdf"&gt;"The Strengths of Weaker Identities: Opportunistic Personas"&lt;/a&gt;, Mark Allman, Christian Kreibich, Vern Paxson, Robin Sommer, and Nicholas Weaver (ICSI) state that it is sometimes unnecessary (or inconvenient) to perform the ceremonies necessary for a 'full' establishment of a party's identity and trusted keys prior to communication with that party.  They use the term &lt;q&gt;opportunistic persona&lt;/q&gt; for situations in which the cryptographic keys are generated opportunistically and do not provide what is traditionally considered a "strong" form of identity.  They write &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;In addition to the opportunistic generation of personas, we also argue for the idea that user actions can often be interpreted as an implicit proxy for management of personas. Users tend to respond differently to legitimate versus unwanted activity. By observing user reactions, we can then in some cases infer the user's trust in particular personas. For example, user reactions could drive the construction of white- and black-lists... Certainly, in terms of achieving secure and sound systems, learning personas in an informal fashion is in principle not as desirable as manually exchanging and validating keys. However, in a number of contexts such validation has proven impractical: it is either beyond the ability of most users, or at least beyond their 'pain threshold' for the perceived benefits . Thus, we believe application and protocol developers will benefit if they broaden their thinking to consider weaker forms of identity may actually provide stronger practical security.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If a user's interpersonal software (e.g., email, conferencing) dynamically generates a key for signing outgoing messages to other users, over time, a user might promote these opportunistic personas of other users with whom they frequently communicate into the 'actual' identity of that user. &lt;/p&gt;  </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Anti-utopian social networking #2 (20070811)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070811_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070811_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Anti-utopian social networking #2 (20070811) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In an &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070730_01.shtml"&gt;earlier post on anti-utopian social networking&lt;/a&gt;, I outlined a scenario in which &lt;q&gt;An anti-utopian social networking site is a social networking site that has developed a flaw that "spoils" it, and one flaw could be the misapplication of undercover/viral marketing strategies&lt;/q&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Another problem which could be a flaw in social networking is &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality"&gt; &lt;i&gt;hyperreality&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a term used by the theorists &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard"&gt;Jean Baudrillard&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco"&gt;Umberto Eco&lt;/a&gt;.  One possible definition of hyperreal could be made in contrast to what is "real": &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;q&gt;The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction... The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal...which is entirely in simulation.&lt;/q&gt; (Jean Baudrillard) &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;1. Just because you're not a celebrity doesn't mean millions of people couldn't be watching your every move.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One impact is the sense an individual would have from &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon"&gt;"always being viewed"&lt;/a&gt;.  In part, social networking services give anyone with Internet connectivity the ability to share minutae of their life with others, regardless of boundaries of time or distance.  Everyone is encouraged to self-publish: blog their life, update their status on Twitter, write about their feelings in specialized feeling-recording Facebook or MySpace apps, upload their family photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube. Not only do people enjoy uploading, people enjoy watching.  Without LiveJournal/Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/MySpace/YouTube, would those same authors write in their diaries, show their snapshots to friends at parties, etc?  To some, the magnification available from publishing to these services must offer an appeal, but with it often comes a cost to the participants: both the authors, and the viewers searching for the "real" in self-generated content.  Jean Baudrillard wrote in the section "The End of the Panopticon" of &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ee.sun.ac.za/~hgibson/docs/html/Simulacra-and-Simulation.html"&gt;Simulations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, concerning a TV documentary capturing an "actual typical American family": &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "It is again to this ideology of the lived experience, of exhumation, of the real in its fundamental banality, in its radical authenticity, that the American TV-verite experiment on the Loud family in 1971 refers: 7 months of uninterrupted shooting. 300 hours of direct non-stop broadcasting, without script or scenario, the odyssey of a family, its dramas, its joys, ups and downs - in brief, a "raw" historical document, and the "best thing ever on television, comparable, at the level of our daily existence, to the film of the lunar landing." Things are complicated by the fact that this family came apart during the shooting: a crisis flared up, the Louds went their separate ways, etc. Whence that insoluble controversy: was TV responsible? What would have happened &lt;i&gt;if TV hadn't been there&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; More interesting is the phantasm of filming the Louds &lt;i&gt;as if TV wasn't there&lt;/i&gt;. The producer's trump card was to say: "They lived as if we weren't there". An absurd, paradoxical formula - neither true, nor false: but utopian. The "as if we weren't there" is equivalent to "as if you were there". It is this utopia, this paradox that fascinated 20 million viewers, much more than the "perverse" pleasure of prying. In this "truth" experiment, it is neither a question of secrecy nor of perversion, but of a kind of thrill of the real, or of an aesthetics of the hyperreal, a thrill of vertiginous and phony exactitude, a thrill of alienation and of magnification, of distortion in scale, of excessive transparency all at the same time..." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The popularity of these social networking services gives millions of people around the world the ability to simultaneously 'drop in' on any randomly-chosen individual in a way that never would be physically possible before. The &lt;a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6187554.stm"&gt;BBC reports&lt;/a&gt; that footage of a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_kid"&gt;teenage kid swinging a golf ball retriever&lt;/a&gt;, not intended to be shown to anyone, has been viewed 900 million times, making the victim a "worldwide object of ridicule": &lt;q&gt;It was simply unbearable, totally. It was impossible to attend class&lt;/q&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;As people are &lt;i&gt;objects&lt;/i&gt; in social networking services, these services are designed to make it easy for the users to find other people they know, and learn more about them.  &lt;a href="http://ceppi.blogs.com/"&gt;Chris Ceppi&lt;/a&gt; writes about the people search engine &lt;a href="http://ceppi.blogs.com/arbitrage/2007/07/spock-and-the-n.html"&gt;Spock and the New New Transparency&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Spock automates the retrieval of those bits - if your age is published on LinkedIn, MySpace, a random online bio, or any other number of sources that Spock sorts and surfaces - then it will be front and center on Spock.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Also, many social networking sites encourage users to add comments about each other.  Gossiping is a natural human activity, that now is magnified through technology to allow the gossip to be available on a vast scale.  As a result, individuals find that they are not in control of their story as commentary aggregates and swirls around and about them.  Pamela Dingle wrote in her blog post &lt;a href="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/the-dating-mashup-or-my-facebook-adventure/"&gt;"The Dating Mashup (or my Facebook Adventure)"&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Why wouldn't someone from some other part of my life or history cruise through and add his own dating history into that photo thread? Heck, maybe my husband will chime in, he's on Facebook too. If there was enough interest, I do believe that an entire timeline could be constructed, and what could I do? I could scream and freak out and have the photo removed I'm sure. But such anti-social behaviour would become the object of discussion in turn. When you protest, people assume you are afraid of something :). Taken separately, nobody's dating history is secret - but peer-to-peer publishing of cumulative results makes me feel vulnerable to the same phenomena occurring around some other, less innocent set of facts.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Bob Blakley has discussed this in his blog post &lt;a href="http://notabob.blogspot.com/2006/01/on-absurdity-of-owning-ones-identity.html"&gt;"On the Absurity of Owning One's Identity"&lt;/a&gt;, and the fear of computer systems and organizations conspiring behind one's back is based on real concerns, as shown in an article earlier this year by &lt;a href="http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Commentary/Experts/Weston/Liz_Pulliam_Weston.aspx"&gt;Liz Pulliam Weston&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href="http://moneycentral.msn.com/"&gt;MSN Money&lt;/a&gt; entitled &lt;a href="http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourHome/InsurersKeepASecretHistoryOfYourHome.aspx"&gt;"Insurers keep a secret history of your home"&lt;/a&gt; discusses the ChoicePoint Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) database:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Jan and Kevin Garder of Bremerton, Wash., discovered this the hard way. The Garders thought they were doing the right thing when they told their insurance company, State Farm, about some minor water damage caused by a rainstorm last year.  The couple, who say they had been with their insurer for 30 years without filing a claim, ultimately decided not to file one this time, either.  That didn't stop State Farm from dropping them as customers, they say. Not only that, but they say State Farm also shared the damage information with the CLUE database. When the Garders applied for coverage elsewhere, the other insurers cited State Farm's damage report as the reason they wouldn't write a policy, Jan Garder said.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Here, as the information flow paths in social networking services are based on one's "friends", "coworkers" and other more nebulous relationships, &lt;i&gt;&lt;q&gt;this time, it's personal&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Thus one flaw of social networking might be that it provides anyone with  the ability to drill into the details (facts, opinions, speculations, connections real or implied) of another's life, and to the target, the sense that this could occur at any time and come from anywhere.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The former, taken to extremes, can be anti-social behavior.  It is not necessary to know everything about a person to be their friend/coworker/neighbor, and conversely knowing everything of a person's biography does not make them one's friend, as I &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070731_01.shtml"&gt;mentioned in the example of &lt;i&gt;the King of Comedy&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070731_kc.jpg" width="498" height="196" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;2. The Replica replacing the real&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The second flaw might be that the unreal world of online interaction might come to affect real-world interaction.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Internet users are conditions to not accept certain people as real.  There are not hundreds of rich widows in Nigeria seeking help in moving their fortunes; it is a variant of the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner"&gt;Spanish prisoner&lt;/a&gt; scam:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Fellow says him and his sister, wealthy refugees, left a fortune in the home country. He got out, girl and the money stuck in Spain. Here is her most beautiful portrait. And he needs money to get her and the fortune out. Man who supplies the money gets the fortune and the girl. Oldest con in the world. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;On the face of it, as Pamela Dingle noted in &lt;a href="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/breaking-the-tos-before-you-even-start/"&gt;"Breaking the TOS before you even start"&lt;/a&gt;, the terms of service of various social networking sites require the user to provide 'true' information.  Some sites would delete "fake" profiles for non-real persons, as a &lt;a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/2003-08-13/news/attack-of-the-smartasses/"&gt;2003 article in SF Weekly&lt;/a&gt; states  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Jonathan Abrams, the 33-year-old software engineer who founded Friendster to improve his own social life ... abhors the phony profiles. He believes they diminish his site's worth as a networking tool and claims that fakesters' pictures -- often images ripped off the Web -- violate trademark law. Abrams' 10-person Sunnyvale company has begun ruthlessly deleting fakesters and plans to eventually eradicate them completely from the site.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Yet if there is commercial value in having certain "non-person" characters present, then those are allowed, as a &lt;a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/07/64156"&gt;2004 article in Wired&lt;/a&gt; states &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"What Friendster is doing with these movie-character profiles is actually a brand-new paradigm in media promotion," Friendster spokeswoman Lisa Kopp said. "We are working directly with a number of production houses and movie studio partners to create film-character profiles, or 'fan' profiles, that allow our users to share their enthusiasm about the film with their friends." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Social networking services can further be subverted with characters that have no existence outside of the services themselves. An Internet celebrity may not necessarily be a "real" person or even a "real" (pre-existing) character, as in the example of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15"&gt;lonelygirl15&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;To further the initial illusion that Bree was a real girl, a MySpace page was set up for her and she began meaningfully corresponding with many of her fans. Several fans of lonelygirl15's video posts began to wonder if Bree was, in fact, a real person or if the posts were part of a teaser campaign for a television show or an upcoming movie (similar to the viral marketing used to hype &lt;i&gt;The Blair Witch Project&lt;/i&gt;). Others felt that the blog might be part of an alternate reality game.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;If all one sees are replicas, does it become harder to recognize the real? For an extreme example, in the movie &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/"&gt;Galaxy Quest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, an alien civilization, the Thermians, has intercepted Earth's TV transmissions from the 1960-1970s. Yet their mental models are different and they do not 'get' that the television shows are sometimes fictional.  They believe &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilligan_%28fictional_character%29"&gt;Gilligan&lt;/a&gt;, the Skipper, "and the rest" really were stranded on an island. They also believe that the episodes they receive of the sci-fi show "Galaxy Quest" were "historical documents" describing the adventures in space of the crew of the NSEA Protector, a thinly-veiled &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Enterprise"&gt;Starship Enterprise&lt;/a&gt;.  Using their advanced technology, the Thermians transport the actor Jason Nesmith, who portrayed the captain of the Protector, to an actual interstellar spaceship they have constructed with the appearance of the Protector from these "historical documents". Jason Nesmith, having of course never seen an actual spaceship, doesn't recognize it as being 'real', believing it to be only a fan's reconstruction:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070811_i1.jpg" width="380" height="246" alt="bridge of the spaceship" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;This is great. Usually it's just cardboard walls in a garage.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/center&gt;   &lt;p&gt;The second impact of social networking is that 'unreal' statements made on the Internet about interpersonal relationships might replace the 'real' statements: the vocabulary of the software becomes a "Newspeak" that reframes the participants' expressions.  Suppose the term &lt;tt&gt;friend&lt;/tt&gt; is used to mean any connection: people who are interested in me, people who have a pretty picture on their home page, people who I was at the same school at, people whose friends I know, etc.  Can changes such as these affect people's behavior?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  In an article in last month's &lt;a href="http://www.newscientist.com/"&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href="http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19526136.300-the-rise-of-cyberbullying.html"&gt;"The rise of cyberbullying"&lt;/a&gt; several contributing factors are cited, including the typical scapegoat of anonymity, the magnification of attacks from the wide distribution possible online, the 24x7 connected lifecycle of the participants, and &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;The lack of face-to-face contact might tempt bullies to new levels of cruelty. "On the playground, seeing the stress and pain of the victim face-to-face can act as an inhibitor to some degree," explains Carr. "In cyberspace, where there is no visual contact, you get more extreme behaviour." Kowalski says the effect is unique to computer-mediated communication. "There is a distancing of the self and immediacy in response that we don't have in any other form of communication," she says. "On the computer, it's like it's not really you."&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Furthermore, unlike traditional online games (e.g., &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethack"&gt;Nethack&lt;/a&gt;) where people play behind personas defined by the game, game-like interactions embedded in social networking services have such no layer of isolation: the players are playing "as themselves".   &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The article also notes that 2000 abuse reports are filed each day in Second Life, and that  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;"It's adults hassling other adults," says Thomas Chesney of the University of Nottingham, UK, who has encountered pushing, swearing and shooting there.  Chesney and colleagues recently set up an office in Second Life where they interviewed more than 100 inhabitants about bullying. Chesney says that because many people come to Second Life with a background in gaming, they bring preconceived notions of violence and aggression with them. "They're playing games like World of Warcraft - where the aim is to kill everybody - and they take that attitude into Second Life," he says. "It's a bit depressing that we haven't progressed beyond hassling one other, but not surprising given all we know about workplace bullying."&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 11 Aug 2007 23:20:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Report on the state of the art in software security assurance (20070810)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Report on the state of the art in software security assurance (20070810) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The US Dept. of Defense Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center and the Data and Analysis Center for Software have jointly released  &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://iac.dtic.mil/iatac/download/security.pdf"&gt;Software Security Assurance Start-of-the-Art Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;.  This report is a 400-page PDF document which includes &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;an introduction to software threats and vulnerabilities,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;secure systems engineering,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;security concerns at each stage of the software development lifecycle and a comparison of the security enhanced methodologies,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a survey of software assurance initiatives, organizations and other resources, and&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a list of observations on the general problem of security assurance and current research efforts.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>"My" Story: biography in social networking services (20070810)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  "My" Story: biography in social networking services (20070810) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;span about="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/about/" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"&gt;Pamela Dingle (who blogs at &lt;a href="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/" rel="foaf:weblog" &gt;Adventures of an Eternal Optimist&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/span&gt; writes in &lt;a href="http://eternaloptimist.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/the-dating-mashup-or-my-facebook-adventure/"&gt;"The Dating Mashup (or my Facebook Adventure)"&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;...I see that a photo has been 'tagged' as being of me....When my friend posted that picture, only those in his network saw it - generally speaking, those that were interested were all a member of &lt;b&gt;one&lt;/b&gt; of my circles of acquaintance. No problem - until I join Facebook, and link all of my various circles TOGETHER. Suddenly, a photo &amp;amp; conversation intended for one circle is accessible to another. Yes, I can 'limit' what people see - but would I have the foresight, tools, and memory to figure out all the ways in which I really don’t want past circles to intersect in the future? What about current circles? What about friends who span the circles? I am suddenly the hub, and all my different spheres are the spokes, and those spokes are suddenly connected through me in a tangible, interesting, and researchable way. You may not need to be a direct friend; sharing a friend, a group, or a network may suffice as well (depending on whose account 'houses' what discussion, and who you and your friends open your accounts up to).&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;span about="http://www.blogger.com/profile/08489111023182783403" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"&gt;Paul Madsen (who blogs at &lt;a href="http://connectid.blogspot.com/" rel="foaf:weblog" &gt;ConnectID&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/span&gt; writes in &lt;a href="http://connectid.blogspot.com/2007/08/eclectic-avenue.html"&gt;"Eclectic Avenue"&lt;/a&gt; on someone whose profile he was reading on LinkedIn: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;For instance, if the user's play list showed they listened to Bjork's Greatest Hits, followed by Debussy, I might start to believe that their taste was indeed eclectic. Bad, but eclectic nevertheless.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This seems an unfair characterization, given the portrayal of &lt;i&gt;identity management&lt;/i&gt; in at least one of the Greatest Hits: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  The Icelandic poet &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sj%C3%B3n"&gt;Sj&amp;#xf3;n&lt;/a&gt; wrote the lyrics for the song &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelorette_%28song%29"&gt;"Bachelorette"&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rk"&gt;Bj&amp;#xf6;rk Gu&amp;#xf0;mundsd&amp;#xf3;ttir&lt;/a&gt;.  An excerpt of the &lt;a href="http://unit.bjork.com/specials/gh/SUB-05/index.htm"&gt;story in the song&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;table border="0"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;p&gt;"One day I happened upon a big book buried deep in the ground. I had been walking through the forest, searching for mandrake and the rare mushroom of everlasting love. Few books find their way to my part of the world so I picked it up and dusted the earth of its massive cover. From beneath the dirt appeared a faded photograph of a young woman.  The young woman was I.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; Despite the alarming fact that my own image was on the cover, I clung to the hope that the book contained a tale of a knight in shining armour and a fair lady waiting to be rescued from a blackhearted ogre. I tried to picture myself on a dark winter's night, sitting in front of the fire, immersed in an ancient adventure.  I opened the book, trembling with fear and excitement. The pages were blank.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i1.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;p&gt;I was about to cry out in a mixture of disappointment and relief when my gaze touched the paper where one would expect to find the first paragraph. To my surprise the book had started writing itself - as if by magick:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;&lt;tt&gt;One day when I was walking through the forest, searching for mandrake and the rare mushroom of everlasting love, I happened upon a big book buried deep in the ground.&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i2.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; &lt;p&gt;What it wrote was what I was doing there and then. It seemed to follow my every move. &lt;q&gt;Well,&lt;/q&gt; I thought, &lt;q&gt;it's an automatic diary. I guess that means it's up to me to create the story as I go on living.&lt;/q&gt; Deep down the thought saddened me. Who would ever want to go through page after page about someone like me? My life was so simple it would never make for a good read. But then a new sentence appeared: &lt;q&gt;&lt;tt&gt;I had to leave the forest.&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And another one: &lt;q&gt;&lt;tt&gt;I realised the book was not merely recounting what I did, it was telling me what I should do. It was time I left my house and started exploring the world.&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/q&gt; I did exactly what the book told me to and the forest opened up to me like never before. It put on a great show of colours, movement and sounds - as if it wished to make sure it stayed rooted in my memory in all its dazzling beauty. Now, I was ready to leave." &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i3.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Once in the city, the book "My Story" sends her to a publisher; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="0"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;the book is published and becomes a bestseller;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;it's turned into a performance,&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i4.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i5.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;but the media frenzy (captured in the text itself) &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;causes the story to unravel.&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i7.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070810_i6.jpg" width="352" height="240" /&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Images in identity protocols (20070809)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070809_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070809_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Images in identity protocols (20070809) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;span about="http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/about/resume" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"&gt;Barbara Ballard (who blogs at &lt;a href="http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/" rel="foaf:weblog" &gt;little springs design&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;)  writes in &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470033614?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=litsprdesinc-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0470033614"&gt;Designing the Mobile User Experience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ABooksources&amp;isbn=0470033614"&gt;0470033614&lt;/a&gt;, published in 2007 by Wiley) on "learning from &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_miniature"&gt;portrait miniatures&lt;/a&gt;": &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;"Portrait miniatures ... were the wallet photographs of the time; many of them were smaller than mobile phone screens.  Some were used as lids for tins; others were jewelry.  Some had frames, but many did not.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;A full-sized portrait of the time would include the full or half length of the body and typically some bit of personalization beyond clothes like a treasured object or a symbol of the subject's status.  Miniatures could not contain all this information.  Instead most depicted the bust only; any adornments were worn in the clothes or hair.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Full sized portraints were distant: the viewer is distant from the painting, and the artist adds a more formal distance in the composition.  Miniatures were intended to be held, sometimes close to the heart, so the artists painted the subject a bit more intimately...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;American miniature portraits serve a further inspiration: the second generation of such portraits were largely painted by amateur artists."  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;When a digital image is to be relayed from a source (e.g., a web site) to a destination device for display (e.g., a desktop computer or mobile phone), there are often situations in which the source has available to it a range of alternate images that are "the same picture", and furthermore the source may be possible to resize, transcode or otherwise manipulate an image before sending it in order to "adapt" it to the needs of the destination device. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In an identity management system, the source may be a directory that stores, in a record or entry for a person, links to multiple possible images of that person, in multiple formats or situations.  Only a subset of the information &lt;i&gt;about&lt;/i&gt; these images is captured, however, in existing identity schemas. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In LDAP directory schema,  the &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2798.txt"&gt;RFC 2798&lt;/a&gt; &lt;tt&gt;inetOrgPerson&lt;/tt&gt; object class of a person allows the attributes &lt;tt&gt;photo&lt;/tt&gt;, which is an ITU-T T.4 G3 fax with an ASN.1 wrapper (defined in &lt;a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1274#section-9.3.7"&gt;section 9.3.7 of RFC 1274&lt;/a&gt;) that is not widely used in enterprise directories, and &lt;tt&gt;jpegPhoto&lt;/tt&gt;, a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_File_Interchange_Format"&gt;JFIF&lt;/a&gt;-encoded JPEG image.  The &lt;a href="http://nedinfo.nih.gov/amgtech/docs/schema/current.html"&gt;draft NIH schema&lt;/a&gt; adds &lt;tt&gt;nihJpegPhotoDate&lt;/tt&gt;, the date the &lt;tt&gt;jpegPhoto&lt;/tt&gt; was taken, and &lt;tt&gt;thumbnailPhoto&lt;/tt&gt;, a small JPEG photo of the person.  Some limitations of these definitions are: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;There is no defined mechanism for supporting additional image formats besides fax or JPEG (e.g., adding PNG or SVG would require substantial changes beyond simply adding a decoder for that format to the destination.)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Any &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_01.shtml"&gt;metadata in the images&lt;/a&gt; is not exposed in the LDAP protocol: a client cannot request an image by size, color depth, etc.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;There are no relationships between images (there is not even an equality matching rule defined for &lt;tt&gt;jpegPhoto&lt;/tt&gt;).  If a person has two values of &lt;tt&gt;jpegPhoto&lt;/tt&gt; and two values of &lt;tt&gt;thumbnailPhoto&lt;/tt&gt; in their entry, there is no way to relate one value of &lt;tt&gt;jpegPhoto&lt;/tt&gt; to one value of &lt;tt&gt;thumbnailPhoto&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/"&gt;FOAF specification&lt;/a&gt;,  the &lt;tt&gt;foaf:depiction&lt;/tt&gt; property provides a link from any resource to an image of that resource.  A subproperty &lt;tt&gt;foaf:img&lt;/tt&gt; links a &lt;tt&gt;foaf:Person&lt;/tt&gt; to an image of that person. The &lt;tt&gt;foaf:thumbnail&lt;/tt&gt; property of an image links to another version of that image. In RDFa one might state&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;div about="#me" class="foaf:Person"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;img rel="foaf:img" src="my-picture.jpg" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;However, while it is possible to extract the &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_01.shtml"&gt;metadata from an image&lt;/a&gt; and transform it into RDF statements about the image, this is not commonly done today.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt; SXIP has put in the OpenID &lt;a href="http://www.axschema.org/types/"&gt;AX schema registry&lt;/a&gt; attributes that link to images of a person. The attributes specify the &lt;tt&gt;default&lt;/tt&gt; image, images with aspect ratios of 1:1, 4:3 and 3:4, and an image that is a &lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/howto-favicon"&gt;"favicon"&lt;/a&gt; (a 16x16 or 32x32 pixel image in either 8 or 24 bit depth with either a PNG, GIF or ICO encoding). &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Future identity protocols and data formats should permit the negotiation of a selection of images from a set of possible images, based on a wider range of factors, including: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;the capabilities of the device presenting the image&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;It should be possible in the protocol for the recipient device to express its constraints, such as its supported image encodings (e.g., &lt;i&gt;prefers PNG, accepts GIF or JPEG, doesn't support SVG&lt;/i&gt;), the maximum image area, supported aspect ratios, color depths, &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_color_spaces_and_their_uses"&gt;supported color spaces&lt;/a&gt; (e.g., &lt;i&gt;prefers Adobe RGB, supports sRGB&lt;/i&gt;), etc. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;the capabilities of the viewer of the image&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Does the person viewing the image use a magnifier, have &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blind"&gt;color blindness&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_vision"&gt;low vision&lt;/a&gt;, or the ability to perceive colors outside of the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space"&gt;'normal' range&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;the context of the image in the layout of the application&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt; How will the image be used in the application? For example, a display of "people we like" might wish to make transparent the blank space around a person's head, as in the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_images_on_the_cover_of_Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band"&gt;famous picture&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070809_i1.jpg" height="109" width="286" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;context of the image in the culture of the viewer&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt;What expectations does the person viewing the image have?  If there are captions or text balloons in the image, what language are they in? Would the image be offensive or generally inappropriate to someone based on their cultural context?  (For example, in MacOS the Page setup Options dialog illustrated paper orientation with a picture of a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow"&gt;dogcow&lt;/a&gt;, except in Arabic systems, which illustrated the paper orientation with a picture of a horse.)&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;social context of the image and the application&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A picture taken in one context may be inappropriate in another. Not only should the image include its context, but also the requesting destination. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; An actor might wish their 'default' picture to be a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_shot"&gt;head shot&lt;/a&gt; that is carefully constructed and posed.  A system which arbitrarily resizes or adapts this image might give the wrong proportions or tones, and in this case, the actor might prefer the system not send any image if the fidelity cannot be preserved.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; In a system in which mobile phones display a thumbnail picture of the person calling, a participant might wish to have a picture of themselves with a serious expression be sent with a call to a stranger or a business partner, and use a lighter expression be displayed in calls to friends or intimates.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; The articles &lt;a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0426072pirate1.html"&gt;"College sued over drunken pirate sanctions"&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2029"&gt;"A MySpace Photo Costs a Student a Teaching Certificate"&lt;/a&gt; mention a lawsuit by a 27 year old student whose MySpace page showed her drinking from a cup at a costume party: &lt;q&gt;A university official told her that the photo was "unprofessional" and could have offended her students if they accessed her MySpace page.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;    &lt;!-- ==wats 35 1pm sat   --&gt; </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu,  9 Aug 2007 18:50:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity Selection at the Data Link (20070808)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070808_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070808_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Identity Selection at the Data Link (20070808) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/eap-charter.html"&gt;IETF EAP WG&lt;/a&gt; Internet Draft   &lt;a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/draft-ietf-eap-netsel-problem/?"&gt;"Network Discovery and Selection Problem"&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-eap-netsel-problem-08.txt"&gt;last updated in June 2007&lt;/a&gt;) discusses the increasingly common situations in which users &lt;q&gt;encounter networks for which no preconfigured settings are available, yet which offer desired services and the ability to successfully authenticate with the user's home realm&lt;/q&gt;.  The document discusses the sub-problems of this problem, including "identifier selection" (section 2.2):&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Typically, the user will choose an identity and corresponding  credential set based on the selected network, perhaps with additional  assistance provided by the chosen authentication mechanism.  For  example, if Extensible Authentication Protocol - Transport Layer  Security (EAP-TLS) is the authentication mechanism used with a  particular network, then the user will select the appropriate EAP-TLS  client certificate based in part on the list of trust anchors  provided by the EAP-TLS server.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;However, in access networks where roaming is enabled, the mapping    between an access network and an identity/credential set may not be    one to one.  