Trusted third party? Not government!??

Here's an item from ComputerWorld that corroborates something this bit of the Web has been blathering about in various places such as heres: Get Ready for the U.S. National ID Card. The significant point is that while the world rails against a national ID card program, it has one in practically all effects except name. The driver's license is not meant to be a national or general ID; it is a license to drive a motor vehicle. HOWEVER, it is a culturally accepted standard of identification that, although not standardized across states and provinces nor granted national identity status, is going through an evolution to become just that.

I think it's a great idea, and that if the citizenry demands competing, alternative identity credentials as well, the "drivers' license national identity card" could be relatively innocuous re: privacy and civil rights. If it is standardized, as suggested in Cline's piece -- which points to an American Association of Motor Vehicles Administrators (AAMVA) initiative to create a framework for license standardization (in North America!) -- it will give a lie to the implicit assumption (sometimes made explicit depending on who's taking what position) that the public will never accept a government issuing a national digital identity. Counterpoint that with this post about Verisign issuing digital credentials despite being a representative of the equally unacceptable -- to consumers/citizens -- ommercial interest issuing general identity credentials.

That's the thing about so-called paradigm shifts: nothing holds for very long. Equilibrium is punctuated at best, and we just have to move along with the ground.

Posted by Grayson at February 12, 2004 08:22 AM