I used to follow the whole identity/single-sign-on but haven’t lately. Back when I stopped it was mostly debate of Passport vs the Liberty Alliance. Not sure if you saw them:

http://www.projectliberty.org/index.php

There’s an overview of some parts of the webservice here:

http://webservices.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2003/04/01/liberty.html

Oh and forgot this one from some time back:

http://openid.net/

Well I’ll just go ahead and spam this post. This was posted a little bit ago:

http://www.itgarage.com/node/658

sorry to comment all over your pretty blog, but i meant to say this the other day. this stuff creeps me out. it’s true, I’m a bit paranoid, but i just don’t like anyone but me managing my identity. sure, there are helpful possibilities, but there are also very unpleasant ones– which would certainly come along.

on one side, there is the issue of how we think of identity. when identity and personality became information it became something less. Something less important, it’s dehumanizing.

on the another side, there is how business thinks of our identity. That is to say something to track so that they can sell us more stuff we don’t need. Something to sell, so that other people can try to sell us things. What parts of our personal lives are free from being a commodity anymore?

On yet another side we have the government. Not just ours either. Our government in particular seems interested in tracking people as easily as possible. I don’t like that. So long as I don’t have a warrant out for me I want to be another face in the crowd, I don’t want the government to have a profile about who I am– not because I have something to hide, but because it is none of their business.

And on another side still we have the security of this information. If there is one thing we should have learned by now it is that absolute security is more of a dream than a reality. The depth of information that identity management aspires towards is scary, not only because of it’s depth, but because of the very real possibility that it could be mishandled. It is hard enough to rebuild your life after having your ssn stolen, what happens when a person possesses what could only be described as intimate details of your life? I know one thing, it sure wouldn’t end well for you.

To me it seems like identity management is just another step in the wrong direction, we have so little control of things in this world, why do we need to hand over control this?

please tell me if i am being silly.

Handing over control is a valid concern. The idea is to mimic drivers license. In a sense you are handing some control over to the people who issued your license, but you still retain the rights of when to show it, etc. The identity comes when people trust the people that issued it. The founder of Skip actually did a nice explanation/presentation of all this that’s available online now. I recommend giving it a look, it’s not too long and goes over the handing over of details (which is what ends up happening now).

http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

[...] I said “identity management is the next big thing” back in September. That was before I’d seen Sxip founder Dick Hardt’s presentation on Identity 2.0. Zach peeped me the link and told me I wouldn’t regret watching the presentation. He was right. Everybody, especially the people who don’t yet care about identity management, should take a look. [...]

[...] been a long time since I said identity management is the next big thing (and many of the names have changed since), but I stand by it. I also stand by the suggestion that [...]