For example, it is possible for multiple identities to    be usable on an access network or for a given identity to be usable    on a single access network, which may or may not be available.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The 3GPP has been investigating this issue, and published "Identity Selection Hints for the Extensible Authentication Protocol" (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4284.txt"&gt;RFC 4284 of January 2006&lt;/a&gt;). Identity hints are provided in the EAP-Request/Identity.  Some of the limitations of this approach are: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;The hints are NAI realm names (from &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4282.txt"&gt;RFC 4282&lt;/a&gt; of December 2005), which have a limited character range (&lt;tt&gt;[A-Za-z0-9]&lt;/tt&gt;).&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The hints are carried within a display string.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;"Hello!\0NAIRealms=example.com;example.org"&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;As the hints are embeddeded in the EAP-Request, it arrives 'too late' to help the supplicant determine which network to attach to.  If there are multiple wireless networks, a supplicant might need to try each one in turn to find out what realms are supported.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;If each hint is 20 octets long, at most 50 roaming partners can be advertised before the EAP MTU is reached.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Other approaches to address this include:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt;  &lt;li&gt;The "XML DTD for Roaming Access Phone Book" (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3017.txt"&gt;RFC 3017&lt;/a&gt; of December 2000) defines a syntax for representing a set of Points of Presence (POPs) for Internet connectivity, including name and contact informations of providers, user name prefixes and suffixes, etc.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Defining a mapping between network names and realm names for data link protocols which advertise network names.  For example, the client may have a convention that networks with the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSID"&gt;SSID&lt;/a&gt; "tmobile" should use the T-Mobile credentials set.  This doesn't work for IEEE 802.1X EAP on wired Ethernet networks, however, as wired networks don't advertise a SSID. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;The "Certificate Extensions and Attributes Supporting Authentication in PPP and WLAN" (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4334.txt"&gt;RFC 4334 of February 2006&lt;/a&gt;) has a WLAN SSID extension for a usage hint for client certificates. The extension contains a list of SSIDs that &lt;q&gt;MAY be used to select the correct certificate for authentication in a particular WLAN&lt;/q&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;The Candidate Access Router Discovery (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4066.txt"&gt;Experiemental RFC 4066 of July 2005&lt;/a&gt;) enables a mobile node to discover the capabilities of an access router.  The PDUs are carried between a router and a node via ICMP. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; The Device Discovery Protocol &lt;a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-marques-ddp-00"&gt;(&lt;tt&gt;draft-maques-ddp-00&lt;/tt&gt; of May 2003)&lt;/a&gt; allows devices to announce themselves by sending link-level multicasts of SNMP variable bindings. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;IEEE 802.11u (interworking with external networks) &lt;q&gt;includes a mechanism for enabling a station to determine the identities it can use to authenticate to an access network, prior to associating with that network&lt;/q&gt;, and is working on a "Generic Advertisement Service". &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;IEEE 802.21 (handover) is developing a mechanism for capability advertisement. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ohba-802dot21-basic-schema-00"&gt;IEEE 802.21 basic schema&lt;/a&gt; defines an RDF schema (ontology) for networks, operators and access points. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;However these and future approaches will continue to be constrained by limitations from the underlying wired and wireless Ethernet specifications, such as &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;There are scaling issues with IEEE 802.11[a/b/g] beacons with a practical limit  of 50 advertised networks, and less than 20 when 802.11b is used, constraining the number of "virtual access points" which can be present. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Neither IEEE 802.1ab (Station and MAC Connectivity Discovery) nor 802.1af (Authenticated Key Agreement for MAC Security), currently in draft form, are &lt;q&gt;likely to support fragmentation of network advertisement frames&lt;/q&gt;. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;EAP-based mechanisms can only be used after the client is associated to the access point. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed,  8 Aug 2007 23:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Evolving the Category of Identifiers: Iceland in 1997-1998 (20070807)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070807_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070807_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt;  Evolving the Category of Identifiers: Iceland in 1997-1998 (20070807) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070807_01.shtml"&gt;an earlier post&lt;/a&gt; I mentioned the attempt by &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decode_Genetics"&gt;deCODE Genetics&lt;/a&gt; to build databases of genetic data of Icelanders, which is discussed in &lt;a href="http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/issue2/iceland.asp"&gt;"An analysis of the Icelandic Supreme Court judgement on the Health Sector Database Act"&lt;/a&gt; by Dr. Renate Gertz, Research Fellow, ahrc Centre, School of Law, University of Edinburgh. Sections 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 of that document discuss how interpretations of European personal data protection issues affected the drafting of legislation.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The resulting Iceland Ministry of Health and Social Security &lt;a href="http://eng.heilbrigdisraduneyti.is/laws-and-regulations/nr/659"&gt;Act on a Health Sector Database&lt;/a&gt; of 1998 defines in the context of &lt;i&gt;personal data&lt;/i&gt; that    &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;An individual shall be counted as personally identifiable if he can be identified, directly or indirectly, especially by reference to an identity number, or one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   &lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/"&gt;Ross Anderson of Cambridge University&lt;/a&gt; wrote in his analysis of &lt;a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/iceland.pdf"&gt;"the DeCODE Proposal for an Icelandic Health Database"&lt;/a&gt; that pseudonyms in themselves did not give adequate protection:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Firstly, although it is not too difficult to de-identify data that provide only a time-limited snapshot of a population's health - such as the data which health services use to compile monthly management statistics of numbers of operations, consumption of drugs and the like - it is effectively impossible to de-identify longitudonal records, that is, records which link together all (or even many) of the health care encounters in a patient's life. Someone wishing to abuse the database to investigate a business or political rival, for example, is likely to know some facts about the target of investigation (that he broke his ankle playing football on the 14th October 1974, that he was absent from Iceland for 1978-1982 doing postgraduate work, and so on) and wish to know other facts (such as whether he has ever been treated for alcoholism or for psychiatric disorders). In many cases, the known facts will enable the target patient to be identified despite the use of a pseudonym in the database itself...&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue,  7 Aug 2007 18:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Four scenarios for end user consent and involvement (20070807)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070807_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070807_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Four scenarios for end user consent and involvement (20070807) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;1. Choicepoint and the offline user&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.identityblog.com/?page_id=360"&gt;Kim Cameron&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/"&gt;Microsoft brings up in a recent post on &lt;a href="http://www.identityblog.com/?p=849"&gt;"Linkage with CardSpace in Auditing Mode"&lt;/a&gt; the example of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoint#Major_security_breaches"&gt;the 2004 Choicepoint security breach&lt;/a&gt;.  He wrote &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;The identity thieves were a 'relying party', and ChoicePoint was the 'identity provider'.  The information was delivered using a backchannel connection with no users in the loop,  ChoicePoint had mechanisms in place to vet the legitimacy of the the thieves, but these were not sufficient...What if the participation of the data subjects were required for the transactions to complete?  This isn't so hard to imagine in the current period of wikipedia, Facebook and mass collaboration. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For online interaction (e.g., an individual applying for a credit card at a credit card issuing bank's web site) the InfoCard model might offer advantages; however, some of the difficulties of applying the InfoCard user interaction model to the more general ChoicePoint scenario are: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the end user might not have a pre-existing relationship to the identity provider, or might not be aware of which brokerage is involved in the transaction,   &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;non-digital scenarios, e.g., &lt;a href="http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/choicepoint/0523069complaint.pdf"&gt;the FTC complaint against ChoicePoint&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that one of the attackers was purporting to be an "apartment leasing subscriber", and it is rare in apartment leasing for the end user to have brought a trusted secure computing device with them to the apartment leasing office in order to rent an apartment, &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;batch and non-real-time interactions, e.g., the apartment complex runs its credit checks outside of normal business hours, or &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the user is hiding, e.g. &lt;a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8587-2005Mar4.html"&gt;an article in the Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; stated one of the ChoicePoint attackers claimed &lt;q&gt;he needed sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers to track down targets of his collection agency&lt;/q&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;2. Why can't the end user see the claims?&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/13527775445288176698"&gt;Eric Norman&lt;/a&gt; responded to Kim Cameron's post that &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Even if the IdP encrypts claims for the relying party, can the user inspect those claims for accuracy as they travel from IdP to RP? I.e. can the user also decrypt this traffic? After all, the user is entitled to see and verify what testimony is actually being provided by the IdP, Isn't he?&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Eric is highlighting that currently in the CardSpace implementation the claims travel from the identity provider to the relying party within a token that is encrypted with the public key of the relying party.  The identity selector doesn't hold the private key of the relying party, and so can't decrypt and view what is being said about them in this transaction.  CardSpace identity providers offer the identity selector an alternative "Display Token", which I describe in the post &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_01.shtml"&gt;"The current InfoCard display token"&lt;/a&gt;, which is not cryptographically tied to the encrypted token.  A concerned participant might wonder whether there would be scenarios in which the identity provider would be offering additional, conditional or contradictory information to the relying party than what it shows in the display token. As Eric suggests, it would be technically possible for the claims to be encrypted for &lt;b&gt;both&lt;/b&gt; the relying party and the identity selector (if the end user had a public key pair): this is similar to encrypting an email message for multiple recipients in the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_Message_Syntax"&gt;Internet secure message syntax&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;3. Consent for use of records in public health and research&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.biopattern.org/"&gt;BIOPATTERN&lt;/a&gt; is a European online health science project that plans  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;...to provide novel computational intelligent techniques for biopattern analysis and a pan-European integrated, intelligent analysis of an individual's bioprofile. Information from distributed databases will be made available, securely, over the Internet to provide on-line algorithms, libraries and processing facilities for such analysis.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.robertmatthews.org/"&gt;Robert Matthews&lt;/a&gt;, visiting reader in science at Aston University and a member of Biopattern's ethics working party, writes in opinion article appearing in this week's &lt;a href="http://www.newscientist.com/"&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href="http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19526155.800-comment-consent-is-crucial-to-medical-research.html"&gt;"Consent is crucial to medical research"&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;i&gt;requiring consent of the participants to have their data shared&lt;/i&gt; is being seen by portions of the medical and research community as unnecessary, a cost, or a hindrance to scientific research or public health management. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;It's true that demanding explicit consent has had dire consequences on databases designed to probe specific diseases. Medical registries in Canada, Australia and Germany have all been weakened by this requirement, with most patients deciding, for whatever reason, not to give consent. Demanding consent can also lead to subtle biases in databases since certain groups, often the poor, are less likely to agree. This can lead to misleading inferences about the links between sociological class, for example, and diseases such as cancer.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;He cites the example of the failure of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decode_Genetics"&gt;deCODE Genetics&lt;/a&gt; to have a set of three databases built, which would contain and index the genetic data of all Icelanders for exploitation in drug development.   This case is discussed further in &lt;a href="http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/issue2/iceland.asp"&gt;"An analysis of the Icelandic Supreme Court judgement on the Health Sector Database Act"&lt;/a&gt; by Dr. Renate Gertz, Research Fellow, ahrc Centre, School of Law, University of Edinburgh. Dr Gertz wrote that   &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Informed consent was to be required for the genetic samples that were to be taken from the entire Icelandic population. However, in May 2000, the Icelandic Biobanks Act was adopted, a piece of legislation that could enable deCODE to negotiate access to clinical samples collected or archived at various institutions. This access would be without express consent of the original donors. If deCODE followed up on this, the company's assurance to secure informed consent from citizens donating samples would not be adhered to. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Dr. Gertz continues that  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;...instead of informing the population of Iceland about the Health Sector Database and all that it encompasses, and subsequently asking the citizens for consent to have their medical records entered into the database and to link this database with the genealogical and the genetic database, the Icelandic government adopted national legislation containing the provision of presumed consent. The justification provided by the Icelandic government for this use of presumed instead of informed consent is that the information is supposed to be non-identifiable and that Icelanders can opt out. Furthermore, the technophile character of the Icelandic population was mentioned and the assumption that people would act in the interest of the community.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; A similar situation occured in a &lt;a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1035686.stm"&gt;2000 exclusive licensing relationship&lt;/a&gt; between the bioresearch company Autogen Ltd of Australia and the Government of Tonga. A 2002 article in the British Medical Journal &lt;a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7335/443/a"&gt;"Proposed genetic database on Tongans opposed"&lt;/a&gt; quotes Lopeti Senituli, the Director of the Tonga Human Rights and Democracy Movement:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt; Autogen's statement on ethics emphasised prior informed consent of individual volunteers but remained mute on the traditional Tongan role of the extended family in decision making. "We want to also add the prior informed consent of the extended family . . . because what we are talking about is not only the genetic information from that one individual but the genetic material from that extended family," Mr Senituli said.  &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Mr. Matthews highlights the disconnect in position statements from UK organizations about when consent for use of health data should be necessary.  In particular, he writes that &lt;q&gt;In 2005, a poll conducted by the British Medical Association found that 77 per cent of people in the UK believe their explicit consent should be required even for the basic act of storing their health records on a national computer network&lt;/q&gt;, and contrasts this finding with a seemingly contradictory 2006 report "Personal data for the public good: using health information in medical research" by the &lt;a href="http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk"&gt;UK Academy of Medical Sciences&lt;/a&gt;, which suggested an "undue emphasis" on privacy and consent was a real cost to research organizations.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The Academy summarized the consent issues raised in their report as follows: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;Policies that emphasise choice within health care, as within other aspects of modern life, focus on the value of individual autonomy. However, an emphasis on autonomy presents difficulties for activities such as medical research, which are performed for public, rather than individual, benefit. It could be maintained that a patient has the right to say 'use my data to treat me, but not to improve care for others'. Or, more starkly, 'use evidence from other people's data to treat me, but don't use my data to help them'. Many commentators have challenged this view, with some ethicists going further in arguing that, given the importance of biomedical research, there is a positive moral obligation for individuals to participate in certain contexts.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;The Academy's report emphasised that research using personal health data has benefited the health of the public and greatly reduced the burden of disease. It also acknowledged that opportunities to use patient data to inform the design and evaluation of public health interventions are accompanied by important challenges concerning the individual's right to privacy, the sensitive nature of some health data and the importance of patients' trust in the confidentiality of their care. However, the report noted the absence of evidence about public and patient attitudes towards the use of health information in research, forcing regulatory and advisory bodies to make assumptions about what the public might and might not find acceptable. We strongly believe that, in this and other areas, policies should be informed by better research and empirical evidence on public attitudes and awareness.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;The Academy's report argued that an undue emphasis on privacy and autonomy has created a conservative culture of research governance, in which regulatory bodies promote a policy of 'consent or anonymise' with regard to health data. The report explains that measures conducted under this policy have real and substantial costs for research in terms of financial and time resources and may compromise the reliability and generalisablity of research results, so delaying or preventing the acquisition of knowledge necessary to understand, prevent and treat disease. It called for a proportional approach in which individual interests are balanced against the risks involved and the importance of the research in question. Several recommendations were made, including the development of good practice guidance for research using personal data and greater public engagement around the purpose and value of such research.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;4. End user expectations on data holders&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, in an August 1, 2007 story by Chris Hansen of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dateline_NBC"&gt;Dateline&lt;/a&gt; on MSNBC: &lt;a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20078671/"&gt;"Hot iPods: Is there a way to stop theves cold?" &lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;If you own an iPod, you already know that when you first buy it, you plug it into your computer and register it with Apple. Apple files the iPod's serial number and requests personal information like your name and address.  Then, each time you want to download or purchase a song online from iTunes, your computer communicates with a central database at Apple. If you buy a song, Apple requests credit card information.  And it's because of all that identifying information that some consumers are convinced iPods can be tracked if they're lost or stolen.  Since Apple is in the best position to track iPods, we called the company to see if it would work with us on a story that set out to answer whether a stolen iPod could be traced.  Apple declined.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Theoretically, this information &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; be used to identify the recipient of a stolen iPod.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Police like detective Kenney imagine a crime-fighting scenario like this: If this iPod was reported stolen, the real owner could supply his name, address and the serial number of the device to authorities or to Apple.  Then, if a thief tried connecting the stolen iPod, a central database could detect its serial number -- or other personal data embedded in that machine -- to immediately flag it as stolen. And if the thief supplied personal information when he tried buying songs from the iTunes database, or by answering other questions on-line, he could be located and arrested.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;To test this theory without the involvement of Apple, the Dateline staff left apparently new-in-box iPods out to be stolen.  These iPods were modified with a 'phishing attack' in their registration procedure: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;What [the person who is registering a stolen iPod] won't know is that when they click 'I Agree' on a licensing agreement that appears on-screen, they'll be consenting to provide some of the same kind of information they provide Apple to Dateline....The information ranges everything from first name, last name to mobile phone number, home phone number, home address ... what your MySpace handle is. All sorts of things.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In their experiment, they were able to trace 12 of 20 iPods they had stolen.  Some iPod owners felt that Apple &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be involved in tracking their stolen iPods, such as Alain Ferry who set up the &lt;tt&gt;stolenipods.com&lt;/tt&gt; site for discussion by other victims of iPod theft: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Hansen: Why should Apple be held accountable if somebody gets their iPod stolen?&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Ferry: Oh, I'm not saying that they should be held accountable. I just want them to do more than they're doing.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue,  7 Aug 2007 17:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Expressing facts in RDF N-notation (20070806)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Expressing facts in RDF N-notation (20070806) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;span about="http://xri.net/=kermit" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"&gt;Kermit Snelson writes in &lt;a href="http://subjectivity.com/blog/" rel="foaf:weblog"&gt;Subjectivity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; a request to &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;q&gt;Post these rules before you give your facts.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;List eight random facts about yourself.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;At the end of your post, choose eight people and list their names, linking to them.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they've been tagged.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; As an incorrect but simplifying assumption, I'll use web page URIs to refer to individuals. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;1. I have an OID assignment in the private enterprise tree.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This one should be straightforward as RFC 3061 provides a URN namespace of object identifiers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#seeAlso&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.1466&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;h4&gt;2. My favorite drink is cider.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  The attribute "favoriteDrink" is defined in RFC 1274, which is updated by RFC 4524.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;http://www.ldap.com/1/schema/rfc4524.owl#AttributeType_0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.5&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;"cider"&amp;nbsp;.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;3. I do not teach math.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically, the first Google hit for my name is the web site of someone else.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#differentFrom&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;http://www.markwahl.com/&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;h4&gt;4. I once shook hands with President Clinton.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;There isn't an easy way to nail down a &lt;i&gt;time&lt;/i&gt; in RDF.  Ideally one could reference the object &lt;tt&gt;www.whitehouse.gov/president/&lt;/tt&gt;, except that it changes every few years (and at the time, not only did the page not exist, but the domain of the web site didn't exist in DNS.)   The closest might be &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;...#shookHandsWith&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;http://web.archive.org/web/19990429005552/www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OP/html/OP_Bio.html&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;5. In the past I've helped local theater groups with electronics/construction projects. &lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this would require an anonymous collection (a subset of the set "local theater groups"), which would be difficult to express as AFAIK there's no named RDF set that includes both current and no-longer-existing local theater groups.  The individual statements could be listed, such as  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;...#helpedWithSetAndPropConstructionOn&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;http://www.rudemechs.com/shows/history/requiem_03.htm&amp;gt;&amp;nbsp;.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;6. I've picked vacation locations from maps of in-flight magazines.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;How does one express in RDF a &lt;i&gt;subregion&lt;/i&gt; of an image? &lt;/p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_r6.gif" /&gt;   &lt;h4&gt;7. My wife and I name our children with names derived from names of characters of cult television shows.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This one would be needlessly verbose as three anonymous &lt;tt&gt;rdf:Bag&lt;/tt&gt;s (unordered sets) would be needed to encode "my wife and I", "children" and "characters of cult television shows".  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;8. I was a member of the UCL Bloomsbury Television at the same time that other people who later became famous were members of the colocated UCL FilmSoc.&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Not going to attempt this one. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; BTW, for the eight people, I have chosen: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="0"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;1.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2849.txt"&gt;Babs Jensen from the U-M Directory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt; &lt;q&gt;Babs is a big sailing fan, and travels extensively in search of perfect sailing conditions.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t1.gif" width="293" height="142" alt="DIT" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;2.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity%27s_Rainbow"&gt;Tyrone Slothrop from &lt;i&gt;Gravity's Rainbow&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt; &lt;q&gt;Tyrone Slothrop is an anagram for "Sloth or Entropy".&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t2.jpg" width="220" height="297" alt="V2 launch" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;3.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Smith"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;6079 SMITH W&lt;/tt&gt; from &lt;i&gt;1984&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;q&gt;...I have guided Eurasian rocket bombs to targets on Airstrip One by means of coded radio signals.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t3.jpg" width="200" height="131" alt="Winston Smith" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;4.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;The &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Six_%28The_Prisoner%29"&gt;Prisoner from &lt;i&gt;The Prisoner&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;q&gt;For instance, do you remember that time you arrived back from Singapore? Change of climate, feeling a bit shaky. You were sickening for a... cold. Sneezed yourself out of our camera. Deciding to take a vacation. Now, where can you go? Ireland? Bit too cold that time of the year. Paris! Maybe not. "What was that? Sounded like a click! Something in the mirror? Or was it over there? Yes - over there, too!"  You see, there's not much we don't know about you, but one likes to know everything.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t4.jpg" width="241" height="173" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;5.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_%28film%29"&gt;Agatha from &lt;i&gt;Minority Report&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;q&gt;In 2054, the six-year Precrime experiment was abandoned. All prisoners were unconditionally pardoned and released, though police departments kept watch on many of them for years to come. Agatha and the twins were transferred to an undisclosed location, a place where they could find relief from their gifts. A place where they could live out their lives in peace. &lt;/q&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t5.jpg" width="241" height="188" alt="Wooden sphere" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;6.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Monkeys"&gt;James Cole from &lt;i&gt;Twelve Monkeys&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;q&gt;They wanted identification.  I don't have any identification.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t6.jpg" width="243" height="135" alt="Camera sphere" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;   &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;7.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_%28novel%29"&gt;The land surveyor K from &lt;i&gt;The Castle&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;q&gt;K. listened intently. So the Castle had appointed him land surveyor. On one hand, this was unfavorable, for it showed that the Castle had all necessary information about him, had assessed the opposing forces, and was taking up the struggle with a smile. On the other hand, it was favorable, for it proved to his mind that they underestimated him and that he would enjoy greater freedom than he could have hoped for at the beginning.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t7.jpg" width="240" height="322" alt="Praha" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;8.&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://vue.org.uk/falls.htm"&gt;Individuals matching the pattern &lt;tt&gt;(sn=FALL*)&lt;/tt&gt; from &lt;i&gt;The Falls&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;q&gt;It was said that if the VUE had not happened, then Leasting Fallvo could have invented it.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070806_t8.jpg" width="243" height="156" alt="ten identities" /&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon,  6 Aug 2007 19:10:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Extensible Friendly Predicate Notation (20070804)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070804_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070804_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Extensible Friendly Predicate Notation (20070804) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;While it has seen some deployment in applications which can generate these link attributes, there are significant limitations of the &lt;a href="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"&gt;XFN 1.1 relationships meta data profile&lt;/a&gt; in attempting to categorize links.  (Base XHTML includes on the &lt;tt&gt;A&lt;/tt&gt; element a &lt;tt&gt;rel=&lt;/tt&gt; attribute whose values describe relationships between documents, and XFN adds &lt;tt&gt;rel=&lt;/tt&gt; values for describing relationships between people, e.g. &lt;tt&gt;&amp;lt;a rel="friend met" href="&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;tt&gt;"&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;tt&gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.) &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; The &lt;a href="http://gmpg.org/xfn/background"&gt;background on XFN&lt;/a&gt; states that deliberate design limitations included not providing attributes &lt;i&gt;about&lt;/i&gt; the &lt;i&gt;person&lt;/i&gt; that is the target of an XFN link, e.g., not providing their age or gender.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;However, one problem is that the target of the link is not always a most accurate representation of a person.  Instead, the target is often a person's blog, or a post on their blog, etc., an account that person has in a particular service, or a persona of that person.  None of these are "the person themself", and it is difficult to know what is meant by "coworker" to a blog post (if I say "coworker" to 5 blog posts, do I have 5 coworkers?).  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;To address this limitation, I have been considering an encoding notation that allows the person making the statement to make a clearer distinction between the different types of web-accessible resources that are related to a "person".&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This notation uses a subset of &lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/RDFa/syntax/"&gt;RDFa&lt;/a&gt; to describe a connection between &lt;b&gt;two&lt;/b&gt; links, a subject and an object, which permits separate statements to be made about relationships between two people and relationships between a person and a web resource.  The notation I am currently investigating is a simple pattern of a &lt;tt&gt;span&lt;/tt&gt; element with an &lt;tt&gt;about&lt;/tt&gt; attribute containing an &lt;tt&gt;a&lt;/tt&gt; element with a &lt;tt&gt;rel&lt;/tt&gt; attribute. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span about="&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;SPAN-URI&lt;/i&gt;&lt;tt&gt;"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a rel="&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;REL-LIST&lt;/i&gt;&lt;tt&gt;" href="&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;A-URI&lt;/i&gt;&lt;tt&gt;"&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;tt&gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An empty URI means "the document itself": whatever is the real-world object implied by the XHTML where this element is present (a URI can be given by the &lt;tt&gt;xml:base&lt;/tt&gt; attribute of the &lt;tt&gt;html&lt;/tt&gt; itself).  A non-empty URI can be the URI of a person's FOAF file, or an &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/15376"&gt;XRI&lt;/a&gt;, or anything else that is an identifier of the person. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;If the &lt;i&gt;SPAN-URI&lt;/i&gt; is empty (&lt;tt&gt;&amp;lt;span about=""&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;) or the &lt;tt&gt;span&lt;/tt&gt; is absent, then the subject of this statement is the document itself, similar to the XFN scenario. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;However, if the &lt;i&gt;SPAN-URI&lt;/i&gt; is not empty, then the &lt;i&gt;SPAN-URI&lt;/i&gt; is the subject of a statement, which can be different from that of the document itself. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;i&gt;REL-LIST&lt;/i&gt; is a set of CURIEs (as described in RDFa) of predicate URIs; the namespaces are typically defined at the top of the document. Examples of predicates are relations defined in the &lt;a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/"&gt;FOAF specification&lt;/a&gt;, such as &lt;tt&gt;foaf:holdsAccount&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;foaf:weblog&lt;/tt&gt;, to connect a &lt;i&gt;SPAN-URI&lt;/i&gt; of a person to a &lt;i&gt;A-URI&lt;/i&gt; of an account or a blog. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For example, if Alice uses an i-name &lt;tt&gt;=Alice&lt;/tt&gt; and Bob has an OpenID URI &lt;tt&gt;http://bob.example.com/&lt;/tt&gt; and a blog &lt;tt&gt;http://bob.example.com/blog/rss.xml&lt;/tt&gt;, Alice can write in her blog a post that "my friend Bob has a blog", using the &lt;tt&gt;foaf:knows&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;foaf:weblog&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;foaf:openid&lt;/tt&gt; predicates (and inventing an ontology namespace for XFN to say &lt;tt&gt;xfn;friend&lt;/tt&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" &lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:xfn="&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;namespace for an XFN ontology&lt;/i&gt;&lt;tt&gt;"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;link rel="xfn:me rdfs:seeAlso" href="xri://=alice"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span about="xri://=alice"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a rel="foaf:knows xfn:friend" href="http://bob.example.com/"&amp;gt;Bob&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span about="http://bob.example.com/"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a rel="foaf:openid" href="http://bob.example.com/"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a rel="foaf:weblog" href="http://bob.example.com/blog/rss.xml"&amp;gt;blogs&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; If Alice later found Bob's Flickr account, Alice could later mention  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span about="http://bob.example.com/"&amp;gt;Bob has pictures on &lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a rel="foaf:holdsAccount" href="http://www.flickr.com/bob"&amp;gt;Flickr&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Additional relationships could be defined, such as between a person and a blog post by that person.  This enables Alice to refer to  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span about="http://bob.example.com/"&amp;gt;Bob&amp;apos;s &lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a rel="xfpn:blogpost" href="http://bob.example.com/blog/post?id=3"&amp;gt;third post&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat,  4 Aug 2007 14:40:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>interpreting claims, assertions and opinions (20070802)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070802_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070802_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; interpreting claims, assertions and opinions (20070802) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://davekearns.com/"&gt;Dave Kearns&lt;/a&gt; writes in "&lt;a href="http://davekearns.com/?p=9"&gt;Social networking fatal flaw&lt;/a&gt;" on yet another social networking web site, one which focuses on its users providing recommendations to their friends. Dave Kearns questions the assumption made by this web site: that recommendations made by one's "friends" are more reliable.  In once sense that assumption is correct; actual, real-world, friends are unlikely to be &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tout"&gt;touting&lt;/a&gt;. However, some social networking services appear to subvert this goal, by making its users into marketing vehicles, as I observed in the recent post "&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070730_01.shtml"&gt;Anti-utopian social networking&lt;/a&gt;", or by tying friendship into fan clubs, as in "&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070731_01.shtml"&gt;A friend is someone who'll help you move...a profile&lt;/a&gt;", where presumably, as in the real world, celebrities are spokespeople for products and services, rather than recommending what they actually use. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Dave Kearns writes that  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;...I don't value my friends' opinions higher than strangers because they're intrinsically better. I value them because I understand my friends' likes and dislikes, prejudices and preferences. In other words, I can put my friends' recommendations in context - something I can't do with the opinion of a stranger.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Also, &lt;a href="http://notabob.blogspot.com/"&gt; Bob Blakley&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com"&gt;the Burton Group&lt;/a&gt; has &lt;a href="http://identityblog.burtongroup.com/bgidps/2007/08/recapping-the-c.html"&gt;posted a followup summary&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070628_01.shtml"&gt;OSIS user-centric technology demonstration&lt;/a&gt;, that includes a list of the issues found in attempting to establish interoperability between an identity provider and a relying party. Many of the issues arose around the lack of schema management for claims, and a lack of semantic definition for claims handling.  In particular, &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;q&gt;The semantics of an IDP issuing a claim are not clear; in particular it is not clear whether creation of a signed token containing a claim constitutes a statement by the IDP that it believes the claim is accurate.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu,  2 Aug 2007 20:51:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>A friend is someone who'll help you move...a profile (20070731)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070731_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070731_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; A friend is someone who'll help you move...a profile (20070731) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Dave Kearns writes in his blog post "&lt;a href="http://vquill.com/2007/07/dragging-me-kicking-and-screaming.html"&gt; Dragging me, kicking and screaming&lt;/a&gt;" that a user &lt;b&gt;Alice&lt;/b&gt; moving or copying her contact list, which includes a contact &lt;b&gt;Bob&lt;/b&gt;, from social network service X to social network service Y, may not be desirable from Bob's POV, as the "Alice &lt;-&gt; Bob" relationship which Bob signed up to in service X might not be what Bob wants as his description in service Y.  This might be due to factors such as &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;service Y gives relationships hosted there an undesirable connotation (Bob doesn't want to "be seen" in Y), &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;service Y not having the right "terms" to define a relationship (Alice and Bob are "coworkers" in X but Y only has "neighbors"), or &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;service Y not allowing the adequate degree of assymetry to relationships (e.g., Y might require relationships to be symmetric or transitive).&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;He writes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "Unfortunately, most social networking sites don't allow for this sort of "split view" of the relationship - they actually expect both parties to agree upon the degree of intimacy involved. While this mostly serves to lower the precision of the meaning of the relationship terms, it also means that anyone viewing your contacts will think the relationship is as you describe it. That can do a lot of damage to my reputation, another facet of my identity which I would prefer to enhance."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I am reminded of the 1983 movie &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085794/"&gt;The King of Comedy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, in which aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin (played by  &lt;a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000134/"&gt;Robert De Niro&lt;/a&gt;) imagines that he is a guest on a national TV show hosted by Jerry Langford (where Liza Minnelli is another guest)  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070731_kc.jpg" /&gt;  &lt;p&gt; and since he feels that  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;RupertPupkin FriendOf JerryLangford&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and friendship should be symmetric, then he believes that &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;JerryLangford ShouldBeFriendOf RupertPupkin&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;To a viewer of this movie, it is obvious that Rupert's friend beliefs are incorrect; Jerry won't put Rupert on his show. Rupert then enlists the help of another "fan" Masha to kidnap him.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;If these characters had accounts in one of today's typical social network site, a viewer would need additional information to go on.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Rupert Pupkin and Masha might list each other as friends:&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;Site&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Page&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Relation&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;To&lt;/th&gt; &lt;tbody /&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/masha&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/masha&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;And while one might expect to see the "true" assertion&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;Site&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Page&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Relation&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;To&lt;/th&gt; &lt;tbody /&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/lizaminelli&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;it is more likely that a page such as &lt;tt&gt;http://www.myspace.com/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt; page does not have the actual list of friends, but instead, like the real-world Britney Spears page, is a celebrity page that lists hundreds of thousands of people as "friends" who are self-asserted fans.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;Site&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Page&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Relation&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;To&lt;/th&gt; &lt;tbody /&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;...&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/masha&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;friend&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;...&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The compounding of self-asserted information and misleading statements is a hazardous tool, in part as it makes difficult automated processing of these statements. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A similar problem is faced in the design of any comprehensive ontology  of real-world information: there is no single, simple, consensus reality view, since "common sense" and "technical" interpretations of a statement may be different.  In one case, the &lt;a href="http://www.cyc.com/"&gt; Cyc ontology&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;...divides its knowledge base into smaller contexts called micro-theories which contain specialized information regarding specific areas (such as troop movement, physics, movies, etc.).  Belief revision is performed within micro-theories or within a small group of micro-theories that are working together, and the system is only concerned with maintaining consistency within that small group (as opposed to across the entire belief space).  For example:  in an everyday context, a table is solid, but within a physics context, it is mostly space  (between atoms).&lt;/q&gt; (from &lt;a href="http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg05912.html"&gt;an email from Graham Horn&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;And in the Semantic web, RDF currently doesn't give a way to identify or quote the RDF statements themselves. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For example, a FOAF page of Rupert Pupkin might state   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;Site&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Subject&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Predicate&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Object&lt;/th&gt; &lt;tbody /&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myclaimspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/#rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;foaf:friend&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/#masha&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myclaimspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/#rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;foaf:friend&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;myspace.com/jerrylangford&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A receiver of the above two statements might have difficulty in determining whether they are valid. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Who is making these statements?&lt;br /&gt;Is it &lt;tt&gt;myclaimspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;, or Rupert Pupkin? &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Who is allowed to make those statements?&lt;br /&gt;Can someone make arbitrary statements on &lt;tt&gt;myclaimspace.com&lt;/tt&gt;?  Can they choose their own subject? own predicate? own object? &lt;br /&gt;If Rupert Pupkin adds a statement &lt;tt&gt;nbc.com legalese:issuesContractTo /#rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;, who must validate it? The holder of &lt;tt&gt;nbc.com?&lt;/tt&gt; The creator of the predicate &lt;tt&gt;issuesContractTo&lt;/tt&gt;? The subject (but here is an object) &lt;tt&gt;rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt;?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Which parties are to be trusted to make these particular statements correctly?&lt;br /&gt;Are the assertions from &lt;tt&gt;myclaimspace.com&lt;/tt&gt; plausible? If so, are the assertions from &lt;tt&gt;myclaimspace.com/#rupertpupkin&lt;/tt&gt; also plausible?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This starts to resemble the certificate scoping and &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070221_01.shtml"&gt;practice statement extensions&lt;/a&gt; added to X.509 by the IETF PKIX working group. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed,  1 Aug 2007 03:06:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Anti-utopian social networking (20070730)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070730_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070730_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Anti-utopian social networking (20070730) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;First, some background.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;Tupperware parties, undercover marketing and viral marketing&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  The &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_plan"&gt;party plan&lt;/a&gt; is a marketing technique developed by &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_Wise"&gt;Brownie Wise&lt;/a&gt; in the early 1950s, initially for selling &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware"&gt;Tupperware&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; (tm) plastic storage containers. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; The 1995 documentary &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/"&gt;Tupperware!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, on the history and impact on Tupperware in American culture, provides a basic description of how the parties start. The documentary includes excerpts from a party plan short training film; quoting from the &lt;a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/filmmore/pt.html"&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Woman 1&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;I've heard a little about this kind of party, but I've often wondered how it works.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Woman 2&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;Well here's the idea. All you have to do is invite about twelve or fifteen of your friends to drop over some afternoon or evening for a party. And I'll help you put it on. Tell them we'll have lots of fun.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Woman 1&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;And then I suppose you take orders from the guests?&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Woman 2&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;Yes, but no high-pressure selling. None of your friends will be embarrassed into buying.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A goal of the plan was that anyone (but typically women) could become a participant in this business as a party host or hostess.  The &lt;a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/peopleevents/e_dream.html"&gt;background FAQ&lt;/a&gt; for the film discusses some of the advantages of the model: low barrier to entry, and leverages existing and emerging interpersonal connections:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="0"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Through all these changes [brought on by WWII], women retained important social networks, keeping up with other women through their churches, neighborhoods, and families. Female relatives still provided most child-care for absent mothers. These were the same sort of female networks that had shaped the 19th century anti-slavery and suffrage movements, contributed to the union movement of the early 20th century, and enabled women to move from country to city during the war. These connections would, in turn, be critical to Brownie Wise's marketing strategies, as she &lt;b&gt;built the Tupperware home party business on top of relationships created at church socials and back-fence friendships&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/q&gt; (emphasis added)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;  &lt;img src="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/peopleevents/images/e_business_03.jpg" width="160" height="195" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;center&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/peopleevents/e_business.html"&gt;(from PBS)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/filmmore/ps_knowhow.html"&gt;sales brochure&lt;/a&gt; illustrated how the scope of selling can grow beyond immediate friends:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Betty&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;Everyone needs and wants Tupperware. And don't forget your beauty operator, your milk man, your grocer, butcher, service station attendant, your doctor... in other words, everybody you see every day.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Ann&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;What about the P.T.A.? I know some people there.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Betty&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;Exactly! You're getting the idea. In other words, wherever you go, you will meet people who are prospects for Tupperware parties.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Participating in a Tupperware party is a 'voluntary' experience, driven by the participant's interest and sense of social obligation.  And the product demonstration and order-taking is an evident and 'fun' part of such a party. Everyone there knows that selling is occurring.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;By contrast, in &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_marketing"&gt;undercover marketing&lt;/a&gt;, the goal of the marketer is to inform the potential customer without the potential customer being aware they are being targeted.  The 1998 movie &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/"&gt;The Truman Show&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt; takes this to extremes, as an &lt;a href="http://www.transparencynow.com/truman.htm"&gt;analysis&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href="http://www.transparencynow.com/"&gt;Transparency at transparencynow.com by Ken Sanes&lt;/a&gt; suggests &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="0"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Since the television program that is [Truman Burbank's] life plays nonstop, without commercial interruption, it has to makes money through product placement. Advertisements are not-so-seamlessly woven into dialogue and scenes, turning Truman's life into a continuous commercial, as well as a form of entertainment...&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Taking the point one or two steps further, we can say that the media would have us live inside a world of fiction that is the most glorious commercial ever devised, for a system in which life, sales, and entertainment are interfused. "Product placement" and testimonials for this emerging system of entertainment-marketing capitalism are being seamlessly woven into our lives.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.transparencynow.com/truman/1041.jpg" height="240" width="320" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Look what I got for you at the checkout.  It's a Chef's Pal.  It's a dicer, grater, peeler all in one.  Never needs sharpening.  Dishwasher safe.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing"&gt;viral marketing&lt;/a&gt;, the potential customer and the current customer are enlisted to pass on the marketing message they've received.  The prospect caught up in viral marketing may be aware and actively want to "spread the word", might be a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptomatic_carrier"&gt;carrier&lt;/a&gt; who is unaware of how they are being used, or might be aware of their participation in the activity and not be able to do something about it. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An example of the third category of viral marketing is a public emailing service that automatically attaches ads to outgoing messages.  Hotmail, one of the earliest uses of viral marketing on the Internet, is discussed in the 2001 paper &lt;a href="http://pubsonline.informs.org/feature/pdfs/0092.2102.01.3102.90.pdf"&gt;"Applying Quantitative Marketing Techniques to the Internet"&lt;/a&gt; by  &lt;a href="http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/alm3/"&gt;Alan Montgomery of CMU&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;An alternative promotional campaign was suggested by one of Hotmail's venture capitalists, who advocated placing an advertising message, "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail," with a hyperlink back to Hotmail at the bottom of every outgoing e-mail. The recipient would know that the e-mail message came via Hotmail and its use would be an implicit endorsement of the service. The more e-mail messages a Hotmail subscriber sent, the more advertising would be distributed. Every recipient would become a potential new subscriber. Initially the founders were against this type of promotion, thinking that their users would be repelled by any advertising, but they had few other advertising options.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One reason for the success marketing campaign is that it was the only one of its kind, as Ellen Neuborne wrote in her 2001 BusinessWeek article " &lt;a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_12/b3724628.htm"&gt;Viral Marketing Alert!&lt;/a&gt;": &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;My inbox occupies an ever-bigger slice of my hard drive. If viral marketers have their way, in addition to my daily dose of e-mails from companies pitching junk, I'll get another pile passed on by friends. It'll be cute once, maybe twice. But there's a viral traffic jam lurking just a few clicks down the Information Highway. Even good friends can be as annoying as marketers if they bombard me too much. Companies think viral marketing will cut through the clutter, but if they come en masse, they'll be the clutter.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;Utopia as a goal for social networking&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;There is a long tradition of attempts to create utopia social experiements, particularly in the United States.  Typically these involve communal living of unrelated individuals and some form of central governance and control over societal behaviors, and many of these attempts have failed. Robert C. Ellickson wrote in 2001 in the draft "&lt;a href="http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/ellickson.pdf"&gt;The law and economics of the household&lt;/a&gt;" that &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;The enduring appeal of utopian alternatives to the conventional household hints that humans have an evolved psychological yearning for a return to the conditions of the hunter-gatherer band. Like a sweet tooth, this yearning can prompt maladaptive decision-making under contemporary conditions.&lt;/q&gt; (p. 32)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One persistent example alternative household structure "design pattern" he cites is the "group quarters": &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Examples are dormitories, fraternities and sororities, and abodes for members of religious orders. Group quarters exploit efficiencies of scale in the production of food, shelter, and social activities, but at the price of major sacrifices in autonomy and privacy. A consensual group quarters thus disproportionately attracts those who are young and impecunious.&lt;/q&gt; (p. 33)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible to consider social networking web sites as being "utopian", for example in that many  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;encourages individuals to join in and invite their friends,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;share commonalities with the "group quarters" design pattern,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;encourages participants to make connections with ever-larger sets of individuals, adding them to the participants "friends", &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; promise an environment where all the participant's needs are met, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; have as a focus entertainment or pleasure.  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;Marketing in social networking&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Marketing techniques used in social networking sites seem to follow party plan, undercover and viral marketing strategies.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For one example of marketing in social networking, Google Gmail includes advertisements in the display of a page alongside emails being read, and targets these advertisements based on the content of the email.  Google says that    &lt;q&gt;By offering Gmail users relevant ads and information related to the content of their messages, we aim to offer users a better webmail experience. For example, if you and your friends are planning a vacation, you may want to see news items or travel ads about the destination you're considering.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore Google goes out of their way to stress, in a &lt;a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/more.html"&gt;apology page for Gmail ads&lt;/a&gt;, that people actually want these advertisements: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;q&gt;Many people have found that the search-related ads on Google.com can be valuable--not merely a necessary evil, but a welcome feature. We believe that users will also find Gmail's ads and related pages to be helpful, because the information reflects their interests. In fact, we have already received positive feedback from Gmail users about the quality and usefulness of our ads and related pages.&lt;/q&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For another example, in Facebook there is an ad region consistently on the left side of every page, below the link to the home page and links to applications: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070730_01.gif" height="314" /&gt; &lt;p&gt; And Facebook also interpolates ads in the middle of a 'news story' about a subject's friends: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070730_02.gif" height="172" /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;It is interesting to note that the icon for this "news item" is a megaphone (to suggest that &lt;b&gt;amplification&lt;/b&gt; to reach a wide audience is necessary), and unlike every other interesting news story about friends, the item has a "&lt;b&gt;Share&lt;/b&gt;" button to permit the subject to send it to their friends or add it to their profile.  There's no obvious indication of why a participant might want to include an ad for a credit score in their profile when they are not permitted to include in their profile non-advertising news items about their friends, such as a notice of a birthday or a party, or significant life events such as marriages or job changes. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;Anti-utopian social networking&lt;/h4&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia"&gt;dystopias&lt;/a&gt; mentions a distinction between an anti-utopia and a dystopia, that is derived from a 1998 &lt;a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980528"&gt;Random House article&lt;/a&gt; on the word "dystopia": &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;q&gt;...for example, dystopia is used to mean 'a horrible place', while anti-utopia is used to mean 'a place or society intended to be utopian but that has been perverted and is now horrible'.&lt;/q&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An anti-utopian social networking site would have some flaw that "spoils" it, and one flaw could be the misapplication of these marketing strategies. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This flaw might arise from a mismatch of expectations between the operators and participants of the social networking service, in particular where the operators see it as vehicle for selling advertisements, and the participants have goals unrelated to being marketed to. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For example, a cognitive disconnect in the real world would occur when a group of friends engaged in a ordinary discussion in one of their houses realize that they have been brought into a Tupperware party without realizing it, when the hostess starts bringing up topics of conversation concering food storage options and demonstrating various plastic containers. &lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;In an anti-utopian social networking site, participants might feel "trapped" by incessant, annoying, or unnerving marketing, without a vehicle for escape or subversion.  While the site operators might argue that no one is forced to be part of the social networking site, this is not always in practice true, due to factors discussed in the earlier post &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070616_01.shtml"&gt;"Modelling the effects of interoperability"&lt;/a&gt;, or scenarios such as: a corporation holding a training course in a virtual reality environment, or a university relying upon a social networking site to disseminate news to its students. &lt;/p&gt;  </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:15:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Language options for scripting cross-platform RIAs in 1997 (20070729)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070729_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070729_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Language options for scripting cross-platform RIAs in 1997 (20070729) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I noticed that according to the &lt;a href="http://www.archive.org/"&gt;Internet archive&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19980109022644/sunscript.sun.com/plugin/"&gt;Sun&lt;/a&gt; released the beta of the version 2 of the  &lt;a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19980109020559/http://sunscript.sun.com/plugin/"&gt;Tcl/Tk web browser plugin&lt;/a&gt; in October 1997.  This version of the plugin was cross-platform (Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, SunOS, Linux, IRIX) and cross-browser (Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Opera).  The &lt;a href="http://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/"&gt;latest version&lt;/a&gt; of the plugin supports Linux, Solaris and Windows.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike JavaScript, Tcl/Tk could be used to develop standalone and platform-agnostic non-browser applications as well.  The "hello world" Tk program &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;button .b -text "Hello world"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;pack .b&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  Could be run from a web page  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;embed src="helloworld.tcl" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;or the command line&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; % wish helloworld.tcl&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Another interesting aspect of the Tcl/Tk plugin is that the security policy was written in Tcl. A trusted interpeter controls what commands are present in a sandbox interpreter:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;interp create -safe untrusted&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The user's security policy overrides the implementation of dangerous commands (quoting from the &lt;a href="http://www.tcl.tk/software/plugin/safetcl.html"&gt;Safe-Tcl page&lt;/a&gt;), e.g., if the command &lt;tt&gt;file extension&lt;/tt&gt; was allowed but not the command &lt;tt&gt;file open&lt;/tt&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;proc Interp_File {operation args} {&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;switch -- $operation {&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;extension -&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;dirname -&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;rootname -&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;tail {&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;return [file $operation [lindex $args 0]]&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;default {&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;error "Unsupported file operation: $operation"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;}&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;interp alias untrusted file {} Interp_File&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 29 Jul 2007 18:05:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Issues with internationalizing domain names (20070729)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070729_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070729_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Issues with internationalizing domain names (20070729) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In the &lt;a href="http://openid.net/specs/openid-authentication-1_1.html"&gt;OpenID authentication 1.1 protocol&lt;/a&gt;, an end user provides their identifier URL (in either the &lt;tt&gt;http&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;https&lt;/tt&gt; scheme) to a relying party web site they are visiting, by typing their identifier into a field the relying party site's web form.   The &lt;a href="http://openid.net/specs/openid-authentication-2_0-11.html"&gt;OpenID authentication 2.0 protocol&lt;/a&gt; is similar, but currently also allows the end user's identifier to be an XRI.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A HTTP or HTTPS &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt"&gt;URL&lt;/a&gt; is typically expressed with the components &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;the scheme name&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;http&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;https&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;a host id&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;example.com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;an optional port number&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;:8080&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;an optional path&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/x.cgi&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;an optional query&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;?foo=bar&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;an optional fragment&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;#section2&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;   &lt;p&gt; Currently the two most common representation choices of OpenID URLs, for a user with a userid at a identity provider organization, are &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the host id is a domain name that holds a domain component for the userid followed by the domain name for an identity provider organization; the path, query and fragment components are absent;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;tt&gt;http://joebloggs.example.com&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the host id contains the domain name for an identity provider organization; the path contains a userid at that identity provider; the query and fragment components are absent; &lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;tt&gt;http://openid.example.com/joebloggs&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; There are some significant differences between representing a userid as a domain name component and in a path, including &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;domain name component&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;HTTP URI path&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tbody /&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;case-insensitive&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;case-sensitive&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;length limited to 255 characters (by &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt"&gt;RFC 1123&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;length not limited by HTTP &lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; either an ASCII alphanumeric string [&lt;tt&gt;a-z0-9-&lt;/tt&gt;]  (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1034.txt"&gt;RFC 1034&lt;/a&gt; section 3.5), or &lt;br /&gt; an  international domain name component that is  UTF-8 encoded and with its octets percent-encoded. &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt; must begin with a &lt;tt&gt;/&lt;/tt&gt;; the strings  &lt;tt&gt;/./&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;/../&lt;/tt&gt; have special significance;  some characters must be percent-encoded. &lt;/td&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The proposed standard definition of international domain names in IDNA  (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt"&gt;RFC 3490&lt;/a&gt;) defines an internationalized domain name, and the components can be  internationalized labels, which contain encoded Unicode characters from outside of the ASCII range.  Out of the Unicode 3.2 charset only a few characters cannot be used, e.g. Unicode "dots" &lt;q&gt;U+3002 (ideographic full stop), U+FF0E (fullwidth full stop), U+FF61 (halfwidth ideographic full stop)&lt;/q&gt;, space characters, control characters, private use characters, non-character code points, surrogate characters, characters inappropriate for plain text or canonical represntation, display property characters and language tag characters.  IDNA performs a conversion on non-ASCII characters using the "nameprep" (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3491.txt"&gt;RFC 3491&lt;/a&gt;) profile of "stringprep" (&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3454.txt"&gt;RFC 3454&lt;/a&gt;), to map upper case characters to lower case.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The internet draft &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-idnabis-issues-02.txt"&gt;"Proposed Issues and Changes for IDNA - An overview"&lt;/a&gt; by John Klensin of July 2007 discusses some of the issues that have been found with the model.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One observation in that draft is that  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "Historically, many, perhaps most, of the 'names' in the DNS have just    been mnemonics to identify some particular concept, object, or    organization.  They are typically derived from, or rooted in, some    language because most people think in language-based ways.  But,    because they are mnemonics, they need not obey the orthographic    conventions of any language: it is not a requirement that it be    possible for them to be 'words'." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Another consideration is display order of the components of a domain name (left-to-right vs right-to-left), which may be different from the order in which the components are transmitted. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;    "Questions remain about protocol constraints implying that the overall    direction of these strings will always be left-to-right (or right-to-    left) for an IRI or email address, or if they even should conform to    such rules.  These questions also have several possible answers.    Should a domain name abc.def, in which both labels are represented in    scripts that are written right-to-left, be displayed as fed.cba or    cba.fed?  An IRI for clear text web access would, in network order,    begin with 'http://' and the characters will appear as    'http://abc.def' -- but what does this suggest about the display    order?  When entering a URI to many browsers, it may be possible to    provide only the domain name and leave the 'http://' to be filled in    by default, assuming no tail (an approach that does not work for    other protocols).  The natural display order for the typed domain    name on a right-to-left system is fed.cba.  Does this change if a    protocol identifier, tail, and the corresponding delimiters are    specified?" &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An important issue with OpenID in web browser interactions as it relates to international domain names is that the user does not type in their OpenID identifier URL in the 'address bar' of the web browser, where URLs are typically typed in, but instead they enter their URL in a form field of a web page. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Any assistance the user's web browser may provide for typing in an international domain name in the address bar doesn't apply to form fields. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;There is no &lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.4"&gt;HTML 4&lt;/a&gt; form INPUT attribute to indicate to the web browser that the value of an attribute should be a URI or URL. Thus, the web browser cannot provide any assistance in entering an international domain name properly.  The OpenID 2.0 authentication document states that &lt;q&gt;The form field's "name" attribute SHOULD have the value "openid_identifier"&lt;/q&gt;, but this is not generalizable: other services which use URIs in form fields cannot re-use &lt;tt&gt;openid_identifier&lt;/tt&gt; without confusing OpenID-aware applications.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;Some elements of international domain name processing are subject to 'local policy'. In this context, however, the 'local' is the software running the relying party, &lt;b&gt;not&lt;/b&gt; the end user's web browser.  As the user has not yet logged in to the relying party, the relying party doesn't know the locale of the user to be able to perform locale-specific aspects of domain name processing on the user's supplied OpenID in accordance with the user's locale. &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Addressing these limitations would require changes such as  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;form&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;label for="openid_identifier"&amp;gt;OpenID&amp;lt;/label&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;input type="&lt;b&gt;uri&lt;/b&gt;" name="openid_identifier" title="OpenID"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;label for="openid_locale"&amp;gt;Your language&amp;lt;/label&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;select name="&lt;b&gt;openid_locale&lt;/b&gt;" title="Your Language" size="1"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;option value="en" label="English" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;option value="fr" label="French" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/select&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/form&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:05:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Managing PKI trust anchors (20070726)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070726_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070726_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Managing PKI trust anchors (20070726) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;center&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060918_believe2.jpg" width="150" height="225" alt="I Want to Believe" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/center&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Many modern operating systems, web browsers, virtual machine, embedded Internet devices, smartcards etc. have a local file or database containing a collection of one or more public keys, and rely upon these public keys to be able to build X.509 certificate paths.  A typical web browser contains the public keys of several dozen well-known certificate authorities (CAs), storing these keys as self-signed certificates, referred to as "root certificates" or "trust anchors".   &lt;p&gt;For a Certificate Authority, having their public key in a client's trust anchor collection means that the client will be able to build a trust path to any servers who certificates are issued by that CA (or an intermediate CA whose certificate is issued by that CA).    Organizations that wish to issue their own certificates for their intranet servers, without being connected to one of the commercial Internet CAs, must have each user in the organization manually add the organization's certificate to their computing platform's root certificate sets. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p&gt;The client root certificate file was not a built-in requirement of public key cryptography or X.509.  Originally, X.509 assumed that building a certificate from a client A to a server B involved following a chain of cross-certificates from the CA issuing the certificate to A to the CA issuing the certificate to B.  This was impractical, so a hierarchical certificate path approach was proposed for PKI deployments on the Internet, which also faced difficulty as the namespace for X.509, distinguished names, did not match the namespace for Internet applications: email addresses and domain names. This was fixed with the introduction of X.509v3 with its certificate extensions and the idea that a packaged client application, should be bundled with a small set of CA public keys as the root CA certificate set, that would ensure that any certificates with a path back to one of those certificates could be validated by that application. (The CA certificates to bundle were chosen by the vendors, companies such as Netscape and Microsoft, of the packaged application. Java version 1.4.2 came with 15 bundled CA certificates in &lt;tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;java.home&lt;/i&gt;/lib/security/cacerts&lt;/tt&gt;;  Windows comes with 100+ bundled CA certificates, also describes &lt;a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293819/"&gt;How to remove a Root Certificate from the Trusted Root Store&lt;/a&gt;, but also lists &lt;a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293781/"&gt;Trusted root certificates that are required by Windows Server 2003, by Windows XP, and by Windows 2000&lt;/a&gt;.  Some vendors might have a program that was simply payment in exchange for inclusion, others might require some auditing or vetting be done of the CA's procedures. An illuminating discussion of these procedures can be seen in the three years of comments on a bug filed to request the &lt;a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215243"&gt;CAcert root cert inclusion into the Mozilla browser&lt;/a&gt; - in the interim its underlying platform (NSS) has stopped bundling any &lt;a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/loadable_certs.html"&gt;Root Certificates&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;       &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/07jul/agenda/tam.txt"&gt;Scheduled for Friday (20070727)&lt;/a&gt; is an &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/"&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; BOF on "Trust Anchor Management" (the BOF's PowerPoint &lt;a href="http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/07jul/slides/tam-0.ppt"&gt;welcome&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/07jul/slides/tam-1.ppt"&gt;problem summary&lt;/a&gt; slides have already been posted).  The group proposing the BOF has had a &lt;a href="http://www.vpnc.org/ietf-trust-anchor/"&gt;mailing list&lt;/a&gt; since June 2007, and drafted a strawman &lt;a href="http://www.vpnc.org/ietf-trust-anchor/mail-archive/msg00175.html"&gt;charter&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-wallace-ta-mgmt-problem-statement-01.txt"&gt;problem statement&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The second draft of the "Trust Anchor Management Problem Statement" (&lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-wallace-ta-mgmt-problem-statement-01.txt"&gt;draft-wallace-ta-mgmt-problem-statement-01&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; of July 2007) by R. Reddy of NSA and C. Wallace of Cygnacom discusses some of the problems, including &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;A computer system may have multiple distinct trust anchor stores (root certificate files); each of which is locked into an application or operating system differently and needs its own proprietiary tool to manage.  There is no standard way to report on the content of a trust anchor store &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;There is no standard means to limit the scope of applicability of a trust anchor that is just a public key: that it can be used for one purpose or application but not another.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Trust anchors as public keys in self-signed certificates provide &lt;q&gt;no useful means for establishing trust in the information contained in the certificate&lt;/q&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Embedding SIOC in XHTML with RDFa (20070725)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070725_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070725_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Embedding SIOC in XHTML with RDFa (20070725) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; I have been experimenting with adding in the (X)HTML blog summary page &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/"&gt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; XML attributes defined by RDFa with values that express SIOC relationships of posts to the blog. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Quoting from the home page of the &lt;a href="http://www.sioc-project.org/"&gt;Semantically-interlinked online communities (SIOC) project,&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"SIOC provides methods for interconnecting discussion methods such as blogs, forums and mailing lists to each other. It consists of the SIOC ontology, an open-standard machine readable format for expressing the information contained both explicitly and implicitly in internet discussion methods, of SIOC metadata producers for a number of popular blogging platforms and content management systems, and of storage and browsing / searching systems for leveraging this SIOC data."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;While a SIOC description of a blog, a post or other resources can be represented today in &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/sioc.xml"&gt;a separate RDF-encoded XML file&lt;/a&gt;, the emerging &lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/"&gt;RDFa&lt;/a&gt; allows SIOC (and indeed any RDF) to be placed inside a XHTML document. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "RDFa is a syntax for expressing this structured data in XHTML. The rendered, hypertext data of XHTML is reused by the RDFa markup, so that publishers don't repeat themselves. The underlying abstract representation is RDF, which lets publishers build their own vocabulary, extend others, and evolve their vocabulary with maximal interoperability over time. The expressed structure is closely tied to the data, so that rendered data can be copied and pasted along with its relevant structure."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Unlike a microformat, RDFa does not require a separate design process to decide on &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt; SIOC should be re-encoded to fit into XHTML: RDFa gives a pattern for the translation of the properties defined by an ontology, in this case the &lt;a href="http://www.sioc-project.org/ontology"&gt;SIOC ontology&lt;/a&gt;, to values of XML attributes which can be placed on XHTML elements. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the XHTML examples below, additions to the HTML for RDFa are in &lt;tt&gt;&lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;, and for SIOC in particular are in &lt;tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;italics&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;Namespaces are added to the top of the XHTML file for RDF, RDF Schema, Dublin Core and SIOC ontologies:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;xmlns:sioc="http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#"&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:this="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The description of the blog itself is added to an XML element which contains other elements (in this file, a &lt;tt&gt;ul&lt;/tt&gt; happened to be handy).  This declares &lt;tt&gt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl&lt;/tt&gt; to be a &lt;tt&gt;Container&lt;/tt&gt; in the SIOC ontology, with a property of &lt;tt&gt;date&lt;/tt&gt; (in the Dublin Core ontology) with value &lt;tt&gt;2007-07-25&lt;/tt&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;ul &lt;b&gt;class="&lt;/b&gt;&lt;i&gt;sioc:Container&lt;/i&gt;&lt;b&gt;" about="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;Last updated &amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="dc:date" content="2007-07-25"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;2007 July 25&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A description of a specific post.  This declares &lt;tt&gt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070724_01.shtml&lt;/tt&gt; to be a &lt;tt&gt;Post&lt;/tt&gt; in the SIOC ontology, with &lt;tt&gt;title&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;created&lt;/tt&gt; properties, and a link back to the container which holds it.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;p &lt;b&gt;class="&lt;/b&gt;&lt;i&gt;sioc:Post&lt;/i&gt;&lt;b&gt;" id="post_20070724_01" about="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070724_01.shtml"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070724_01.shtml"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="dc:title"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;OpenID and 20 years of distributed systems&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;, &lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;span &lt;b&gt;property="dcterms:created" content="2007-07-24T00:00:01Z"&lt;/b&gt;&amp;gt;2007/7/24&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="sioc:has_container"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>OpenID and 20 years of distributed systems (20070724)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070724_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070724_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; OpenID and 20 years of distributed systems (20070724) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The computer scientist &lt;a href="http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/"&gt;Leslie Lamport&lt;/a&gt; is attributed as author of the definition of &lt;i&gt;distributed system&lt;/i&gt;, in &lt;a href="http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/distributed-system.txt"&gt;an email&lt;/a&gt; from May 1987: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;"&lt;tt&gt;A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.&lt;/tt&gt;" &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the same email he wrote&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "&lt;tt&gt;The current electrical problem in the machine room &lt;/tt&gt;[at &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Systems_Research_Center"&gt;SRC&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;tt&gt; is not the culprit--it just highlights a situation that has been getting progressively worse.  It seems that each new version of the nub makes my FF more dependent upon programs that run elsewhere.&lt;/tt&gt;" &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/artur/"&gt;Artur Bergman&lt;/a&gt; wrote today on a blog post &lt;a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/365_main_datace.html"&gt;"365 Main datacenter power outage - Six Apart Technorati Craigslist"&lt;/a&gt; regarding  &lt;a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/24/BAG9NR67253.DTL"&gt;the electrical power outage(s)&lt;/a&gt; affecting a popular hosting datacenter that &lt;q&gt;anyone using a LiveJournal OpenID will be unable to use their credentials anywhere else until service is restored&lt;/q&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:10:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>New MRD from Liberty Alliance (20070723)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070723_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070723_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; New MRD from Liberty Alliance (20070723) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.projectliberty.org"&gt;Liberty Alliance&lt;/a&gt; has put out  the first version of the &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://projectliberty.org/liberty/content/download/3432/22922/file/Liberty_Id_Governance_mrd-v1.0.pdf"&gt;Identity Privacy and Access Policy Marketing Requirements Document Use Cases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;q&gt;This document provides the use cases and requirements for Id-Governance Identity Privacy and Access Policy provided by the participants of the Liberty Alliance Business and Marketing Requirements Expert Group&lt;/q&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Attribute semantics are what you make of them, except when prohibited by law (20070723)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070723_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070723_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Attribute semantics are what you make of them, except when prohibited by law (20070723) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In 2006 the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) observed that, when interacting with the &lt;tt&gt;xanga.com&lt;/tt&gt; social networking/blogging web site to create a new account, someone could tick a "I am at least 13 years old" checkbox on the first page of the account creation form, and then in subsequent pages of the form, enter a month and year in a 'date of birth' form field that indicated they were under 13, and the web site would let them continue to create an account.  Web sites in the US which collect data from children under 13 are subject to the US law &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act"&gt;Children's Online Privacy Protection Act&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The &lt;a href="http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0623073/060907xangacomplaint.pdf"&gt;FTC complaint&lt;/a&gt; led to a &lt;a href="http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/09/xanga.shtm"&gt;million dollar settlement in September 2006&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;tt&gt;Xanga.com&lt;/tt&gt;, and a &lt;a href="http://press.xanga.com/2006/09/07/statement/"&gt;press release from Xanga.com CEO John Hiler describing the problem &lt;/a&gt; stated &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"We found that an array of Xanga users created profiles with "birth dates" other than their actual day of birth when establishing their weblog. For example, pet bloggers registered with their pet's birthday, engaged bloggers registered with their wedding date, and religious bloggers registered with their "born again" date."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Duck typing in directory access (20070722)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070722_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070722_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Duck typing in directory access (20070722) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;One of the assumptions in X.500 carried into LDAPv3 that has hindered its success is that for a particular branch of the directory information tree, the directory servers that store that branch, schema used by entries in that branch, and the applications that create and update entries in that directory branch, are all under a single administrative control.  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; As a result, while through subschema LDAP servers can &lt;i&gt;publish&lt;/i&gt; their schema and DIT constraints (supported object classes and attributes, name forms, DIT structure rules, etc.), typically don't maintain and advertise a separation between schema and DIT constraints which are: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;design artifacts of the directory server implementation (e.g., that a server might only allow objects representing users to be represented as leaf entries below a domain entry),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;design choices of the DIT administrator for how to represent objects as entries (e.g., that &lt;tt&gt;uid&lt;/tt&gt; is the naming attribute), &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;schema elements of directory-enabled applications that are intended to be shared between applications, and&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;schema elements of directory-enabled applications that are intended to be private to the application (e.g., Netegrity defined attributes for representing Siteminder state which is opaque to any other application).&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This is problematic as configuring "yet another" directory enabled application to leverage a particular organization's deployed directory service is a far more difficult process than it should be.   &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Some commercial products that are "directory-enabled applications" &lt;b&gt;require&lt;/b&gt; a so-called green-fields deployment: one in which the directory tree has not yet been populated or used by any applications, and fail to work correctly when the directory service is already an operational service.  Other directory-enabled applications require arbitrary changes to existing directory information trees and schemas, which might break other applications. &lt;li&gt;Even if the application does not modify the schema, directory tree structure, or entries, the application must be customized to be able to find objects of interest to their application, and understand how the directory server, the DIT administrator, and other applications are modelling those objects in the directory.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Some of the issues can be discussed in the context of "duck typing".  &lt;i&gt;Duck typing&lt;/i&gt; in programming languages is the concept that an object can &lt;q&gt;be interchangeable with any other object so long as they both implement sufficiently compatible interfaces, regardless of whether the objects have a related inheritance hierarchy&lt;/q&gt; (from &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing"&gt;the Wikipedia page on Duck typing&lt;/a&gt;).  In C++ for example, templates can be used for one form of duck typing in programs written in that language. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In LDAP directory applications, &lt;i&gt;duck typing&lt;/i&gt; can be thought of as a limited form of schema independence.  A duck typed LDAP application doesn't assume there is a particular structure rule or object class in use in a particular directory: so long as the attributes match, the application will work.  For example, &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="2" frame="hsides" rules="groups"&gt; &lt;caption&gt;&lt;b&gt;DIT structure&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/caption&gt; &lt;thead valign="top"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;Not duck typed&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;Duck typed&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;The &lt;tt&gt;Read&lt;/tt&gt; operation&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Subtree searching&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;ou=People&lt;/tt&gt; branch&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Searching from the base of the naming context&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070719_01.shtml"&gt;families of entries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="2" frame="hsides" rules="groups"&gt; &lt;caption&gt;&lt;b&gt;Object classes&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/caption&gt; &lt;thead valign="top"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;Not duck typed&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;Duck typed&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Searching for &lt;tt&gt;(&amp;amp;(objectClass=person)&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;tt&gt;)&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Only having auxiliary classes (if at all) in search filters&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Application-specific object classes (e.g., &lt;tt&gt;fooPerson&lt;/tt&gt;)&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;extensibleObject&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="2" frame="hsides" rules="groups"&gt; &lt;caption&gt;&lt;b&gt;Attribute types&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/caption&gt; &lt;thead valign="top"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;Not duck typed&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;th&gt;&amp;nbsp;Duck typed&amp;nbsp;&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;OIDs in search filters or in requested attribute lists&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Using string names for attribute types&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;Application specific attribute types&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td align="center"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Duck typing, however, is not a cure for directory interoperability problems.  In paricular, duck typing can be dangerous as two attributes with the same name may not be semantically equivalent. Is &lt;tt&gt;passwordExpiry&lt;/tt&gt; a date, a number of seconds, or a boolean?.  Checking against the object identifier (OID) of the attribute in the directory server's schema before using it has a greater chance of ensuring the attribute type is the same as that assumed by the application, although some vendors arbitrarily change the OIDs of standard schema elements (e.g., &lt;a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms808546.aspx"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;inetOrgPerson&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Hello World: 90 years of user-centric graphics design in a global virtual community (20070721)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Hello World: 90 years of user-centric graphics design in a global virtual community (20070721) &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt; Those who work in user-centric identity management and are not &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio"&gt;ham radio operators&lt;/a&gt; should have read &lt;i&gt;Hello World: a life in ham radio&lt;/i&gt;, by &lt;a href="http://www.dannygregory.com/pro/helloworld.html"&gt;Danny Gregory&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.paulsahre.com/index.php?/work03/hello_world/"&gt;Paul Sahre&lt;/a&gt;, published by &lt;a href="http://www.papress.com/bookpage.tpl?isbn=156898281x"&gt;Princeton Architectural Press&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;blockquote&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_t1.gif" height="375" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;font face="New Century Schoolbook" size="+3"&gt;This is a  &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSL_card"&gt;QSL card&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;font face="New Century Schoolbook" size="+2"&gt; Whenever hams connect on the air for the first time, they exchange specially designed postcards in the mail.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;font face="New Century Schoolbook" size="+2"&gt; These QSL cards are physical proof that the radio contact actually took place.   &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;font face="New Century Schoolbook" size="+2"&gt; Each ham's card is different, featuring the call sign for his station, details about the call and the gear used, and words and pictures that tell more about himself and his home.&lt;/font&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In a basic sense, a call sign of a ham radio operator is a public identifier, that (until recently) was administratively assigned and arbitrary.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "When he's on the air in his own ham shack, a ham's call sign is his identity, far more so than his legal name.  He must announce the sign at least once every time minutes during a contact and again when he signs off.  It's not unusual for a ham to emblazon his call sign on his license plates and clothing."   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The convention of a subsequent exchange of QSL cards between two hams after they have participated in an interaction by radio is a 85-year old protocol that still is useful in portions of the world with no Internet and infrequent postal handling (QSL bureaus provide store-and-forward and bulk delivery).  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.paulsahre.com/images/uploads/3spread_helloworld1.jpg" height="406" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;QSL cards were tied to the ham's contact log: in the US until the 1960s (and longer in other countries), radio operators were required to keep a log of each contact they made, as this log could be audited by the government.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;More interesting, however, to the user-centric case, is the &lt;i&gt;design&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;contents&lt;/i&gt; of the QSL card. Like business cards, de-facto standards govern a QSL card's overall shape (rectangular), maximium dimensions (QSL cards shouldn't be larger than an index card), and some of the text fields on the cards (QSL cards must have sender and receipient's call sign, frequency, and date and time). Unlike business cards, QSL cards are designed by the individuals identified on them (and often handwritten, self-printed or printed by their local stationer), and within the overall constraints of QSL cards, hams have full flexibility to express themselves in colors, images, additional information about themselves, which in a short exchange of morse code or highly filtered voice it might not be possible to convey...&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_t2.gif" height="379" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Spaces vs places in Geraldine Fitzpatrick's Locales framework (20070721)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Spaces vs places in Geraldine Fitzpatrick's Locales framework (20070721) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geraldin/"&gt;Geraldine Fitzpatrick&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href="http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/research/groups/interact/people/geraldine.htm"&gt;University of Sussex&lt;/a&gt; writes in the chapter "The Locales Framework: Making Social Thinking Accessible for Software Practitioners" of &lt;i&gt;Social Thinking -- Software Practice &lt;/i&gt; &lt;a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8776&amp;ttype=2"&gt;published by MIT press&lt;/a&gt; on metaphors for scoping interactions in  &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_supported_cooperative_work"&gt;CSCW systems&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the &lt;tt&gt;wOrlds&lt;/tt&gt; CSCW system, the room metaphor   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_s2.gif" alt="visitors currently present in the room, taken from figure 3.3 of http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geraldin/Publications/localesFramework.pdf"/&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; "...can be characterized by notions of group related to a bounded space, where you are either in or out, and see everything or nothing. The systems engineers' work on the other hand can be better characterized by "individuals in multiple groups" who make use of a variety of physical and virtual spaces as places of work, and where notions of relationships around centers are more relevant than containment by boundaries..." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; "On seeing this mismatch between the instantiation of a spatial metaphor in wOrlds, and the rich ways the systems engineers used their virtual and physical spaces, I started to think about place instead of space as a guiding design principle -- where place arises in the lived relationship between people and the spaces they use. Conincidentally others were also moving toward this notion of place rather than space &lt;abbr title="Harrison, S., and P. Dourish. 1996. Re-Place-ing Space: The Roles of Place and Space in Collaborative Systems. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 67-76. Boston: ACM Press."&gt;(Harrison and Dourish 1996)&lt;/abbr&gt;." (p. 145) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In the later &lt;a href="http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geraldin/localesFramework.html"&gt;Locales framework&lt;/a&gt; (described in detail in her &lt;a href="http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geraldin/Publications/localesFramework.pdf"&gt;thesis&lt;/a&gt;),&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; "A social world is the fundamental building block of collective action &lt;abbr title="Clarke, A. 1991. Social Worlds/Arenas Theory as Organizational Theory. In D. Maines, ed., Social Organization and Social Process: Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss, 119-158. New York: Adeline de Gruyter."&gt;(Clarke 1991)&lt;/abbr&gt;. Members of a social world are bonded by a common, sometimes implicit, goal and perform actions toward the collective purpose. Actions are always embedded in interactions, which are continually permuting. Social worlds need "sites and means" to facilitate their shared interactions. An interaction trajectory captures the issues about how courses of action evolve over time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; The primary unit of analysis and design in the Locales Framework is "locale." Locale does not exist a priori as does a space or room. Rather, a locale is the place constituted in the ongoing relationship between people in a particular social world and the "site and means" they use to meet their interactional needs -- that is, the space together with the resources available there. As such, the framework is based on a metaphor of place as the lived interaction with space and resources. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; In contrast to metaphors of space, which embody principles of boundaries and containment (e.g., see &lt;abbr title="Roseman, M., and S. Greenberg. 1996. TeamRooms: Network Places for Collaboration. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 325-333. Boston: ACM Press."&gt;Roseman and Greenberg 1996&lt;/abbr&gt;), a metaphor of place embodies principle of centers giving rise to relationships (&lt;abbr title="Fitzpatrick, G. 2000. Centres, Peripheries, and Electronic Communication: Changing Work Practice Boundaries. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 12: 115-148."&gt;Fitzpatrick 2000&lt;/abbr&gt;). The shared purpose of the social world, for example, provides a center around which the people, spaces, and resources make sense. With the notion of centers come other notions, for instance, of relationships around the center, of distances from the center potentially definable along multiple different dimensions, and of dynamically varying relationships of centers to one another." (p.147-149) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href="http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geraldin/Publications/SJIS-Fitzpatrick.pdf"&gt;"Centres, Peripheries and Electronic Communication: Changing work practice boundaries"&lt;/a&gt; she illustrates an example of  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070721_s1.gif" height="228" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; "...there are &lt;i&gt;multiple dimensions&lt;/i&gt; along which the effect of multiple boundaries can be seen in a social world, as depicted [above]. Differentiated peripheries might exist around the &lt;i&gt;degree of commitment&lt;/i&gt; to the social world purpose. This can vary from intense  commitment to wavering commitment. Differentiated peripheries can exist according to the &lt;i&gt;limits of communication&lt;/i&gt;. These might vary from co-located face-to-face communication to geographically and possibly temporally dispersed communication via different technological media. Differentiated peripheries can also be described according to different &lt;i&gt;levels of participation&lt;/i&gt; - these can vary from actively involved in core activities to passively involved in marginal activities. A person's 'location' with respect to the centre can be abstractly defined in this multidimensional space." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Unsolved problems in cross-organizational identity protocols (20070720)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070720_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070720_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Unsolved problems in cross-organizational identity protocols (20070720) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; After reflecting on the recent IIW, Concordia and Burton Group conferences, I noted several open issues which individuals and organizations deploying cross-organizational identity management had encountered with existing identity protocols.  The issues included: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1. View of the past.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are few proposals and no consensus on protocols for the exchange of historical information about identity-related operations (trace of logins, modifications etc.), in support of auditing, undo, data analysis, or other services. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. Notifications.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Suppose an application at one organization has authenticated and managed to get an element of identity from another organization.  How does the provider implement callbacks across organizational boundaries so that the holder of that data copy can be notified when that or related data changes? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;3. Idle timeouts and unified logouts.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Security rules for application developers often state that the application should log the user out after a "period of inactivity".  But how to determine inactivity when a user's interaction with an application is via a web browser communicating with a third party web site, run entirely outside of the organization's firewall?  If a user has put the application's window 'in the background' or minimized it to work on something else, is it still 'active'? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;4. Account linking with records without credentials.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some traditional federated provisioning protocols assume that a user will be linking their accounts in two systems together, and that this can be accomplished by the user 'logging in' to both systems with the names and credentials in their accounts to indicate the user's ability to access them.  Yet the majority of records about individuals, in corporate CRM systems or government databases, have no authentication credentials.  Knowledge-Based Authentication and other methods, while limited, aren't well integrated into existing identity management authentication and assertion protocols. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;5. Delegation to users outside of the organization.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can one organization or individual delegate its access rights to another?  In the Boeing case study, airlines wished to delegate their rights to read the Boeing maintenance web site to the independent maintenance organizations which work on the planes on behalf of the airlines.   An employee or retiree might wish to provide their spouse or someone with power of attorney the right to access their identity attributes which control their direct deposit or retirement account.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;6. Long-term user sessions and portfolios.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does a user build a session and manage their history of activities and interactions with other users and services, and allow this history to be moved between sites? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;7. Scaling assumptions.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's a set of often unstated assumptions each protocol makes on the underlying environment in which it is deployed.  For example, OpenID assumes domain names are stable, long-lived identifiers, whereas in ad-hoc networks, domain names could change on a minute-by-minute basis.  Directory replication protocols don't work well with high rate of change data, such as a user's location or login history. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Henry Story on FOAF and OpenID (20070720)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070720_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070720_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Henry Story on FOAF and OpenID (20070720) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Last week &lt;a href="http://bblfish.net/"&gt;Henry Story&lt;/a&gt; of Sun wrote in his &lt;a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/"&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; on  &lt;a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/the_limitations_of_json"&gt;"The limitations of JSON"&lt;/a&gt; on the difference between syntax and semantics &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;img src="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/resource/Syntax-Semantics-Photo.jpg" alt="differences between syntax and semantics" height="583"/&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "[From a JSON example of a person record] we know there is a map between something related to the string "&lt;tt&gt;firstName&lt;/tt&gt;" and something related to the string "&lt;tt&gt;John&lt;/tt&gt;"... But what exactly is this saying? That there is a mapping from the string firstName to the string John? And what is that to tell us? What if I find somewhere on the web another string "&lt;tt&gt;prenom&lt;/tt&gt;" written by a French person. How could I say that the "&lt;tt&gt;firstName&lt;/tt&gt;" string refers to the same thing the "&lt;tt&gt;prenom&lt;/tt&gt;" name refers to? This does not fall out nicely." