Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans

[phleshdef]

78. What you just said is almost as illogical as "keep your government hands off my Medicare".

Now look, I am against SOPA in its current form. I think its oppressive.

But this proposal here, isn't anything thats a big deal. First off, the government owns the damn internet. The government built the internet. The government has ALWAYS HAD and always will have the kind of access it needs to the internet to do the kinds of things that you are suggesting this proposed ID would do. Where did you think the internet came from? The internet fairy?

Secondly, the proposed ID would be something akin to a smart card that would allow you to more easily inject your identification into websites that require it. It is not anything mandatory. It is something a person could buy, if they wanted the god damn convenience. In practice, its no different than what you do RIGHT NOW when you go online and create accounts, use credit cards, access banking info, file your taxes, etc. Almost all those things require you to create an identity and provide identity related information whenever you do certain things. If you had a smart card that stored your identity, instead of asking you for it directly, your computer would automatically feed that info to that website for you. And thats the extent of it.

A lot of this paranoid BS in this thread is due to people not understanding how stuff works now and thus making uninformed assumptions.