[IP] Re: "The ID Divide"

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Adam L Beberg [beberg@stanford.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 5:39 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: Mary Shaw
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   "The ID Divide"

This brings up the social shift that underlies all of this, accelerated
by the technology - an identity is now no more permanent or significant
then a set of clothes. That goth kid you went to high school with is now
a lawyer in a suit, and his Sr partner was at Woodstock. Now days the
kid that discards his 7th MySpace incarnation for Facebook when they
goto college, will soon also discard the binge drinking facebook
identity for a professional LinkedIn profile. And more or less everyone
is perfectly happy with this.

Using an alias is perfectly legal, and always has been. The most common
use is by actors and writers, almost none of which go by or do business
under their real names. As long as you do not misrepresent - See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym

The treats come from someone tying them all together - your insurance
company finding out about the WebMD searching "you" for example would be
catastrophic, or from someone getting impersonating a version of "you"
and using it - the worst usually being someone getting the credit report
"you" which is the target identity thieves are after.

Which brings us full circle back to the original idea of what to do
about those without a government ID? The government wants to be able to
identify and track the citizen/voter/taxpayer version of "you", and be
big brother to make sure you're not a terrorist or worse a black
democrat. So the threat (beyond the govenment itself) is... everyone
wanting to use that ID too like the horribly flawed all powerful social
security number, or someone being able to steal that ID. Biometrics make
the later rather simple to solve, but that first one is a real problem
that those fighting REAL ID and other strong government ID are worried
about. And of course to keep things interesting, solving the later
problem with biometrics makes the former problem impossible, fun fun!

> From: Mary Shaw [mary.shaw@gmail.com]
> This brings us to a question that has been on my mind for a while --
>
>                 Why should I have a single "true identity"?
>
> What's wrong with my maintaining multiple personas, either in the real world or the virtual world?


--
- Adam L. Beberg







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