The Obama administration has yet to come up with a plan to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are draining our economy, prevent the continuing mortgage meltdown, get more Americans back to work, or do away with pork-barrel spending and government corruption, to name just a few of the overriding concerns plaguing our nation today. Instead, purportedly motivated by a desire to make our lives easier, the president wants to implement a universal Internet ID that would eliminate the need for multiple usernames and passwords.
For those inclined to view government as a benevolent institution, this can be viewed as a considerate gesture in a time of economic and social unrest. However, for those who would take seriously John Adams’ warning “to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty,” this latest move is nothing short of a Trojan Horse attempt to sidestep privacy concerns and institute a national ID, all the while giving the government even greater access to our most personal information.
Under the stated goal of achieving Internet security and consumer convenience, the Identity Ecosystem, as the program has been dubbed, would supposedly streamline the process of doing business online by replacing the various login names and passwords currently used to access personal accounts and information on various websites with a universal Internet ID. However, as Curt Hopkins points out in the New York Times, “a user would have one, ‘verified’ ID, which would be known by the government, and a set of large corporations. Given the periodic outbreak of governmental and corporate shenanigans, we fail to see the benefit of such a system.”
And who has the president entrusted with being the gatekeeper of our most sensitive online transactions? Not the Department of Homeland Security, which spent a year masterminding the strategy, nor the National Security Agency, which carries out the government’s warrantless eavesdropping program. Rather, the Identity Ecosystem will supposedly be overseen by the Commerce Department -- a move clearly intended to assuage fears that the government would improperly make use of such highly personal information. Yet in the wake of 9/11, information sharing between government agencies has become so commonplace that it would be naïve to think that the DHS and NSA, both of which have been jockeying for control of the nation’s cybersecurity, won’t have easy access to the information.