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and then gives a FOAF example of the same data, expressed in RDF.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "The RDF version has the following advantages:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt;     &lt;li&gt; you can know what any of the terms mean by clicking on them (append the prefix to the name) and  &lt;a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/get_my_meaning"&gt;do an HTTP GET&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;     &lt;li&gt; you can make statements of equality between relations and things, such as &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;       &lt;tt&gt;foaf:firstname = frenchfoaf:prenom .&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/li&gt;     &lt;li&gt; you can infer things from the above, such as that       &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;       &lt;tt&gt;&amp;lt;http://eg.com/joe#p&amp;gt; a foaf:Agent .&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/li&gt;     &lt;li&gt; you can mix vocabularies from different namespaces as above, just as in Java you can mix classes developed by different organisations. There does not even seem to be the notion of a namespace in JSON, so how would you reuse the work of others?&lt;/li&gt;     &lt;li&gt; you can split the data about something in pieces. So you can put your information about &amp;lt;http://eg.com/joe#p&amp;gt; at the "http://eg.com/joe" URL, in a RESTful way, and other people can talk about him by using that URL. I could for example add the following to my foaf file:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;tt&gt;       &amp;lt;http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card#me&amp;gt; foaf:knows &amp;lt;http://eg.com/joe#p&amp;gt; .&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;      &lt;p&gt; You can't do that in a standard way in JSON because it does not have a URI as a base type (weird for a language that wants to be a web language, to miss the core element of the web, and yet put so much energy into all these other features such as booleans and numbers!) &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Now that does not mean JSON can't be made to work this way, as the SPARQL JSON result set serialisation does. But it does not do the right thing by default. A bit like languages before Java that did not have unicode support by default. The few who were aware of the problems would do the right things, all the rest would just discover the reality of their mistakes by painful experience. "  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Earlier today, he posted on &lt;a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/foaf_openid"&gt;"foaf and openid"&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;"My openid &lt;tt&gt;http://openid.sun.com/bblfish&lt;/tt&gt; should not just return a representation that contains a link to the openid server&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;link rel="openid.server" href="https://openid.sun.com/openid/service" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;but also a link to a representation that contains more information about me, which would be my &lt;a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/i_have_a_foaf_file"&gt;foaf file&lt;/a&gt;. This could be done very simply by growing the header of my openid html by one line:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;link rel="openid.server" href="https://openid.sun.com/openid/service" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;which is what videntity.org has been doing since 2005 ... and openid.org has been providing since early July ... Now all that would be needed then is for dzone to read the foaf file pointed to, and extract the name relation, email and logo from the person described in the foaf file with the same openid. This could be done with a simple &lt;a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/"&gt;SPARQL&lt;/a&gt; query such as"&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; PREFIX foaf: &amp;lt;http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; SELECT ?mbox ?logo ?nick&lt;br /&gt; WHERE {&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;?p foaf:openid &amp;lt;http://openid.sun.com/bblfish&amp;gt;.&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;OPTIONAL { ?p foaf:mbox ?mbox } .&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;OPTIONAL { ?p foaf:logo ?logo } .&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;OPTIONAL { ?p foaf:nick ?nick } .&lt;br /&gt; }&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "For those who are still trying to keep their info private, one could add some content negotiation mechansim to the serving of the foaf file, such that depending on the authentication level of the requestor (dzone in this case), the server would return more or less information. If dzone could somehow show on requesting my foaf file, that I had authenticated them, and that should not be difficult to do, since I just gave them some credentials, I could give them more information about me. How much information exactly could be decided in the same box that pops up when I have to enter the password for the service... A few extra checkboxes on that form could ask me if I want to allow full, partial or minimal view of my foaf relations. Power users with more time on their hands could even decide on a relation by relation basis."&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Other resources include&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href="http://www.foaf-project.org/"&gt;FOAF project&lt;/a&gt; article &lt;a href="http://www.foaf-project.org/2004/11/join.html"&gt;"Getting your foaf file noticed"&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the &lt;tt&gt;phpbb.cc&lt;/tt&gt; blog post &lt;a href="http://blog.phpbb.cc/2007/02/26/openid-foaf-trackback/"&gt;"OpenID + FOAF + TrackBack = ?"&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;from the foaf-dev mailing list, &lt;a href="http://lists.foaf-project.org/pipermail/foaf-dev/2007-June/008605.html"&gt;"proposal for foaf:openid property"&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Observations 1-5 for identity data sharing (20070719)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070719_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070719_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Observations 1-5 for identity data sharing (20070719) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Marc Canter and others have been proposing a data sharing summit to discuss the protocols and other standards needed for data sharing between social networking services. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Besides &lt;a href="http://www.identityblog.com/?page_id=360"&gt;Kim Cameron of &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/"&gt;Microsoft&lt;/a&gt;'s well-known &lt;a href="http://www.identityblog.com/?page_id=354"&gt;"Seven Laws of Identity"&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Digital identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user's consent. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;The solution which discloses the least identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable, long-term solution. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Digital identity systems must limit disclosure of identifying information to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;A universal identity metasystem must support both 'omnidirectional' identifiers for use by public entities and 'unidirectional' identifiers for private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;A universal identity metasystem must channel and enable the interworking of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;A unifying identity metasystem must define the human user as a component integrated through protected and unambiguous human-machine communications. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;A unifying identity metasystem must provide a simple consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt;  &lt;p&gt; and  &lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com/AboutUs/Bios/PrintBio.aspx?Id=92"&gt;Mike Neuenschwander&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com"&gt;Burton Group&lt;/a&gt;'s "Seven Tragic Flaws of Identity" (which I described &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050713_01.shtml"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://vquill.com"&gt;Dave Kearns&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/dir/2005/0718id2.html?fsrc=rss-id"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Failure of the weakest links mustn't lead to catastrophe&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Don't put the role before the start&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Not every identity nail requires the technology hammer&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Use of a system invites abuse of it&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Identifying things doesn't make them more secure&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;Identity isn't about the individual&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;i&gt;There are a lot more than 7 flaws&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I noted some observations I've made on this blog on the specific topic of the technology problems when sharing identity data across organizational boundaries. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;b&gt;Attempting to model a real-world object as complex as a person as merely a 'list of type:value pairs' or 'a hierarchical XML document' is insufficient and unworkable.&lt;/b&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't make &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow"&gt;spherical cow&lt;/a&gt; assumptions: it's been tried many times, and invariably it fails each time.  Today, these are the wrong starting points as they lead to problems when attempting to interwork with systems that have a much richer model, as richer data can't be flattened into a simple list of attributes.  Connections are lost, metadata/annotations are lost.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is derived in part from Mike Neuenschwander's Flaw #6: &lt;i&gt;it's not about the individual: it's about the relationship&lt;/i&gt;.  It was also seen in the failures in LDAP and X.500 to model attributes that are related to each other (e.g., a telephone number and a mailing address are tied to a site): X.500 tried with &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070719_01.shtml"&gt;families of entries&lt;/a&gt; concept, and LDAP deployments ended up with application-proprietary XML blobs as values.   &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For another example, &lt;a href="http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/"&gt;Mike Jones of Microsoft&lt;/a&gt; wrote in &lt;a href="http://self-issued.info/?p=9"&gt;"Interoperable Verified Identity Claims"&lt;/a&gt; on an form of value metadata of interest to CardSpace: indicating whether an attribute value has been verified, and if so, by whom, how, and the validity period of this verification, and suggested a syntax of a rich attribute for a "verified name". I discussed in a &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070522_01.shtml"&gt;"scorecard" for how hard this would be to implement in various existing identity data models&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The best thing to do might be to not even attempt to send the description of a person from one system to another.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. &lt;/b&gt; &lt;b&gt;It's better to provide answers to questions, than the data behind those answers.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com/AboutUs/Bios/PrintBio.aspx?Id=24"&gt;Bob Blakley&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href="http://www.burtongroup.com/"&gt;Burton Group&lt;/a&gt; wrote in &lt;a href="http://notabob.blogspot.com/2006/07/meta-identity-system.html"&gt;"The Meta-identity System"&lt;/a&gt; about an "Identity Oracle" &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"In order to build an asset, the Identity Provider has to stop giving its crown jewels - identity data - to its customers. It can do this simply by changing what it puts into the claims it hands out to Relying Parties. Instead of answering a Relying Party's query "How old is Bob?" with the claim "Bob is 45", it can answer "How old is Bob?" with the claim "Bob is over 18". Instead of answering the query "Is Bob a good credit risk?" with the claim "Bob's credit history is (fifty-page report goes here)", it can answer "Is Bob a good credit risk?" with the claim "97% of people with credit histories similar to Bob's repaid loans of under $200,000 on time." ... The second advantage ... is that it allows the Identity Provider to provide a service to Relying Parties while minimizing the disclosure of specific personal information to those parties - thereby reducing privacy risks to subjects." &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This would also help to address the problems &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_02.shtml"&gt;I mentioned in an earlier post&lt;/a&gt;: services receiving data from other services, and then re-using that information in ways the user didn't expect.  Also it makes it somewhat easier for the provider of the data to specify whether it is authoritative for that data.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, this makes caching by the recipient more difficult, and issues for how to handle notification of changes would need to be addressed.   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;However, before sending an answer, it is necessary for the sender to have confidence the service that asked the question will be able to understand it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;3.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;b&gt;A service shouldn't share an item of identity data with another service unless the sender knows the recipient can understand it.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Early directory browsing applications were based on the assumption that the client application would search for some user's entry, and upon finding it, retrieve "all user attributes". The directory server would happily oblige and return all the attributes of the user in that entry (subject to access control restrictions), and leave it to the client to sort out what to do with them.&lt;/p&gt;  As I mentioned in &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050108_01.shtml"&gt;the principle of contractual disclosure&lt;/a&gt;, this is a bad idea today. Instead,&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;  An identity system must only reveal identifying information to a  recipient if the identity system and that recipient have agreed on how  the recipient can handle and use that information. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; This is to ensure the identity system does not inadvertently violate its data management policy by revealing information to a recipient that is not going to follow a compatible policy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; Without such an agreement in place, the operators of an identity system has no information about what the recipient will do with that information, an in particular has no recourse if it finds a recipient has misused a user's information provided to it, even if that recipient in general has a place in identity relationships, and even if the information is part of the 'least' identifying information for the user. If the recipient has no identified policy for managing a particular kind of identifying information, then the identity system wouldn't be able to fully answer a user's or auditor's question of how it ensures that the control of that data is maintained. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; This principle would IMHO be used primarily with respect to private information, but also is relevant for public information: most identity providers will want to make certain statements about the information they provide (e.g. the format, interpretation of fields, ownership/copyright, appropriate/acceptable use etc), as well as defend against libel, provide the right to later revise or revoke it, etc.  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; Some of these topics are also being considered by the &lt;a href="http://www.projectliberty.org/"&gt;Liberty Alliance&lt;/a&gt; as it has taken on the evolution of the "&lt;a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/standards/idm/igf/index.html"&gt;Carmel Apple&lt;/a&gt;" (IGF CARML AAPML) specifications proposed earlier this year by &lt;a href="http://blogs.oracle.com/identityprivacy/"&gt;Phil Hunt and others of Oracle&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;It is also necessary for the recipient of a piece of information to understand not just the information itself, but any &lt;i&gt;metadata&lt;/i&gt; which the sender has attached to it.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;4. Metadata needs to stay attached to identity data.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; Metadata for an element of identity information includes administrative annotations, rights and restrictions.  Besides the example given earlier, other forms of metadata include,&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;where did the information originate?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what can be done with this data?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;is retransmission allowed?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;when does the data expire?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In the electronic news gathering and media environments, the preservation of &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_01.shtml"&gt;the metadata on press photos&lt;/a&gt; is critically important.  If the name of the photographer or the releases becomes detached from a photo as the photo travels from one organization to another, the photographer may not get credit, or the recipient may not be able to use it.  For this reason, tools such as Photoshop that perform 'drastic' manipulation of images (cropping, resizing, retouching) still recognize the metadata and preserve the metadata values on the image files which these tools generate.  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yet this data is at risk in cross-organization identity flows, as existing identity protocols and systems often make "lossy" translations, and don't have fields in their protocols or databases for this incoming metadata. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In theory, while it might be considered OK to remove metadata when the data has been munged into a privacy protecting database where individuals can no longer be directly discerned, in practice these databases may not be viable, as I mentioned in &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070619_02.shtml"&gt;"extracting data from links in social networks"&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070616_02.shtml"&gt;"attacks on anonymized social networks and fudging oracles"&lt;/a&gt;, and quoted  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "... any privacy mechanism, interactive or non-interactive, providing reasonably accurate answers to a 0.761 fraction of randomly generated weighted subset sum queries, and arbitrary answers on the remaining 0.239 fraction, is blatantly non-private." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;5. There is no universal schema.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050126_01.shtml"&gt;person schemas have been around for 107 years&lt;/a&gt;, during the early 1980s the CCITT/ISO for OSI standardized, based on the work of the &lt;a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3586"&gt;IFIP International Computer Messaging WG&lt;/a&gt;, an &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/x400schema.shtml"&gt;electronic mail addressing scheme&lt;/a&gt; that would in theory route messages based on a combination of  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;           &amp;nbsp;country-name&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;            &lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;administration-domain-name&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;network-address&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;            &lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;terminal-identifier&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;private-domain-name&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;organization-name&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;numeric-user-identifier&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;personal-name&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;           &amp;nbsp;organizational-unit-names&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This led to the X.500 &lt;tt&gt;organizationalPerson&lt;/tt&gt;, and numerous attempts were subsequently made to develop a common, minimal subset representation of an individual person in an LDAP directory: &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4524.txt"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;account&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2218.txt"&gt;Internet White Pages Schema&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/98aug/I-D/draft-ietf-lsd-ldapv3-wp-00.txt"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;wpSchema&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/920/920f12.html"&gt;Lightweight Internet Person Schema&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2798.txt"&gt;&lt;tt&gt;inetOrgPerson&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Microsoft &lt;tt&gt;User&lt;/tt&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;As I mentioned in &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050201_01.shtml"&gt;"Client implications of Kim's fifth law"&lt;/a&gt;, schemas such as these made assumptions which were not global.  For example, in the case of naming attributes,  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;th&gt;Schema Assumption&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Invalidated by&lt;/th&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;individuals only have 3-4 naming attributes&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt; 	"A fully evolved nomenclature consists of (in this order) laqab,  	kunya, ism, patronymic (with or without further nasab), nisba(s)..." 	from &lt;a href="http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/BeestonNomen.pdf"&gt;Arabic Nomenclature: a summary guide for beginners&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;everyone has a given name and surname&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;for cultures which do not make use of a surname or family name, e.g., Icelandic or Malay&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;everyone has a single full name or nickname that is what everyone else refers to them as&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Even in the US, Dr. Robert Smith would expect to be called "Dr. Smith" by a patient and "Bob" by a family member.&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;everyone in a culture has the same 'display order' for their name&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;   	"I've found that name order in Chinese persons is a marginally  	reliable indicator of attitudes towards the West.", quoted from 	&lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001435.html"&gt;http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001435.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the late 1990s &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050614_01.shtml"&gt;I and others in the SP-DNA working group&lt;/a&gt; attempted to develop a CIM-aligned "conceptual model" for directory contents, to separate applications from directory schemas.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Conceptual Model was to be specified as a series of views, each corresponding to a role in the deployment (Service Provider or Hosted Organization).  Within a view, were a series of layers.  Each layer defined a UML graph illustrating the relationships between the modeled objects, implemented as instances of classes.  (The layers interconnected and were mainly a way of constraining the size of each graph to be understandable and fit on a single page.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;    &lt;p&gt;More recently, the identity schemas have been tied to &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050616_01.shtml"&gt;the web ontology language OWL&lt;/a&gt;, through &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050617_02.shtml"&gt;reverse engineering of schema&lt;/a&gt;.  However, as I discussed in &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050714_01.shtml"&gt;"ontologies for schema, continued"&lt;/a&gt;, there is probably no &lt;i&gt;single&lt;/i&gt; ontology possible for describing all that has been done with directory schema, and in &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060608_01.shtml"&gt;"Schema ontologies: some considerations"&lt;/a&gt;, that there is not yet a generally agreed-upon ontology framework amongst ontology researchers (everything from &lt;a href="http://www.opencyc.org"&gt;OpenCyc&lt;/a&gt; with its &lt;a href="http://www.opencyc.org/doc/topic_map"&gt;topic map&lt;/a&gt; to the ISO SUMO to dozens of industry bodies have their own upper-level ontologies and languages, no de-facto standard, as &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_ontology_(computer_science)"&gt;debated on the Wikipedia pge for upper ontology&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the 'minimal subset' of schema across existing identity systems is &lt;b&gt;so&lt;/b&gt; minimal that it is not really worth standardizing, since too many systems have assumptions that limit their interoperability in this regard (e.g. basic issues such as restrictions on the form of a  name or the uniqueness constraints (across all time, across multiple systems) of a "unique identifier" attribute, let alone questions such as whether they have a concept such as of "individual person" or not).  &lt;p&gt;The bigger issue than trying to find the minimal schema is how service-specific, application-specific, community-specific and user-specific schema &lt;i&gt;extensions&lt;/i&gt; can better be handled.  There is no way that a universal schema will occomodate every schema need, since any set of users might identify a need for an element of schema that is not met by any existing schema.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For a practical example, suppose a service wishes to interwork with another service in which there are Icelandic or Russian users who have a naming attribute "Patryonymic". It is insufficient for a service to merely store this as 'yet another attribute', as it has key social significance, as described in the  &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic"&gt;Wikipedia entry on Patronymic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;     "A Russian will almost never formally address a person named Mikhail     as just 'Mikhail', but rather as 'Mikhail' plus his patronymic (for     instance, 'Mikhail Nikolayevich' or 'Mikhail Sergeyevich' etc).     However, on informal occasions when a person is using the diminutive     of a name, such as Misha for Mikhail, the patronymic is hardly ever     used. " &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This issue is discussed further in my post on &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050203_01.shtml"&gt;"decentralized l10n"&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;One can envisage locales which correspond to very small enclaves of use, perhaps one individual or a particular set of individuals.  These locales are defined by their participant users rather than by a geography. They do not need to imply a different and private written language, the locale could use English, Klingon, or other languages or combinations of languages. Instead, the locale defines a particular set of operating conventions for software in this locale, that are driven by the requirements of the participants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Identity Management, this implies that the schema of the deployment, as well as aspects of the system which depend upon that schema, such as the provisioning user interface, should be determined by the choices made for that locale, which might be arbitrary and change over time.   If a community decides to have for example a &lt;TT&gt;favoriteDrink&lt;/TT&gt; attribute, and defines the data management expectations for this attribute (it is a user supplied string that can be displayed to any user of the system), there is no reason to suggest that this attribute will be in conflict with other requirements of an extensible or general purpose identity system, so it should be possible to implement. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; As the set of potential locales in this expanded concept is quite large, there is no possibility that a single vendor could attempt to hard code or upon demand implement every possible locale.  Nor would there be an external volunteer community that would be willing to take up the challenge and implement the locale.  Furthermore, attempting to even coordinate this system at a single point would be taxing to that service provider, this would require a system that could scale to the size of (for example) the Yahoo! Groups environment. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; For this concept to be reached, therefore, it seems to imply that the localization process is decentralized: the users of a system can modify their system to meet their needs.  The approach sounds simple in practice, although going by implementation experience, it is rarely fully realized. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt; Some of the barriers to decentralized localization of existing Identity Management deployments have been:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;an immutable schema in the protocol,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;an immutable set of attributes or relationships,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;schema which is added cannot be deleted,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a requirement that all components of the deployment have the same schema,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;additions require special programming skills,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;lack of reuse: every application needs to be customized independently&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050204_01.shtml"&gt;evaluation criteria&lt;/a&gt; I proposed, in the context of naming attributes, included &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt;  &lt;li&gt;Does the data format's syntax allow an individual's name and other attributes to be expressed correctly?&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;If the name can't even be written correctly (it is truncated, misformatted or characters cannot be encoded), then the resulting name may not match properly, and will not display property.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;If names are encoded in a structured format, is the structure based on the locale of the individual?&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For example, some systems may give a choice between two options&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;title givenname middle-initials surname qualifier&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;initials surname qualifier&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and individuals whose locales do not use surnames as a typical naming attribute will not be able to have their name displayed properly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;If multiple structures are possible, are the choices of encoding, layout or ordering of the name under the control of the individual?&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Name formatting is in some locales an individual choice that signifies the attitude of the the individual regarding different cultures and their name formatting conventions.  Enforcing a single encoding may misrepresent the individual's opinion, and may make the user not be locatable in the system.  Similarly, an individual who has changed their name might expect their new name to be "primary" and their older names become only a cross-reference or be deleted.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Does the system allow for a the individual to specify different names and other attribute sthat are be used in different contexts or situations?&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In many cultures, people will use different names (formal names, nicknames, familial names) in different situations.  They may also be multicultural, and express their identity differently to each culture. A system that asks a user to supply "their name" in one context may cause that user embarrasment if that name is used in other contexts, or may simply not be a useful search identifier.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Families of entries (20070719)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070719_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070719_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Families of entries (20070719) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One of the X.500 features added for the 1997 revision is &lt;i&gt;compound entries&lt;/i&gt; provided by &lt;i&gt;families of entries&lt;/i&gt;, defined in section 8.11 of &lt;a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.501-200508-I/en"&gt;X.501(2005)&lt;/a&gt;, and described on the X.500 pbwiki fan site &lt;tt&gt;x500standard.com&lt;/tt&gt; in the page &lt;a href="http://www.x500standard.com/pmwiki.php?n=X500.FamiliesOfEntries"&gt;"X500/Families of Entries?"&lt;/a&gt;.  The compound entry concept provides X.500 directory servers with something similar to one of the virtual directory features: the ability to assemble a virtual 'view' in a single directory entry, in which the attributes of that view are made up of data from multiple sources.  However, unlike a virtual directory, &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;whereas a virtual directory pulls information from relational databases or multiple directories using transformation rules and mapping functions, the compound entry only pulls information from entries in the same directory server and those entries must be located in a single subtree, &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the 'view' is primarily of use for deleting and searching; directory client applications which add/modify/search entries need to be aware of the division of entries forming the compound entry, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;no fancy transforms or joins are provided in X.500 compound entries: there needs to be at least one real directory entry backing each virtual entry, as each directory entry that is to be a compound entry is part of a "families of entries". &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, families of entries are useful for modelling relationships between related attributes that make up a user's entry.  For example, in a traditional X.500(88) or X.500(1993) directory, a user's entry might resemble &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; dn: uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: person&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: inetOrgPerson&lt;br /&gt; uid: jbloggs&lt;br /&gt; &lt;b&gt;telephoneNumber: 1 213 555 1212&lt;br /&gt; telephoneNumber: 1 408 555 1212&lt;br /&gt; postalAddress: 1 Foo Street $ San Jose, CA $ 94087 $ USA&lt;br /&gt; postalAddress: 1 Bar Street $ Los Angeles, CA $ 90210 $ USA&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the above example, it is not possible to specify in X.500(88)/X.500(93) that the telephone number with the "1 213" prefix is associated with the "Los Angeles" address, and that the telephone number with the "1 408" prefix is associated with the "San Jose" address.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The problem gets worse when it is necessary to have multiple multi-valued attributes used by directory-enabled applications, as in &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; dn: uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: person&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: inetOrgPerson&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: mobileDeviceUser&lt;br /&gt; uid: jbloggs&lt;br /&gt; telephoneNumber: 1 213 555 1212&lt;br /&gt; telephoneNumber: 1 408 555 1212&lt;br /&gt; &lt;b&gt;mobileTelephoneNumber: 1 213 555 9999&lt;br /&gt; mobileTelephoneNumber: 1 408 555 9999&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; postalAddress: 1 Foo Street $ San Jose, CA $ 94087 $ USA&lt;br /&gt; postalAddress: 1 Bar Street $ Los Angeles, CA $ 90210 $ USA&lt;br /&gt; &lt;b&gt;mobileDeviceCapabilities: &amp;lt;cameraphone/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; mobileDeviceCapabilities: &amp;lt;java/&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An application cannot tell which &lt;tt&gt;mobileTelephoneNumber&lt;/tt&gt; is for a device with the &lt;tt&gt;cameraphone&lt;/tt&gt; feature, and which has the &lt;tt&gt;java&lt;/tt&gt; feature.  LDAP/X.500 doesn't have any unique identifier for attribute values, and embedding the telephone number in the mobile device capabilities leads to duplication of data and problems for other applications which merely want the phone numbers of the user.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The approach taken in X.500(2005) to address this problem (while being protocol-backwards-compatible with existing X.500 clients) is &lt;i&gt;families of entries&lt;/i&gt;, which are made up of a small subtree of entries, in which the entry at the top of the subtree is an ordinary entry that is termed the &lt;i&gt;ancestor&lt;/i&gt;, and that ancestor entry is part of one or more &lt;i&gt;families&lt;/i&gt;.  A family is the ancestor entry plus a collection of one or more &lt;i&gt;family member&lt;/i&gt; subtrees below it, in which the entries at the top of each &lt;i&gt;family member&lt;/i&gt; subtree have the same most-structural-object-class. (As an entry can have only one most-structural-object-class, this means that an entry can be an ancestor entry with multiple families below it, but the only entries in common between two or more families is the ancestor entry itself).  A family member is a subtree, in which the entry at the top of the subtree is immediately subordinate to an ancestor entry.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An ordinary entry is made into an ancestor when another entry is added below it, and the entry being added has the auxiliary object class &lt;tt&gt;child&lt;/tt&gt;.  When this occurs, the directory server automatically makes the entry immediately above that one become an ancestor entry by giving it the abstract object class &lt;tt&gt;parent&lt;/tt&gt;.  All of the entries in the subtree below an ancestor entry have the object class &lt;tt&gt;child&lt;/tt&gt;.  A &lt;i&gt;strand&lt;/i&gt; is a hierarchy of entries from an ancestor down to a leaf family member entry.   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For example, an entry with object class &lt;tt&gt;person&lt;/tt&gt; might be an ancestor entry with two families: a &lt;tt&gt;location&lt;/tt&gt; family and a &lt;tt&gt;personalComputingDevice&lt;/tt&gt; family. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; dn: uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: person&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: inetOrgPerson&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: mobileDeviceUser&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: parent&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;#&lt;/tt&gt;automatically added by server as this entry has two families&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; uid: jbloggs&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; dn: cn=office-Northern, uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: location&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: child&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;#&lt;/tt&gt;this entry is one family member of the location family jbloggs&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; cn: office-Northern&lt;br /&gt; telephoneNumber: 1 408 555 1212&lt;br /&gt; postalAddress: 1 Foo Street $ San Jose, CA $ 94087 $ USA&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; dn: cn=office-Southern, uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: location&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: child&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;#&lt;/tt&gt;this entry is another family member of the location family of jbloggs&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; cn: office-Southern&lt;br /&gt; telephoneNumber: 1 213 555 1212&lt;br /&gt; postalAddress: 1 Bar Street $ Los Angeles, CA $ 90210 $ USA&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; dn: cn=mobilePhone-ATTWS, uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: personalComputingDevice&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: child&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;#&lt;/tt&gt;this entry is one family member of the personalComputingDevice family of jbloggs&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; cn: mobilePhone-ATTWS&lt;br /&gt; mobileTelephoneNumber: 1 213 555 9999&lt;br /&gt; mobileDeviceCapabilities: &amp;lt;cameraphone/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; dn: cn=mobilePhone-Cingular, uid=jbloggs, dc=example, dc=com&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: top&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: personalComputingDevice&lt;br /&gt; objectClass: child&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;#&lt;/tt&gt;this entry another family member of the personalComputingDevice family of jbloggs&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; cn: mobilePhone-Cingular&lt;br /&gt; mobileTelephoneNumber: 1 408 555 9999&lt;br /&gt; mobileDeviceCapabilities: &amp;lt;java/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the above LDIF, there are four strands: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;{ &lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;tt&gt;cn=office-Northern,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;  } &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;{ &lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;tt&gt;cn=office-Southern,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;  } &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;{ &lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;tt&gt;cn=mobilePhone-ATTWS,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;  } &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;{ &lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;tt&gt;cn=mobilePhone-Cingular,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;  } &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   &lt;p&gt;The application can control what kind of virtual directory-like behavior it expects from the directory server with the &lt;tt&gt;FamilyGrouping&lt;/tt&gt; argument on the Compare, Search and Remove (delete entry) requests.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;tt&gt;FamilyGrouping&lt;/tt&gt; options applicable for removing entries are:  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;entryOnly&lt;/tt&gt;: Each entry is considered independently from all others, the child/parent relationships are ignored.  This is the default for backwards compatibility with applications expecting traditional X.500 semantics.  Deleting an ancestor entry would cause a &lt;tt&gt;notAllowedOnNonLeaf&lt;/tt&gt; error, since a client can't delete an entry with subordinates. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;compoundEntry&lt;/tt&gt;: Deleting an ancestor entry causes all subordinate child entries to be deleted as well.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Where it gets interesting is in search filter evaluation.  The &lt;tt&gt;FamilyGrouping&lt;/tt&gt; options applicable for comparing and searching are: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;entryOnly&lt;/tt&gt;: Each entry is considered independently from all others: the child/parent relationships are ignored.  This is the default for backwards compatibility with applications expecting traditional X.500 semantics. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;compoundEntry&lt;/tt&gt;: The attributes from all family members appear to be grouped together into a single compound entry. When searching, if there are several attributes of the same type coming from different family member entries, all the values are merged together. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;strands&lt;/tt&gt;: Each strand is considered independently, and all family member entries on a strand are merged together.  If the merged attributes from the entries on a strand match the search filter, then that strand matches the search filter. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;multiStrand&lt;/tt&gt;: A search based at the ancestor entry causes all combination of strands to be tested, and the compound entry matches the filter if at least one &lt;b&gt;combination&lt;/b&gt; of strands matches the filter.  &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the &lt;tt&gt;strands&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;multiStrand&lt;/tt&gt; options, family member entries which have attributes that contribute to the match are called &lt;i&gt;contributing members&lt;/i&gt;, and all of the entries on that strand are called &lt;i&gt;participating members&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The client can control which entry's information it wants returned from the search with the &lt;tt&gt;familyReturn&lt;/tt&gt; field of the entry information selection included in a Search request.  The client can specify &lt;tt&gt;contributingEntriesOnly&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;participatingEntriesOnly&lt;/tt&gt;, or &lt;tt&gt;compoundEntry&lt;/tt&gt;, and optionally a set of object classes of families that should also be returned even if they didn't match.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Note that unlike a virtual directory, the entries from matching strands are returned as individual search result entries, rather than having their attributes combined into a single entry. So when compound entries are being used, directory applications would need to be aware of this division of entries and be prepared that matching an entry might result in a train of additional child entries with the attributes being returned. Compound-unaware applications might not work correctly.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For example, if a client searches for &lt;tt&gt;(&amp;amp;(uid=jbloggs)(telephoneNumber=1 213*))&lt;/tt&gt; with X.500(88) or X.500(1993) semantics (equivalent to the &lt;tt&gt;entryOnly&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;tt&gt;FamilyGrouping&lt;/tt&gt; and the &lt;tt&gt;contributingEntriesOnly&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;tt&gt;familyReturn&lt;/tt&gt; options), then the search would not match anything, as there is no entry with both those attributes.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;If a client searches for &lt;tt&gt;(&amp;amp;(uid=jbloggs)(telephoneNumber=1 213*))&lt;/tt&gt; with the &lt;tt&gt;strands&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;tt&gt;FamilyGrouping&lt;/tt&gt; and the &lt;tt&gt;participatingEntriesOnly&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;tt&gt;familyReturn&lt;/tt&gt;, then the search would match the strands &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;{ &lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;b&gt;[matches uid]&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;tt&gt;cn=office-Southern,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;b&gt;[matches telephoneNumber]&lt;/b&gt; } &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;{ &lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;b&gt;[matches uid]&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;tt&gt;cn=mobilePhone-ATTWS,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt; &lt;b&gt;[matches mobileTelephoneNumber]&lt;/b&gt; } &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and the client would receive the entries&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;cn=office-Southern,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;tt&gt;cn=mobilePhone-ATTWS,uid=jbloggs,dc=example,dc=com&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Annex C of  &lt;a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.511-200508-I/en"&gt;X.511&lt;/a&gt; provides examples of the use of families of entries.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;David Chadwick &lt;a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/draft-chadwick-families/"&gt;proposed&lt;/a&gt; an Internet-Draft for adding familes of entries support as controls to the LDAP protocol, however this draft expired in 1999.  It is &lt;a href="http://sec.cs.kent.ac.uk/download/FamiliesID-1.txt"&gt;archived&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Whose access controls enforce data sharing across social network services? (20070718)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Whose access controls enforce data sharing across social network services? (20070718) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;With independent siloed Internet services, a user must manually switch from viewing one service's web site to viewing that of another service. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_s1b.gif" /&gt;  &lt;p&gt;As these silos add oft-requested APIs to provide external applications access to the siloed data, it allows for the possibility of interaction between services.  For example, the experience with the portal Facebook discussed by &lt;a href="http://www.beuchelt.com/" lang="en"&gt;Gerald Beuchelt&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.beuchelt.com/index_de.htm" lang="de"&gt;Gerald Beuchelt&lt;/a&gt; in his blog post &lt;a href="http://beuchelt.blogdns.net:8080/FacebookHmm.aspx"&gt;"Facebook ... hmm"&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://ceppi.blogs.com/arbitrage/"&gt;Chris Ceppi&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href="http://ceppi.blogs.com/arbitrage/2007/07/facebooks-point.html"&gt;Facebook's Pointer Platform&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;If a user of services A and B grant service C the right to access the user's profile as held in B and their profile as held in A, in order to cause their data from A to show up in B, then the user's access control requests should be respected regardless of where the data is being displayed.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Problems arise, however, if access control checks are decoupled from the data access, and applications using an API can bypass the fine-grained access control checks which a service implements for its own rendered views.     &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_s2.gif" /&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In some current implementations, the user of A can allow an independent application C the right to access their data through the API, but when this occurs, the fine-grained access controls which the user placed on their data merely becomes "advisory" - the application C might not interpret the access control at all, or if it does, might not implement them in line with the user's expectations.   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; For example, an application that is allowed access to read a user's Flickr photos and display them in the user's Facebook page to the user's Facebook friends, might by default display photos that the user marked as "private" in Flickr (violating the user's access controls), since Flickr doesn't know what the application is planning to display the photos to third parties. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;What should be the appropriate points for access control decisions to be made when data is transferred between 'mashedup' Internet services?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;If access control statements or security capabilities are to be transferred between applications, in what format should they be encoded?  If, instead, the statements/capabilties are not to be transferred, but the decisions made at the source of the data, in what format should the application's intentions to that data be described?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;How should the differences in semantics between the applications be handled?  A "friend" concept in one social network service is not necessarily applicable as a "friend" in another service, since the term has become overloaded.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Is there scope for, for example, one of the &lt;a href="http://projectliberty.org/index.php/liberty/specifications__1"&gt;Liberty&lt;/a&gt; protocols to be of use here? &lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;  Perhaps this might be discussed at a &lt;a href="http://datasharing.maxwiki.com/"&gt;DataShareCamp&lt;/a&gt; (the idea of a conference for discussing data sharing between social network sites through services such as OpenID AX was proposed by &lt;a href="http://www.identitywoman.net"&gt;Marc Canter&lt;/a&gt; in his blog post &lt;a href="http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2007/07/datasharecamp"&gt;"DataShareCamp"&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Metadata handling principles for press photos (20070718)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070718_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Metadata handling principles for press photos (20070718) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Users of digital cameras, photo editing software and photo hosting services are becoming increasingly aware of the presence of metadata in their image files.  Formats such as &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif"&gt;Exif&lt;/a&gt;, which encodes values for &lt;i&gt;technical&lt;/i&gt; metadata (date and time, shutter speed, color space, ...) in TIFF and JPEG, are widely supported in both consumer-grade and professional cameras and software packages.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Besides technical metadata, other categories for photo metadata are &lt;i&gt;descriptive&lt;/i&gt; (captions, locations, persons in the photo, genre,...), &lt;i&gt;administrative&lt;/i&gt; (GUID, date created, job id, ...) and &lt;i&gt;rights&lt;/i&gt; (creator, credit, model releases, ...).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.iptc.org/"&gt;International Press Telecommunications Council&lt;/a&gt; "&lt;a href="http://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/0.0/documentation/IPTC-PhotoMetadataWhitePaper2007_11.pdf"&gt;Photo Metadata White Paper 2007 revision 11&lt;/a&gt;" includes a guiding set of four principles for metadata attached to digital images, especially photographs created by professional photographers: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;"&lt;b&gt;Metadata is essential to identify and track digital images&lt;/b&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Ownership metadata must never be removed&lt;/b&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Metadata must be written in formats that are understood by all&lt;/b&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Metadata is essential to ensure maximum image quality and image handling efficiency&lt;/b&gt;."&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the issues the IPTC noted in their white paper included &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;there is a need to define mappings between different photo metadata formats with similar schema elements,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;some metadata values such as "creator" or "copyright" should be write-once (perhaps with a digital signature to detect tampering),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;file formats should include the version history of metadata, not just their most recent values,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;cameras should allow the photographer to preset some metadata so that it is automatically put onto all photos they create, and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;digital assets need globally unique identifiers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;( See also &lt;a href="http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/phmdc_2007a.html"&gt;Blog posts by David Riecks&lt;/a&gt; from the First International Photo Metadata Conference summarize presentations by media organizations and software vendors on the importance of creating and preserving photo metadata.)&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Hypothetically, a photograph such as  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/images/awh06c01.jpg" height="192" width="150"/&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;has a &lt;a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/fsaall:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(fsa+8b29516))+@field(COLLID+fsa))"&gt;metadata record&lt;/a&gt; which resembles (in part)&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; TITLE: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.&lt;br /&gt; AUTHOR: Lange, Dorothea, photographer.&lt;br /&gt; OTHER TITLES: Migrant mother.&lt;br /&gt; CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1936 Feb.&lt;br /&gt; SUMMARY: Portrait shows Florence Thompson with several of her children in a photograph known as "Migrant Mother."&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Migrant agricultural laborers.&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Mothers &amp;amp; children.&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Poor persons.&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Migrants--California&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Nitrate negatives.&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Portrait photographs.&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: Group portraits.&lt;br /&gt; SUBJECT: United States--California--San Luis Obispo County--Nipomo.&lt;br /&gt; MEDIUM: 1 negative : nitrate ; 4 x 5 in.&lt;br /&gt; PART OF: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection&lt;br /&gt; REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540&lt;br /&gt; DIGITAL ID: (b&amp;amp;w digital file from nitrate neg.) fsa 8b29516&lt;br /&gt; DIGITAL ID: (digital file from print) ppmsca 12883 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.12883 &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;There are several individual/organizational identities related to this photograph, including &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the photographer &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange"&gt;Dorothea Lange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the organization &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_Administration"&gt;Farm Security Administration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the subject of the photo &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson"&gt;Florence Owens Thompson&lt;/a&gt; and her children&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Two open questions are: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1. How should these identities be represented in photographic metadata?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;is there a controlled vocabulary of relations (e.g., "photographer", "subject", "model", "parent-or-legal-guardian-of-model", "member-of-a-group", ...)?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;should the use of unique identifiers be recommended, and if so, what forms, and how are they transferred?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what attributes are desirable for inclusion in these identities? name? age? contact information? &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;is meta-metadata needed to indicate the source, authenticity or validation of a value?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. Can the four principles mentioned in the white paper have meaning for non-image (indeed non-media) data, such as identity-related information?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Can an individual or organization attach metadata to identity-related records which they create and exchange with others?  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;How do we ensure that rights information encodings are widely understood? &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;A key goal of image processing workflow is to preserve metadata on photos even if the photos are manipulated/resized or converted from one file format to another - how can we prevent metadata on identity records from being lost or 'mangled' by the metadirectory/virtual directory/federation technologies which translate identity records from one format to another?&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>NRL ontology for security policy (20070717)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070717_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070717_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; NRL ontology for security policy (20070717) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The 2005 paper &lt;a href="http://chacs.nrl.navy.mil/publications/CHACS/2005/2005kim-NRLOntologyFinal.pdf"&gt;"Security Ontology for Annotating Resources"&lt;/a&gt; by A. Kim, J. Luo and M. Kang of US Naval Research Laboratory discusses ontologies expressed in OWL for representing security constraints and features. These ontologies can be used by a 'matchmaker' algorithm in a service-oriented architecture for determining whether a service requestor and provider intending to interact each have features that meet each of their peer's requirements. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; An example of a requestor's feature description, that it has a X.509 certificate issued by Verisign, would be &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;  &amp;lt;credential:X.509Certificate rdf:ID="X.509"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;credential:issuer rdf:resource="Verisign" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/credential:X.509Certificate&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;securityMain:SAML rdf:ID="Capability1"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;securitymain:reqCredentials rdf:resource="&amp;amp;credential;X.509" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/securityMain:SAML&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;agent:Agent rdf:about="#BookRequest"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;securityCapability rdf:resource="#Capability1"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/agent:Agent&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;and a service requiring a X.509 certificate &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;  &amp;lt;securityMain:SAML rdf:ID="Requirement"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;securityMain:reqCredentials rdf:resource="&amp;amp;credential;X.509" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/securityMain:SAML&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &amp;lt;profile:Profile rdf:about="#BookSeller"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/tt&gt;...&lt;tt&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;securityRequirement rdf:resource="#Requirement1"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/profile:Profile&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Updated Schemat Sources (20070716)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070716_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070716_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Updated Schemat Sources (20070716) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.informed-control.com/"&gt;Informed Control&lt;/a&gt; released today updated sources for the research software components  &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060909_01.shtml"&gt;Schemat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;, &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070407_01.shtml"&gt;Schemat Consumer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; and &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070706_01.shtml"&gt;Schemat Selector&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;, that illustrate the use of RDF for schema metadata retrieval and processing. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This update includes a few minor build bug fixes and adds an &lt;a href="http://ant.apache.org"&gt;Apache Ant&lt;/a&gt; &lt;tt&gt;build.xml&lt;/tt&gt; file to make compiling easier.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Download the latest snapshot of the Schemat, Schemat Consumer and Schemat Selector research software source code in &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schemat/schemat-src-20070716.zip"&gt;schemat-src-20070716.zip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;, last updated 2007 July 16.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; This software is distributed under the BSD-style &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schemat/LICENSE.txt"&gt;Informed Control Research Software License B&lt;/a&gt;, and relies upon third-party components distributed under various BSD-style licenses, the Apache Public License, and Netscape Public License.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;More information on the Schemat Selector, Schemat Consumer and Schemat are available at the &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/ont.shtml"&gt;Schema Ontology Tools&lt;/a&gt; page.&lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Blog keyword and link clouds (20070712)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070712_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070712_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Blog keyword and link clouds (20070712)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; I tried generating a basic 'keyword cloud' for &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/"&gt;http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt; to illustrate the primary themes of the blog. Unlike a &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud"&gt;tag cloud&lt;/a&gt; which relies upon a manually-assigned set of tags, this uses a stop list-filtered set of words which occur in multiple posts on this blog. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;center&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070712_kc.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/center&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, a 'domain cloud' of the domain names of outgoing &lt;tt&gt;a href&lt;/tt&gt; from this blog.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;center&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070712_lc.gif" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/center&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I believe these would be improved if there was a visual analog for indicating the relative age of each (the time since the keyword or domain was last referenced), but haven't yet discovered a mechanism other than fading, which is more difficult to describe in purely text and would probably require an animated GIF or Flash to show the change over time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Why geographic location specifications matter to identity (20070712)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070712_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070712_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Why geographic location specifications matter to identity (20070712)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;    &lt;p&gt;As IM, Voice over IP (VoIP) and mobile telecommunications/data protocols converge, there  is a desire to augment the real-time data tracked about a user with their geographic  location, in order to support commercial location-based-services (your nearest Starbucks is  100 meters north) and location reporting to the emergency services for mobile users (mobile  &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_911"&gt;E911&lt;/a&gt; in the US).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/"&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; working group &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/geopriv-charter.html"&gt;GEOPRIV&lt;/a&gt; (Geographic location/privacy) was chartered to&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"...assess the authorization, integrity and privacy requirements that must be met in order to transfer [geographic location] information, or authorize the release or representation of such information through an agent."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"...select an already standardized format to recommend for use in representing location per se.  A key task will be to enhance this format and protocol approaches using the enhanced format, to ensure that the security and privacy methods are available to diverse location-aware applications."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The results of this working group activity are of interest to identity protocol development, as &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1.&lt;/b&gt; Maintaining knowledge of the location of an individual person (based on the location of one or more computing devices that person has been using) is one of the most difficult use case for traditional identity management systems, as the location data is sensitive, highly dynamic, sourced from multiple (potentially thousands) providers, and represented in several incompatible formats (e.g., location as lat+long vs. location as street address).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2.&lt;/b&gt; The working group &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3693.txt"&gt;requirements document (RFC 3693, February 2004)&lt;/a&gt; discusses, amongst other topics, the need for privacy rules that controlling the flow of individual's location information across organizational boundaries.  Two of their requirements are: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;       "&lt;tt&gt;The Location Object MUST support use       of Unlinked Pseudonyms in the corresponding identification fields       of Rule Maker, Target, Device, and Location Recipient.  Since       Unlinked Pseudonyms are simply bit strings that are not linked       initially to a well-known identity, this requirement boils down to       saying that the name space for Identifiers used in the LO has to       be large enough to contain many unused strings.&lt;/tt&gt;" (#12) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; "&lt;tt&gt;The protocol SHOULD allow a bypass if authentication       fails in an emergency call.&lt;/tt&gt;" (#15.3) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;3.&lt;/b&gt; The GEOPRIV working group defines its own identity data models for the underpinning of location data access control policy.  It is expected that agents holding or transferring location information about a user would implement an access control policy for controlling read access to the user's location information by other parties: who can be told, and what level of specificity should be revealed?  The &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4745.txt"&gt;Common Policy document format for expressing privacy preferences (RFC 4745, February 2007)&lt;/a&gt; defines &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "a framework for authorization policies controlling access to application-specific data.  This framework combines common location- and presence-specific authorization aspects.  An XML schema specifies the language in which common policy rules are represented." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;An example from that specification, a rule that matches a user who has multiple possible URIs that identify them: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;conditions&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;identity&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;one id="sip:alice@example.com"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;one id="tel:+1-212-555-1234" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;one id="mailto:bob@example.net" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/identity&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/conditions&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;or a rule that excludes certain users from matching:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;conditions&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;sphere value="work"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;identity&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;many&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;except domain="example.com"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;except domain="example.org"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;except id="sip:alice@bad.example.net"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;except id="sip:bob@good.example.net"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;except id="tel:+1-212-555-1234" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;except id="sip:alice@example.com"/&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/many&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/identity&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;validity&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;from&amp;gt;2003-12-24T17:00:00+01:00&amp;lt;/from&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;until&amp;gt;2003-12-24T19:00:00+01:00&amp;lt;/until&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/validity&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/conditions&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Internet Draft &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-geopriv-policy-12.txt"&gt;Geolocation policy for privacy preferences (May 2007)&lt;/a&gt; describes how policy can encode selective disclosure of location.  In a civic context: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;full&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;{&amp;lt;country&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A1&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A2&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A3&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A4&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A5&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A6&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;PRD&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;POD&amp;gt;,&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;STS&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;HNO&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;HNS&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;LMK&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;LOC&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;PC&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;NAM&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;FLR&amp;gt;,&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;BLD&amp;gt;,&amp;lt;UNIT&amp;gt;,&amp;lt;ROOM&amp;gt;,&amp;lt;PLC&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;PCN&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;POBOX&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;ADDCODE&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;SEAT&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;RD&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;RDSEC&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;RDBR&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;RDSUBBR&amp;gt; &amp;lt;PRM&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;POM&amp;gt;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;building&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;{&amp;lt;country&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A1&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A2&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A3&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A4&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A5&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A6&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;PRD&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;POD&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;STS&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;HNO&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;HNS&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;LMK&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;PC&amp;gt;,&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;RD&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;RDSEC&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;RDBR&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;RDSUBBR&amp;gt; &amp;lt;PRM&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;POM&amp;gt;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;city&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;{&amp;lt;country&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A1&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A2&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A3&amp;gt;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;region&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;{&amp;lt;country&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;A1&amp;gt;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;country&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;{&amp;lt;country&amp;gt;}&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;none&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;4.&lt;/b&gt; The GEOPRIV recommended data models for describing a location should be an influence upon the evolution of directory data models.  Currently the &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4519.txt"&gt;LDAP schema derived from X.500 (RFC 4519, June 2006)&lt;/a&gt; includes a few postal service-derived attributes such as &lt;tt&gt;houseIdentifier&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;street&lt;/tt&gt;, but does not allow more fine-grained specification of location, or correlation of attributes in multiple locations (e.g., grouping of attributes into home vs. work vs. school). GEOPRIV suggests two models: the &lt;a href="http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml"&gt;Geography Markup Language (GML) 3.0&lt;/a&gt; &lt;tt&gt;feature.xsd&lt;/tt&gt; schema for describing points and spaces in 3D, and a Civic location format for describing a location based on streets and addresses.   An example of the GML data model is  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;gml:location&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;gml:Point gml:id="point1" srsName="epsg:4326"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;gml:coordinates&amp;gt;37:46:30N 122:25:10W&amp;lt;/gml:coordinates&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;/gml:Point&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;lt;/gml:location&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Internet-Draft &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-geopriv-revised-civic-lo-05.txt"&gt;Revised Civic Location Format (February 2007)&lt;/a&gt; includes a list of attributes for describing a location:  &lt;tt&gt;country&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;A1&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;A2&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;A3&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;A4&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;A5&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;A6&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;PRM&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;PRD&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;RD&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;STS&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;POD&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;POM&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;RDSEC&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;RDBR&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;RDSUBBR&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;HNO&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;HNS&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;LMK&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;LOC&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;FLR&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;NAM&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;PC&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;BLD&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;UNIT&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;ROOM&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;SEAT&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;PLC&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;PCN&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;POBOX&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;ADDCODE&lt;/tt&gt;.  