Microsoft Man Seeks to Re-Engineer the Web Inquirer (UK) (05/16/07) Grossman, Wendy M.
as it appeared in the May 21, 2007 edition of ACM TechNews.
Microsoft's Kim Cameron wants to create a mechanism for knowing who you are talking to on the Web and is working to re-engineer the Internet. His first big break came last year with the publishing of the paper "The Laws of Identity" and proposals for A Privacy-Compliant Identity Metasystem, which serve as the foundation for the CardSpace identification technology that is found in Windows Vista and is available for download for XP. The technology is in beta at many sites and is "beginning to ramp up," says Cameron. CardSpace makes use of the Information Card, which is generated securely on the user's machine, for authentication, and it can be selected from a graphical display. The completion of the authentication process involves the production of a security token by the card, rather than sending information in the card to the site. The graphical display verifies information such as the owner of the site and the location of the underlying business. There are some concerns about the idea of an "identity layer," such as its threat model and use case. Cameron was asked why Microsoft did not join the Liberty Alliance during the recent ACM conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, and he said the widescale vendor initiative was different in that "it doesn't give the user their own agent under their control." Click Here to View Full Article
