Pre-Snowden/NSA News Story: "Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans" [View all]
From 2011:
STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said......
What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." ...
Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential, if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge,"...
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20027837-501465.html
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"No chance....."! Bwahahahahaha!
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The government is allotting up to five years for the standardization of policy and technology to come together. Implementation of the plan, the government said, will not occur overnight.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/obama-online-security/