ONLamp.com -- The Long View of Identity

Our credit ratings are a function of the companies that maintain the ratings; were the companies to go out of business and lose the expertise needed to maintain their databases, we'd lose our credit ratings. The same goes for online identities; they persist only as long as the institutions that offer them.

I don't really believe Equifax will go away (without some other responsible authority taking over its databases), so a more pertinent worry is that the government will take ownership of data that companies have promised--or at least, users have assumed--would be confidential. This fear reflects the reality that our online identities are owned by the authorities that grant them. We also fear that companies will mine our data and use it for purposes we haven't authorized.

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• Contractual: the authority promises the user not to misuse the data stored with the authority.
• Technical: the software used to store and transmit user data encrypts and digitally signs it in such a way that is hidden from everyone except the sites at the endpoints with a need to know.

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