The civic format can be used independently from the GML &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;civicAddress xml:lang="en-AU"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10:civicAddr"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;country&amp;gt;AU&amp;lt;/country&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;A1&amp;gt;NSW&amp;lt;/A1&amp;gt;&amp;lt;A3&amp;gt;Wollongong&amp;lt;/A3&amp;gt;&amp;lt;A4&amp;gt;North Wollongong&amp;lt;/A4&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;RD&amp;gt;Flinders&amp;lt;/RD&amp;gt;&amp;lt;STS&amp;gt;Street&amp;lt;/STS&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;RDBR&amp;gt;Campbell Street&amp;lt;/RDBR&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;LMK&amp;gt;Gilligan's Island&amp;lt;/LMK&amp;gt; &amp;lt;LOC&amp;gt;Corner&amp;lt;/LOC&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;NAM&amp;gt;Video Rental Store&amp;lt;/NAM&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;PC&amp;gt;2500&amp;lt;/PC&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;ROOM&amp;gt;Westerns and Classics&amp;lt;/ROOM&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;PLC&amp;gt;store&amp;lt;/PLC&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;POBOX&amp;gt;Private Box 15&amp;lt;/POBOX&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/civicAddress&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;or can be combined in a single location report, as described in the Internet Draft &lt;a href="http://www.tschofenig.com/svn/draft-ietf-geopriv-pdif-lo-profile/draft-ietf-geopriv-pdif-lo-profile-07.txt"&gt;GEOPRIV PIDF-LO usage clarification (April 2007)&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gp:location-info&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gml:Point srsName="urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gml:pos&amp;gt;-43.5723 153.21760&amp;lt;/gml:pos&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/gml:Point&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;cl:civicAddress&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;cl:FLR&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/cl:FLR&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/cl:civicAddress&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/gp:location-info&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;   &lt;p&gt;There is already a &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4776.txt"&gt;DHCP option for civic address (RFC 4776, November 2006)&lt;/a&gt; and an Internet Draft for &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-geopriv-radius-lo-15.txt"&gt;carrying location objects in RADIUS (July 2007)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;5.&lt;/b&gt; The &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4119.txt"&gt;Presence-based location object format (RFC 4119, December 2005)&lt;/a&gt; PIDF-LO may be suitable as an attribute or claim in an identity metasystem, to transfer the current location of a user.   &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One of the outcomes of Instant Messaging (IM) interoperability was standards to specify and transfer a 'presence' status of a user - whether a user is currently online or not.  The &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3859.txt"&gt;Common Profile for Presence (RFC 3859, August 2004)&lt;/a&gt; defines a model for the transfer of presence information between software agents, and a &lt;tt&gt;pres:&lt;/tt&gt; URL to indicate sending an IM to a user identified as &lt;tt&gt;&lt;i&gt;username&lt;/i&gt;@&lt;i&gt;domain&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.  The &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3863.txt"&gt;Presence Information Data Format (RFC 3863, August 2004)&lt;/a&gt; defines an XML-encoded data type.  For example, a user &lt;tt&gt;pres:someone@example.com&lt;/tt&gt; who is open for communication at a telephone number &lt;tt&gt;09012345678&lt;/tt&gt; is expressed as: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;impp:presence xmlns:impp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;entity="pres:someone@example.com"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;impp:tuple id="sg89ae"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;impp:status&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;impp:basic&amp;gt;open&amp;lt;/impp:basic&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/impp:status&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;impp:contact priority="0.8"&amp;gt;tel:+09012345678&amp;lt;/impp:contact&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/impp:tuple&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/impp:presence&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The PIDF-LO specification extends the presence information data format with location information.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;presence xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:gp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:cl="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10:civicAddr"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;entity="pres:mike@seattle.example.com"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;tuple id="sg89ab"&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;status&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gp:geopriv&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gp:location-info&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gml:Point srsName="urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326"&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gml:pos&amp;gt;-43.5723 153.21760&amp;lt;/gml:pos&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/gml:Point&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;cl:civicAddress&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;cl:FLR&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/cl:FLR&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/cl:civicAddress&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/gp:location-info&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gp:usage-rules&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gp:retransmission-allowed&amp;gt;yes&amp;lt;/gp:retransmission-allowed&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;gp:retention-expiry&amp;gt;2003-06-23T04:57:29Z&amp;lt;/gp:retention-expiry&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/gp:usage-rules&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/gp:geopriv&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/status&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;timestamp&amp;gt;2003-06-22T20:57:29Z&amp;lt;/timestamp&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/tuple&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/presence&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A user might self-assert their location (&lt;i&gt;I live in San Francisco&lt;/i&gt;) or pass on a value received from the local network (&lt;i&gt;the Wi-Fi provider says I am currently at Market and Embarcadero&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Internet draft of a &lt;a href="http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-barnes-geopriv-lo-sec-00.txt"&gt;threat and vulnerability analysis (April 2007)&lt;/a&gt; includes discussion of time shifting, location spoofing, location swapping, eavesdropping and violation of anonymity in protocols that carry these objects.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;6.&lt;/b&gt; The PIDF-LO specification includes encoding usage rules alongside the location data: a &lt;tt&gt;retransmission-allowed&lt;/tt&gt; boolean, a &lt;tt&gt;retention-expired&lt;/tt&gt; date, and a &lt;tt&gt;ruleset-reference&lt;/tt&gt; HTTPS URI. These constraints are generic and should be available for other attributes/claims that are not related to location. &lt;/p&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Beyond the display token (20070711)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Beyond the display token (20070711)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;   &lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_01.shtml"&gt;previous post&lt;/a&gt;, I summarized the current specification of the InfoCard DisplayToken, by which an Identity Provider (IdP) can provide to the identity selector a limited amount of text information that illustrates the token or claims which are being sent to the Relying Party (RP) on the user's behalf.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One assumption of the current display token is that an identity selector should best be able to display to the user the claim types and values that are about to be sent to the RP if the information is provided by the IdP as either a single MIME blob for the token (though this is not implemented in CardSpace 1.0), or as a list of "type: value" pairs: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_img10det.jpg" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;  &lt;p&gt;That aspect of the 'ceremony' may not be most appropriate to the user, and should be under the control of the user and/or their identity provider to express the token information in a way that makes sense for the interaction.  Some of the limitations with the current DisplayToken include: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;A claim value may be more extensive than just a "short text string".  For example, claims may be a large, structured document, such as a user's interaction history, a "reputation", or an &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security"&gt;access capability&lt;/a&gt;, or may be an image.  An identity provider may wish to 'scale' the information being sent in the display token based on the functional limitations of the identity selector (an identity selector running on a small-screened small-memory phone/PDA should not be sent as much information to display to the user about a claim as an identity selector running on a workstation-class computer).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Even for claims in which the value is a "short text string", the identity provider may wish to provide more information about the claim being transferred, such as an authority, a refresh interval, an expiration date or a privacy constraint which the IdP is placing on the RP's use of the claim.  While some of these constraints might be expressed by the IdP as token-wide, it is desirable for this meta-data to be different across claims in a token (e.g., a "name" claim and a "bank balance" claim might have very different constraints, and the user would like to know that).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The identity provider should be able to provide with these claims links to sites which are outside of the InfoCard environment of IdP-user-RP, in order to assist the user learn more about claim types about which they are unfamiliar, or to enable the user to contact an authority that vetted the claim value, without cancelling the InfoCard interaction.  In the case of a self-issued card, the user might have claims with types that are URIs from arbitrary sites on the Internet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The identity provider should be able to describe the form layout, as layout of information is one aspect of the identity provider's branding. &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/CCardFront.svg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/CCardFront.svg/303px-CCardFront.svg.png" height="191"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;For a self-issued card, the user might have a set of card "themes" from which to choose.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The identity provider might also wish to provide information "about" the RP or the interaction that is not a claim per se.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Display order of claims in a list of claims is particularly important, and it may be desirable to allow the end user to customize this ordering.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;If the IdP is sending a large number of claims for each interaction, perhaps the user only wants to vet a few of them each time - the user should be able to group these particular claims to the top of the list so they don't need to scroll around looking for them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;If the IdP is sending the four claims homePhone, homeAddress, workPhone, workAddress,  does the user want to view the claims grouped by location (home information followed by work information) or by type (phone numbers followed by addresses).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;"Order of components of a person's name" has cultural significance (I discussed this in a &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050201_01.shtml"&gt;2005 blog post&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The assumption in the first version of the InfoCard protocol, that the token encrypted for the RP contains a single list of claims, may not be the case for an IdP that aggregates information from other providers (identity oracles and the like).  In this case, a display token might nest multiple display tokens from other providers, and these boundaries should be visually explicit. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;   &lt;li&gt;An identity selector might present the user with choices other than "continue" or "cancel".  In particular, the selector might allow the user to edit this information, which would cause the IdP to re-generate the encrypted token and display token.  Reasons for this include:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Once a user has seen a claim type and value, the user might choose to exclude one or more optional claims from a particular interaction.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;As I mentioned in last month's blog posts &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_03.shtml"&gt;"Don't touch my claims if you please, Mister IdP"&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070613_01.shtml"&gt;"Some claims are more verified than others"&lt;/a&gt;, the IdP might be providing some user-self-asserted information in the set of claims.  As such, the user might wish to edit these claim values in the form without leaving the identity selector.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The user might wish to preserve this information for auditing purposes.  Potentially the DisplayToken element could be signed by the IdP, or include a trusted timestamp.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;It might be worthwhile to investigate scenarios in which the DisplayToken is decoupled from the security token.  As discussed in the post &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070628_02.shtml"&gt;"When is selector ceremony time?"&lt;/a&gt;, the speaker at Catalyst hinted that in some situations the identity selector ceremony might not be invoked for certain federated transactions between business partners, as IdP sends the token and claims directly to the RP.  However even if the selector is no longer a modal, the user may wish to view the claims that are transferred in the background about them.  One can envisage a background window, something like a RSS feed viewer, that has claims being made about the user scrolling past.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Another concern is the interest of other stakeholders, besides the end user, the identity provider, and the identity selector developer, in the interaction.  What other parties should be permitted to control the interaction by tweaking the visual presentation of identity selector elements?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;the RP?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;But could this lead to phishing attacks?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;an identity selector plugin developer?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Personalization and themability are popular in both open source UI platforms and hosted web applications&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;a metasystem "master of ceremonies"?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Are there categories of interactions for which there is an existing well-defined ceremony that should be used instead?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;the user's local administrator?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;What aspects of the interaction should be affected by Group Policy or similar mechanisms?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;a claim schema creator?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;If I define a favoriteDrink claim type, can I include icons for displaying values of "beer"/"wine"/"soda"?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;a claim schema commentator?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;If I declare favoriteBeverage and favoriteDrink to be effectively the same claim type, can I cause the favoriteBeverage UI aspects to affect the favoriteDrink claim presentation?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;the RP's CA?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Can an CA limit what claims are appropriate for sending to RPs it certifies?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;advertisers?&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Inline advertisements are a hallmark of many free hosted services and are a possibility on the desktop as well&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/table&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>The current InfoCard display token (20070711)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; The current InfoCard display token (20070711)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In an InfoCard identity metasystem, there are the three traditional parties to an interaction: the end user, the relying party (RP), and the identity provider (IdP).   When the user wishes to perform a login at an RP web site from their web browser, the RP's HTML form triggers the web browser to launch identity selector on the user's desktop.  By interacting with the identity selector, the user can pick a card (a self-issued generated by the end user themself, or a managed card issued by an IdP), and if it is a managed card, authenticate to the IdP. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;There are several key UI design points in the identity selector, including  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the display of information about the RP site,&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa395199.858ec22e-ca56-4ba4-bc30-1e2352cec89c(en-us,VS.85).gif"&gt;&lt;img src="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa395199.858ec22e-ca56-4ba4-bc30-1e2352cec89c(en-us,VS.85).gif" height="275" alt="Do you want to send a card to this site?" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the presentation of a selection of multiple cards for choosing, &lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/07/InfoCard/fig02.gif"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/07/InfoCard/fig02.gif" height="218" alt="Set of cards" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the visual appearance of each "card", &lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061122_3clubs.jpg"&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061122_3clubs.jpg" height="355" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the display of the token or claims which are being sent to the RP.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/07/InfoCard/fig03.gif"&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/07/InfoCard/fig03.gif" height="219" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the CardSpace implementation of an identity selector, the selector developer (Microsoft) controls the user interface: how cards, tokens and claims appear on the screen.  The implementation allows a limited ammount of text information to be provided by the IdP, as a "display token", that illustrates the token or claims which are being sent to the RP.  This is necessary as the token and its claims are encrypted by the IdP using the public key of the RP: even though the identity selector has this encrypted token in its memory while the token is in transit, the selector doesn't have the RP's private key and so can't decrypt it: the user must trust that the IdP is providing a reasonable token and claims. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In section 3.7 of their paper &lt;a href="http://www.identityblog.com/wp-content/resources/design_rationale.pdf"&gt;"Design Rationale behind the Identity Metasystem Architecture"&lt;/a&gt;, Kim Cameron and Michael Jones of Microsoft present the "display token" concept: &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;"For a human user to meaningfully control the information that would be released by selecting an identity, he or she must be able to view a human-readable and comprehensible representation of those claims. Hence, the identity selector must be able to display representations of claim values. However, because claims can be represented using any payload format, including new ones yet to be invented, it would be impossible to write identity selector code to meaningfully display claim values based only upon the payload's native representation of those claim values (unless we implemented potentially dangerous extension mechanisms, significantly increasing the vulnerability of the system)." &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; "Therefore a design decision was to have identity providers send claim values both in their native format and in a human-readable format (the "display token"), with the two sets of values cryptographically bound together to allow auditing of an identity provider either by users or by relying parties that understand the claims." &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt; Section 4.3.6 of the Microsoft &lt;a href="http://identityblog.com/wp-content/resources/profile/InfoCard-Profile-v1-TechRef.pdf"&gt;InfoCard v1 Technical Reference&lt;/a&gt; (pages 26-27) describes how an IdP can provide a display token, upon request from an identity selector authenticating to it. Currently, the request contains only&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;a &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt"&gt;language tag&lt;/a&gt; (encoded as &lt;tt&gt;xml:lang&lt;/tt&gt;) for the user's locale&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The response from the IdP includes a tag (in &lt;tt&gt;xml:lang&lt;/tt&gt;) to indicate the locale of the response, and either &lt;p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;a &lt;tt&gt;DisplayTokenText&lt;/tt&gt; string with a &lt;tt&gt;MimeType&lt;/tt&gt; for that string, to provide "an alternative textual representation of the entire token as a whole when the token content is not suitable for display as individual claims.", although display of this is not implemented by the 1.0 release of Windows CardSpace, or&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a set of &lt;tt&gt;DisplayClaim&lt;/tt&gt;s.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Each &lt;tt&gt;DisplayClaim&lt;/tt&gt; sent by the IdP has&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;table border="1"&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;Uri&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;the unique identifier URI of the claim type (this is required)&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;DisplayTag&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;a "friendly" name of the claim&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;Description&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;a "description of the semantics" for the claim&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;&lt;tt&gt;DisplayValue&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;the displayable value of the claim to be sent to the RP, currently a short string &lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;  &lt;/table&gt;  &lt;p&gt;What the "description of the semantics" means is not clear from the documentation; the blog post &lt;a href="http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog/RequestedDisplayTokenForCardspaceSelectorToDisplay.aspx"&gt;"Requested Display Token For Cardspace Selector to Display"&lt;/a&gt; just shows an arbitrary string, and the MSDN Forum post &lt;a href="http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1285482&amp;SiteID=1"&gt;"RequestedDisplayToken not being displayed"&lt;/a&gt; and someone's &lt;a href="http://martinparry.com/cs/files/113/download.aspx"&gt;sample STS code&lt;/a&gt; puts into the &lt;tt&gt;Description&lt;/tt&gt; a copy of the claim URI.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; The US Patent Application  &lt;a href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PG01&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=%2220070143835%22.PGNR.&amp;OS=DN/20070143835&amp;RS=DN/20070143835"&gt;20070143835&lt;/a&gt; "Security tokens including displayable claims" by Kim Cameron and Arun Nanda (filed 2005, published 2007) describes the invention of a display token.  The claims include system, method and computer-readable medium embodiments, including &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "...a claims transformer programmed to generate a security token including a computational token and a display token, &lt;br /&gt;the computational token including one or more claims associated with an identity of a principal, and &lt;br /&gt;the display token including display information about the claims in the computational token, wherein&lt;br /&gt; the display information is configured to allow the principal to view the display token" &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;"...the display token is provided in a plain text format"&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;"...the display token includes a first display tag programmed to list a name of one of the claims, and a second display tag programmed to list a value of one of the claims. "&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In this invention, an interpreter &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "... is programmed to interpret display token 152 of security token 150. For example, interpreter 312 can identify the claims that are summarized in display token 152, and interpreter 312 can display the claims for principal 110 using display 314." &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; "...For example, referring now to FIG. 10, an example user interface 550 is shown. User interface 550 displays information in a display token of a security token. User interface 550 includes a list 555 of the display information from the display token. In the example shown, the display information includes employer information (e.g., "Company A") and home telephone number (e.g., "999-999-9999"). User interface 550 also includes a send element 557 and a cancel element 559. The principal can select send element 557 to send the security token to the relying part (e.g., Travel Agency A), or select cancel element 559 to refrain from sending the security token." &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070711_img10.jpg" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;"In alternative embodiments, additional information can be provided in user interface 550. For example, in some embodiments, information about other security tokens that have been sent to a particular relying party can be listed, and/or information about where the particular security token currently being displayed has been sent previously can be listed. In yet other embodiments, information about the particular relying party to which the security token is going to be sent can be provided in the user interface, and/or links to obtain additional information about the relying party can be provided. Other configurations are possible. " &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;      </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:30:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management: Identity Crossing the Firewall (20070710)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070710_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070710_02.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management: Identity Crossing the Firewall (20070710)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;    &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.catalyst.burtongroup.com/NA07/agenda.php?date=2007-06-29"&gt;Late last month&lt;/a&gt; I presented at the &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/BurtonGroupCatalyst07" rel="tag"&gt;Burton Group Catalyst conference&lt;/a&gt; in the "future of identity" segment on the topic "Your Identity Session: Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management".  The slides of the talk can be found on the &lt;a href="http://www.informed-control.com/2/resources/bg.shtml"&gt;Informed Control resources page&lt;/a&gt; in PDF.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;h3&gt;1. Identity information crosses the firewall&lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070710_wcd.jpg" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;Some of the people in Geo. Washington's boat&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike the "idealized state" &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070710_01.shtml"&gt;mentioned in the Introduction&lt;/a&gt;, there are numerous points of interconnect where components of the 'enterprise' identity management system may now or in the future be interacting with systems outside of the enterprise, including interfaces with&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;self-service&lt;/b&gt;: e.g., for retirees &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;web browsers&lt;/b&gt;: e.g., employees using external collaborative tools, or searching the organization using LinkedIn.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;applications&lt;/b&gt;: e.g., VPNs, vendor/integrator support backdoors&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;provisioning&lt;/b&gt;, &lt;b&gt;access control&lt;/b&gt; and &lt;b&gt;federation&lt;/b&gt;: e.g., for outsourced or contract environments, as well as in partner federations&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;   &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;i&gt;Possible future&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.informed-control.com/2/resources/bg/6a.gif" height="630" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Besides benefits to the enterprise, some of these interaction projects can bring direct benefit to the end user.  The earliest examples included &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;the user can synchronize their address books with their PDA/phone,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the user can perform (limited) self-service post-employment (e.g., to update their mailing address for retiree benefits), and &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;the user has an improved experience at partner web sites.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The latter is beneficial as more business projects are moved off-site, however there is a risk to the organizations should one or more users choose on their own to move a project off-site (e.g., to a hosted application).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One of the &lt;i&gt;control implications&lt;/i&gt; of introduced dependencies on third-party services and networks is the potential impact to confidentiality, integrity and availability. The identity data may have increased exposure to data loss (when outside the firewall) or corruption (should a bad update be received). An area of primary concern is the difficulty in applying detective controls, since there is typically no common method for exchanging retained data of audit events or reconstructing activities spanning multiple organizations or occuring entirely outside of an enterprise's firewall.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;When representations of identities are synchronized with other representations outside of the firewall, such as in a federation scenario, this can in some cases lead to an increased volume of attributes needing to be stored in the enterprise's own repository. Furthermore, this can cause changes to the lifecycle model: additional events might be necessary. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Another aspect of externalizing identity information is that it might increase the success rate of certain kinds of social engineering attacks, if the organization's internal connection structure is visible through a service such as LinkedIn, for example.&lt;/p&gt;     &lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management: Introduction (20070710)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070710_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070710_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management: Introduction (20070710)&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.catalyst.burtongroup.com/NA07/agenda.php?date=2007-06-29"&gt;Late last month&lt;/a&gt; I presented at the &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/BurtonGroupCatalyst07" rel="tag"&gt;Burton Group Catalyst conference&lt;/a&gt; in the "future of identity" segment on the topic "Your Identity Session: Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management".  The slides of the talk can be found on the &lt;a href="http://www.informed-control.com/2/resources/bg.shtml"&gt;Informed Control resources page&lt;/a&gt; in PDF.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Traditionally, the process of managing digital identity lifecycles for individuals within enterprise identity management deployments has had the following assumptions: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;The operations performed on an identity start with the creation of the identity (&lt;b&gt;Provisioning&lt;/b&gt;) of a user when an individual joins an organization, continue with one or more &lt;b&gt;Updates&lt;/b&gt;, and finally the disabling or removal of the identity (&lt;b&gt;Deprovisioning&lt;/b&gt;) when that individual leaves the organization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.informed-control.com/2/resources/bg/2b.gif" height="198" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt;In practice, the amount of control the organization has over the data typically decreases over time, as the quality of the data typically decreases (the provisioning system's "view" of the individual as a user identity diverges from the individual's own view, e.g., as job functions or groups change). &lt;/p&gt; &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Each identity is managed independently of each other: activities targeting one user have no effect on other users.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.informed-control.com/2/resources/bg/2a.gif" height="164" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;While collections of users might be classified into 'groups' or other categories for access control management, these operations typically do not affect the representation of an individual user. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The protocol connections over which lifecycle operations are carried are within the enterprise firewall, and ideally, the organization has surrounded the repositories and access control decision points with layers of increased protection.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;i&gt;Idealized state&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.informed-control.com/2/resources/bg/4a.gif" height="629" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; In the talk I identified three trends that could influence how identity management software for the enterprise manage identity lifecycles: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Increasing number of points where identity information crosses the firewall&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Identity decisions move closer to the user&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Identity management data incorporates interpersonal identity&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;     </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>OASIS Provisioning WG work after SPMLv2 (20070709)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070709_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070709_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; OASIS Provisioning WG work after SPMLv2 (20070709) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; During the &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/events/webinars/security-2007.php"&gt;week of OASIS security standards WG webinars&lt;/a&gt; Kent Spaulding of Tripod and Jeff Bohren of BMC presented on the status and directions of the  &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=provision"&gt;OASIS Provisioning Services TC&lt;/a&gt;, which standardized &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis_news_11_19_03.php"&gt;SPMLv1&lt;/a&gt; in 2003 and &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/17708/pstc-spml-2.0-os.zip"&gt;SPML 2.0&lt;/a&gt; in 2006. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt; SPML 2.0 was designed to address limitations and complaints with the original SPML. Even though the SPML specification is completed, the working group lives on.  The presenters' slides mentioned that post-2.0 the working group has been considering &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;SPML 2.0 specification corrections&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;(As of May 2007, there were approx. 10 errata).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Federated provisioning&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt; (A &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/archives/security-services/200706/doc00000.doc"&gt;submission has been made&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=security"&gt;OASIS Security Services TC&lt;/a&gt;, the home of the SAML specification, to develop a SAML 2.0 Profile of SPML 2.0 for linking identities across domains. )&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt; "The Federated Provisioning Profile is designed to support the 'Bulk Provisioning' use case where an Identity Management Lifecycle exists between the IdP and SP. The proposed profile will use the ... (SPML) 2.0 standard as the provisioning protocol with elements from the SAML 2.0 Assertion schema as the provisioning data."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Optional standard schema&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt;(A set of attributes for the representation of operational state for people, accounts, groups, roles, organizations, entitlements, and their relationships.) &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Asynchronous notifications&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt; (This would be addressed after the standards schemas, and would be based on the OASIS specs  &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-BaseNotification"&gt;WS-BaseNotification&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsn/wsn-ws_brokered_notification-1.3-spec-os.htm"&gt;WS-BrokeredNotification&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-Topics"&gt;WS-Topics&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>RDF-directed claim type transformation in the Schemat Selector  (20070706)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070706_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070706_01.shtml</guid><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/" rel="identity"&gt;Commentary by &lt;b&gt;Mark Wahl&lt;/b&gt;, CISA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt; Organizing principles for &lt;a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity" rel="tag"&gt;identity&lt;/a&gt; systems:&lt;br /&gt; RDF-directed claim type transformation in the Schemat Selector  (20070706) &lt;/h3&gt;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.informed-control.com/"&gt;Informed Control&lt;/a&gt; released today the first version of the &lt;b&gt;Schemat Selector&lt;/b&gt;, a proof of concept research implementation of an InfoCard identity selector, that illustrates the use of the  &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070407_01.shtml"&gt;Schemat Consumer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060909_01.shtml"&gt;Schemat&lt;/a&gt; libraries for generating and parsing RDF. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The design of this selector differs from typical CardSpace-inspired identity selectors, as it assumes the user already has defined one or more &lt;i&gt;personas&lt;/i&gt; which incorporate their personal attributes (such as name or address).  A &lt;i&gt;card&lt;/i&gt; is tied to a persona, which supplies the identity attributes which are sent to a web site as claims when using that card.  The only claims which are stored with a card are those which are not part of the user's persona.  &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This design decision is intended to simplify the management of self-issued cards: a user may already manage certain claim values (such as their telephone number, email address or mailing address) in repositories maintained by other tools or social networking services external to the InfoCard environment.  