Begin forwarded message:

From: privacy@vortex.com Date: July 3, 2010 1:16:55 PM AST To: privacy-list@vortex.com Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] "Uncle Sam Wants You to Have an Online ID"

"Uncle Sam Wants You to Have an Online ID" http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03805.html

- - -

http://bit.ly/9tnHhN (Fox Business)

The piece linked above pretty much presents a gung-ho support of the awful online identity proposal, and notes compliance would likely need to be legislated by Congress. (See "Why the New Federal 'Trusted Internet Identity' Proposal is Such a Very Bad Idea" ( http://bit.ly/9j4X0w [Lauren's Blog] ) for background on the proposal.

But what's particularly interesting are the reader comments. At this point, none are clearly positive, and virtually all are negative toward the concept to one extent or another, in ways ranging from logical to wacky. This mirrors most comments on the proposal on forums around the Net -- there appears to be overwhelming resistance to a government-involved universal Internet ID, despite claims of wonderful technological protections that would be provided in its design and deployment.

I should add that the proposal plays directly into the hands of the more "fringy" New World Order conspiracy fans, and provides political fodder for Big Telecom's "the feds are going to take over the Internet" Big Lie campaign against Net Neutrality.

--Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein

_______________________________________________ privacy mailing list http://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy