US Government tries to make a safer web

THE US GOVERNMENT has published a draft of its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) in a bid to make its citizens feel safer on the Internet.

Not for the first time, the US Government thinks it should wade in to police aspects of the Internet and protect the huddled masses. The initial draft (pdf) littered with management speak outlines a vision of "Individuals and organizations utilizing secure, efficient, easy-to-use, and interoperable identity solutions to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice, and innovation."

If that hasn't inspired you to stand tall and salute the Stars and Stripes, well, we guess nothing will. To the authors' credit the document does state quite clearly that any scheme put forward by the US Government will require "voluntary participation".

To pitch it as some sort of warm security blanket, the US government is claiming that NSTIC will be "user-centric", meaning users will have control over their data. Sound familiar? It's the sort of promise put out for software products such as Microsoft's Passport and Facebook, both shining beacons of privacy.

The report cites examples where presumably only US citizens would he able to hide behind some form of anonymity cloak even after divulging parts of their personal information to websites in order to gain access to services.

At this point, NSTIC is still a draft and the US Department of Homeland Security has stuck the document on its Ideascale site hoping for people to pitch in with ideas and opinions. Whether it will listen to them is another matter entirely. The NSTIC draft will be finalised this autumn. µ