Topic: Digital Identity
More and more people are using mobile phones with integral video cameras to capture events. Some of the most harrowing pictures from the London bomb attacks in July came from amateur video taken underground by passengers with camera phones. We seem to be heading towards a future where everything we experience will be captured and stored for retrieval. Perhaps only the sheer scale of the numbers of people involved will be the biggest safeguard we have against the nightmare of 'Big Brother' surveillance. [Accelerating Change Audio from IT Conversations]
The internet offers a degree of freedom unlike any space in the physical world. When you come across something on the internet you dislike, you simply move on. In this conversation with Esther Dyson, participants in the Accelerating Change 2005 conference discuss the unique problem of internet regulation in this climate of freedom. [Accelerating Change Audio from IT Conversations]
Dick Hardt delivers a witty and focused look at the next stage in the evolution of digital identity. In particular, he offers an insight into which parts of the identity ecosystem will be the likely drivers to take us from the directory centric world of what he terms Identity 1.0 to the user centric world of Identity 2.0. [O'Reilly Open Source Convention audio from IT Conversations]
J2EE, .Net, who needs em? Apparently not Amazon, Google, Yahoo or Sabre. Peter Yared, who headed up the Liberty Alliance project at Sun, took notice, left Sun and founded ActiveGrid, a company dedicated to building Web applications upon LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Python/Perl), XML, Javascript and DHTML. As for grids, Yared maintains there are really three types: computational, utility (on-demand) and transaction grids (an example of which is ActiveGrid). He explains what makes a transaction grid different than using conventional load balancing software. How does ActiveGrid stack up against Microsoft's forthcoming Indigo? Why did ActiveGrid choose the Apache open source license for its base technology?
Daniel Solove doesn't use the familiar metaphor of "Big Brother" when
he discusses privacy; rather he uses Kafka's play "The Trial." He
says we're not as much in danger of having our privacy violated by
someone with evil intent as we are of having our lives turned upside
down from the interactions of unapproachable and faceless
corporations and bureaucracies. [Technometria with Phil Windley;
audio from IT Conversations]
How do you establish trust between between strangers on the Internet?
Identity federation is one way to create a community of trust, but it
relies on establishing the trust domains before the interaction. That
doesn't work for many Internet transactions. Phil Windley interviews Professor Kent Seamons to discuss some specific ways of solving this problem. [IT Conversations audio of Phil's Technometria series]
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Evan Ratliff, author of "SAFE: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World." They talk about making America safe - or at least the issues which underlie it. (Tech Nation podcast on IT Conversations)
(The Gillmor Gang on IT Conversations) This week The Gang digs deeper into digital identity with a panel of experts. It begins as a Kumbaya of identity vendors and technologies, but by the second half the gloves come off. Craig points out that everyone has built silos so far because there have been no alternatives. Is the idea of a Microsoft silo "old fashioned thinking," as Kim suggests, defending the company he joined not all that long ago? He then presents the first five of his seven Laws of Identity -- clearly well thought out and vendor independent as all agree. Everyone also agrees that no identity solution can succeed without the cooperation and participation of Microsoft, but Dave is skeptical given the company's history in identity management. Phil points out that PKI hasn't succeded, and Kim suggests it's because PKI violated his 4th Law of Identity. And Doc suggests that digital identity needs a 'key personality' in the same way as Dave has played a lead role in RSS and blogging. Make sure you listen to this one all the way through.
[IT Conversations audio] Scott Mace talked with Bryan Field-Elliot, CTO of Ping Identity Corporation at Digital Identity World 2004. They discussed efforts to converge SAML and the Liberty Alliance standards; other big hurdles in front of widespread adoption of federated identity; understanding the different use cases driving SAML, Liberty and WS-*; the impact of the Liberty IDFF protocol's contribution to SAML 2.0; levelling the playing field between large and small technology vendors; the first email client that uses SAML; plans to further support public-key infrastructures; emerging mandates outside of health care and banking; a status report on the SourceID open-source organization; and deployment hurdles and their solutions.
(Audio: The Gillmor Gang on IT Conversations) With a preview of his forthcoming book from O'Reilly Media, Phil Windley joins The Gang to share his insights on digital identity. The result is an excellent Digital Identity 101 by Professor Windley. Phil explains the differences between virtual directories, metadirectories, centralized directories and federated identity. Other topics include Shibboleth, role-based authentication, SAML, the Liberty Alliance, and SXIP. Also, what's the potential role of DNS in identity management, who controls identity (users or vendors), and who will be the winners and losers in the identity-management game?