In order to avoid duplication of data, a self-issued card should not store these values, but should leverage existing repositories.  In this first version, the card takes its values from a persona which is imported from a file, but later implementations could have the card dynamically obtain values from the user's web resource describing themself (in LDIF, vCard, FOAF, RDFa, etc). &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;After initializing their card store (implemented as a JCE keystore),  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&lt;pre&gt; java -jar schemat_selector.jar --initialize-home keystore password: &lt;i&gt;secret&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;the user imports a persona into their store.  This version of the selector uses Schemat to implement parsing the persona from a file encoded either in RDF with FOAF-defined properties,  &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&lt;pre&gt; java -jar schemat_selector.jar --import-persona \  --import-file file:///tmp/me.rdf#me /tmp/me.rdf \  --persona personal &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;or in LDIF with the RFC 2079 (&lt;tt&gt;labeledURI&lt;/tt&gt;), 2798 (&lt;tt&gt;inetOrgPerson&lt;/tt&gt;), 4512 (&lt;tt&gt;top&lt;/tt&gt;), 4519 (&lt;tt&gt;person&lt;/tt&gt;) and 4524 (pilot) attributes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&lt;pre&gt; java -jar schemat_selector.jar --import-persona \  --import-file file:///tmp/me.ldif#uid=me /tmp/me.ldif \  --persona work &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;When the user logs in to a web site using that persona, &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;tt&gt;&lt;pre&gt; java -jar schemat_selector.jar --login --persona work \  --uri https://rp.example.com/relyingparty/ &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;they are prompted to create a new card, or send an existing card (if one is present in that store for that persona). When creating a new card, the user is only prompted to enter the values  of claims which are not supplied by the persona backing the card. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The attributes or properties of a user's persona are stored using the original predicate URIs (if imported from FOAF) or URIs representing the attributes as defined in LDAP schema (if imported from LDIF).   Since the relying party may ask for claims using a different schema (e.g., the Microsoft schema for self-issued claims at &lt;tt&gt;http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims&lt;/tt&gt;), the selector uses the Schemat Consumer to locate an equivalent property for the relying party's claim, using &lt;tt&gt;owl:equivalentProperty&lt;/tt&gt;, and automatically maps existing schemas to those required by a relying party. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, as the web site &lt;tt&gt;schemas.xmlsoap.org&lt;/tt&gt; where the Microsoft claim types are stored does not appear to provide an RDF file with schema metadata, the Schemat Selector bundles &lt;tt&gt;selfissued.rdf&lt;/tt&gt; which includes mapping statements for the Microsoft self-issued claims &lt;tt&gt;givenname&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;surname&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;emailaddress&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;streetaddress&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;locality&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;stateorprovince&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;postalcode&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;country&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;primaryphone&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;webpage&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;homephone&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;mobilephone&lt;/tt&gt;. These mapping statements resemble &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;tt&gt; &amp;lt;rdf:Description  &amp;nbsp;rdf:about="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/surname"&amp;gt;&lt;br/&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;rdfs:isDefinedBy &lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;rdf:resource="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;owl:equivalentProperty rdf:resource="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/surname" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;owl:equivalentProperty rdf:resource="http://www.ldap.com/1/schema/rfc4519.owl#2.5.4.4" /&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt; &amp;lt;/rdf:Description&amp;gt;  &lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The preceding RDF description of the Microsoft self-asserted claim &lt;tt&gt;surname&lt;/tt&gt; states that it is equivalent to the FOAF &lt;tt&gt;surname&lt;/tt&gt; property, and the LDAP attribute 2.5.4.4 (&lt;tt&gt;sn&lt;/tt&gt;, defined in RFC 4519).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Note that this version of Schemat Selector is not a full identity selector, in that it does not include the support for managed cards, WS-MetadataExchange or WS-Trust.  It only submits to a relying party web site, via a HTTPS POST, a SAML 1.1 attribute assertion for a self-issued card.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Download the Schemat Selector as a standalone runnable jar and man page in &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schemat/schemat_selector-jar-20070706.zip"&gt;schemat_selector-jar-20070706.zip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;, last updated 2007 July 6.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Schemat Selector requires the Sun Java SE Runtime Environment 1.5 or later with JCE unlimited strength jurisdiction policy files installed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;(The unlimited strength jurisdiction policy files can be downloaded from the "Other Downloads" section of the &lt;a href="http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp"&gt;Sun Java SE JDK 5 downloads&lt;/a&gt; page for Java SE 5, or the "Other Downloads" section of the &lt;a href="http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp"&gt;Sun Java SE downloads&lt;/a&gt; page for Java SE 6.)&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Download the latest snapshot of the Schemat Selector research software source code in &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schemat/schemat-src-20070706.zip"&gt;schemat-src-20070706.zip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;, last updated 2007 July 6.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Download the HTML version of the &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schemat/schemat_selector.html"&gt;Schemat Selector man page&lt;/a&gt;, last updated 2007 July 6.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;p&gt; This software is distributed under the BSD-style &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/schemat/LICENSE.txt"&gt;Informed Control Research Software License B&lt;/a&gt;, and relies upon third-party components distributed under various BSD-style licenses, the Apache Public License, and Netscape Public License.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;More information on the Schemat Consumer and Schemat are available at  &lt;a href="http://www.ldap.com/1/spec/schema/ont.shtml"&gt;Schema Ontology Tools&lt;/a&gt; page.&lt;/p&gt;    </description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item>
<item><title>: John Fontana on the multivendor user-centric identity demonstration (20070630)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070630_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070630_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 30 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>: when is selector ceremony time?  (20070628)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070628_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070628_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>user-centric technology demonstration (20070628)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070628_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070628_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>the two camps of attribute types (20070627)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_04.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_04.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>InfoCard implementation travails (20070627)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>survey of the state of the metasystem (20070627)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Interlinked claims providers (20070627)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070627_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Concordia meeting notes for sessions GM and GSA (20070626)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070626_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070626_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Concordia meeting notes for session BC Government (20070626)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070626_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070626_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Concordia meeting notes for sessions AOL and Boeing (20070626)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070626_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070626_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>can the IdP be hidden, or irrelevant? (20070620)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070620_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070620_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>composite role-based monitoring for task-structured activities (20070620)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070620_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070620_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>trust and access control papers from KHU (20070620)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070620_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070620_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>extracting data from links in social networks (20070619)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070619_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070619_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity in paths in anonymizing networks (20070619)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070619_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070619_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Attacks on anonymized social networks and fudging oracles (20070616)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070616_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070616_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 16 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Modelling the effects of interoperability (20070616)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070616_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070616_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 16 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Repositories responding to a breach with an offer of free credit monitoring (20070613)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070613_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070613_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Some claims are more verified than others (20070613)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070613_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070613_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Choosing an identity provider by altitude (20070612)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070612_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070612_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Embedded and pure play identity providers and attribute validity (20070612)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070612_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070612_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Multiple endpoint references in a WS-Federation AttributeServiceEndpoint (20070612)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070612_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070612_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Don't touch my claims if you please, Mister IdP (20070611)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>User-centric identity metasystem research in the 1990s (20070611)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Making Dynamic DNS more user-centric (20070611)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070611_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Network steganography protocols for preceding 802.1X (20070610)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070610_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070610_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Network steganography protocols for opening holes in the firewall (20070610)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070610_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070610_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Attribute value security labels and signatures in X.501(2005) (20070609)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070609_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070609_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Basic and Simplified Access Control in X.501(2005) (20070609)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070609_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070609_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Network Egress Control using process graphs (20070608)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070608_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070608_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Concordia and Catalyst in San Francisco (20070606)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070606_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070606_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>leveraging back-pointer information flow tags in reputation (20070606)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070606_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070606_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>privacy and tagging by image recognition services (20070605)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070605_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070605_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 05 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>signature linking and key revocation in direct anonymous attestation (20070604)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070604_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070604_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Open questions on network admission in network access control (20070604)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070604_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070604_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>TCG Microsoft Statement of Health protocol (20070604)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070604_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070604_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Paul Vixie on the DNS protocol (20070530)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070530_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070530_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 30 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Value metadata in identity protocols (20070522)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070522_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070522_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>A Theory of Tags, Part 1 (20070518)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070518_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070518_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Unique identifiers for entries in LDAP and avoiding the recycling of names (20070517)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070517_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070517_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 17 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Soundex matching (20070517)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070517_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070517_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 17 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Schema discussion at IIW (20070516)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070516_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070516_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 16 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Unique identifiers for entries in X.500 manage recycling of names (20070515)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070515_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070515_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 15 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity protocols in ad-hoc and disconnected networks discussion at IIW (20070515)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070515_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070515_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 15 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity protocols in ad-hoc and disconnected networks (20070513)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070513_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070513_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 13 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Issues with OpenID in ZeroConf networks (20070511)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070511_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070511_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Discovering local identity services (20070511)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070511_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070511_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Cross-organizational identity service schema discovery matrix  (20070510)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070510_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070510_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 10 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Cross-organizational identity service schema discovery: InfoCard (20070510)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070510_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070510_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 10 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Cross-organizational identity service schema discovery: SAML2 and WS-Federation (20070509)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070509_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070509_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 09 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Service (Schema) Modeling Language WG of W3C (20070508)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070508_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070508_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>"User-centric" RDF storage and transfer in the Identity Metasystem (20070508)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070508_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070508_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Change to the URI of the Enrolled User Policy Profiles Attribute (20070508)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070508_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070508_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Jeux Sans Fronti&#xe8;res for user-centric identity (20070507)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070507_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070507_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 07 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Project Liberty Individuals and Concordia update (20070503)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070503_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070503_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>University of Texas at Austin courses validated to NSTISSI 4011 and NSTISSI 4015 (20070503)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070503_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070503_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Trey Drake's Directory-enabled OpenID IdP implementation (2007/4/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070426_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070426_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Eric Norman's Open Questions for the Identity Metasystem (2007/4/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070426_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070426_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Language tags for OpenID values (2007/4/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070426_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070426_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>No Concordia? (2007/4/24)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070424_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070424_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Expressing identity metasystem attribute definitions in XHTML using RDFa (2007/4/19)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070419_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070419_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>"Future Directions in Identity Lifecycle Management" presentation scheduled for Burton Group Catalyst NA 2007 (20070413)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070413_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070413_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>history of identity management: automated payroll processing in the late 1950s (2007/4/7)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070407_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070407_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Schemat Consumer (2007/4/7)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070407_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070407_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>You are in a maze of twisty little accounts, all alike (2007/3/30)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070330_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070330_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Measuring risk in security investigations (2007/3/30)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070330_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070330_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Information Assurance in science fiction: outrunning the Bounty Bear (2007/3/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070326_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070326_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Information Assurance: audit trail aggregation in science fiction: the Bounty Bear (2007/3/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070326_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070326_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Java API specifications for LDAP-centric and directory-agnostic clients (2007/3/23)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070323_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070323_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity providers, relying parties and authorization claims (2007/3/5)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070305_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070305_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>OpenID identity provider as a relying party (2007/2/28)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070228_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070228_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Enrolled User Policy Profiles Attribute (2007/2/27)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070227_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070227_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>The Trust is Out There: Do we need practice statements for OpenID Identity Providers? (2007/2/21)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070221_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070221_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Do you know your OpenID URI? (2007/2/20)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070220_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070220_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Systems of reputation for identity (2007/2/18)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070218_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070218_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Capturing metadata of identity schemas (2007/2/12)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070212_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070212_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 12 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity relationship management and the Relational Continuity Sockets Layer abstraction (2007/2/7)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070206_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070206_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 06 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>A good alignment, though not yet a grand unification (2007/2/6)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070206_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070206_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 06 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Assessment Techniques for Auditing Identity Management (2007/2/5)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070205_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070205_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Referencing privacy policies in LDAP (2007/2/5)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070205_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070205_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Multiple authentication (2007/2/2)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070202_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070202_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Phishing your Customers, Friends and Coworkers (2007/2/1)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070201_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070201_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>A review of "Building and Implementing a Security Certification and Accreditation Program" (2007/2/1)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070201_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070201_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Browser EV certificate validation for anti-phishing: an early study (2007/1/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070126_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20070126_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>The stockings were hung by the chimney with care (2006/12/19)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061219_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061219_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 19 Dec 2006 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>&#9398; Cafe in Miami (2006/12/12)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061212_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061212_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>FYI Identity Schemas wiki (2006/12/12)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061212_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061212_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Is this your card? (2006/11/22)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061122_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20061122_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Social engineering: Trust is just a five letter word (2006/9/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060926_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060926_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 26 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Assessing Identity Management Controls at the RSA Conference 2007 (2006/9/25)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060925_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060925_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>The trust is out there: PKI root certificates and risks to importing a managed card (2006/9/20)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060920_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060920_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 20 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>The trust is out there: the mythology of PKI (2006/9/18)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060918_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060918_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 18 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Higgins framework (2006/9/15)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060915_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060915_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>PKIX specifications for cross-organization certificate discovery (2006/9/11)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060911_03.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060911_03.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Key management deployment concern for the InfoCard regions of an identity metasystem (2006/9/11)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060911_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060911_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>discussion on schema mapping (2006/9/11)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060911_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060911_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Schemat, tools for ontology-driven identity schema mapping (2006/9/9)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060909_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060909_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 09 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Some recent internet-drafts (2006/8/31)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060831_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060831_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Burton Group Catalyst 2006: Burton Group Identity Keynotes  (2006/6/14)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060614_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060614_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Schema ontologies: some considerations  (2006/6/8)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060608_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20060608_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Mail order selective disclosure of organizational role  (2005/11/30)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20051130_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20051130_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Browsers Leveraging PKI for Anti-Phishing (2005/11/23)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20051123_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20051123_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 23 Nov 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>changetype:add (2005/11/11)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20051111_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20051111_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Johannes Ernst's proposal for alternative to FOAF (2005/9/13)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050913_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050913_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Rouge Access Points (2005/9/7)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050907_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050907_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 07 Sep 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Catalyst North America 2005: Identity Geometries: descriptive or restrictive? (2005/7/15)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050715_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050715_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>ontologies for schema, continued (2005/7/14)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050714_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050714_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 14 Jul 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Catalyst North America 2005: Flaws of Identity? (2005/7/13)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050713_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050713_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Data loss and protection in an identity metasystem (2005/6/23)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050623_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050623_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Reverse engineering of schema (2005/6/17)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050617_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050617_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Schema and the single entry (2005/6/17)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050617_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050617_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Background: Web Ontology Language OWL (2005/6/16)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050616_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050616_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Background: SP-DNA metaschema (2005/6/14)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050614_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050614_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Directory access via Open Search RSS and reader annotation (2005/6/9)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050609_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050609_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Location and other attributes (Bob Blakley's response) (2005/6/6)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050606_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050606_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Location and other attributes (2005/6/6)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050606_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050606_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Opting out of airport security checks (2005/6/4)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050604_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050604_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 04 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>returning after parking (2005/6/3)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050603_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050603_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>returning after parking (2005/6/3)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050602_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050602_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World 2005, day 2 (2005/5/12)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050512_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050512_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Digital ID World 2005, day 1 (2005/5/11)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050511_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050511_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 11 May 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Repurposable identity management systems (part 2) (2005/5/10)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050510_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050510_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 10 May 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Repurposable identity management systems (part 1) (2005/5/5)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050505_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050505_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Travel map: (2005/4/1)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050401_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050401_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2005 07:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Privacy Policy Attributes for LDAP (2005/02/28)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050228_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050228_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Risk and liability in personal and enterprise identity management (2005/2/12)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050212_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050212_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 12 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Some naming attribute criteria (2005/2/4)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050204_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050204_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 04 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>decentralized l10n (2005/2/3)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050203_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050203_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Historical review: Origin of LDAP personal naming attributes (2005/2/2)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050202_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050202_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Convergence in services vs protocols (2005/2/1)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050201_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050201_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Client implications of Kim's fifth law (2005/2/1)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050201_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050201_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>105 years of person schema (2005/1/26)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050126_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050126_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Use of the term "laws" (2005/1/21)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050121_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050121_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Questions on key retrieval in LID(2005/1/14)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050114_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050114_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Principle of contractual disclosure (2005/1/8)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050108_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050108_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 08 Jan 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity systems without discovery or public entities (2005/1/3)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050103_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20050103_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Mon, 03 Jan 2005 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Disclosure policy statements (2004/12/17)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041217_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041217_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>On comparison functions and the Axiom of Identity (2004/12/11)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041211_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041211_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>A user applies an identity function to themselves (2004/12/10)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041210_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041210_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2004 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Identity Management for devices (2004/12/9)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041209_02.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041209_02.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
<item><title>Comments on Kim Cameron's third law (2004/12/9)</title><link>http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041209_01.shtml</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.ldap.com/1/commentary/wahl/20041209_01.shtml</guid><description></description><author>mark.wahl@informed-control.com</author><pubDate>Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:00:00 +0000</pubDate></item>
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