Comments on: Seven Laws and Seven Flaws for Managing Identity

By: William Heath

William Heath — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:28:46 +0000

Yup. Laws is a word one should not use lightly among lawmakers - they dont like it. It was a big challenge for these customer-friendly laws to embrace the world of public services and the non-consensual aspects of government (ie the bits where the consent is given by society even if the individual disagrees). Anyway, it was fun and Ideal Gov “assisted” in the French sense.

See the earlier bits:

http://www.idealgovernment.com/index.php/search/results/0bedddaa4e5126eddd9091d8754e083c/

By: Robin Wilton

Robin Wilton — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:57:59 +0000

Tom, I think there are a couple missing from Mike’s corollaries:

- They’re not Laws, they’re Principles… (or, if you are a Pirates of the Caribbean fan… “more what ye might call… guidelines…”)

- #6 should include non-human identities

Dave, the fact remains that Microsoft has not been a Liberty member, for the 5+ years of that organisation’s existence. Interaction between Liberty and Kim has only been possible, as I understand it, insofar as it could take place in a context not subject to any Liberty-style non-assertion agreement: for instance, the unconferences jointly run with Kaliya et al., or the more recent Concordia initiative.

I’m not pointing the finger here, and I maintain that a great part of Kim’s contribution has been to introduce his work to the world without generating a religious war.

By: wendyg

wendyg — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:23:18 +0000

I assure you, the criticism exists, which is all I was saying about it; Cameron was asked point-blank why Microsoft hadn’t joined the Liberty Alliance, and he replied that he doesn’t do religious wars. I was not the person who asked the question.

ISTM that there are two warring instincts in all identity system designs: 1) the desire to have an easy life, which implies linking as much as possible across a single identity. (Cue Mark Twain: I say *put* all your eggs in one basket - and then watch that basket!) 2) the desire for privacy, which implies keeping things separate and limited as much as possible.

By: Dave Kearns

Dave Kearns — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:02:53 +0000

Um, wg? CardSpace (KIm’s project) has lot’s of interaction with both the Liberty Alliance, the Bandit Project and even the OpenID project. You might be thinking of the Microsoft/IBM Web Services Initiative (WS-*) which has similar functionality as the Liberty Alliance spec, but is more all encompassing. But even there, convergence is slowly occurring.

By: wendyg

wendyg — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:42:03 +0000

The Laws are simple enough, but the problem is, as always, in implementation. I interviewed Kim Cameron, whose laws those are, for the Inquirer at CFP this year about his ideas for implementing them. There’s been a lot of criticism of Microsoft for going it alone instead of joining one of the existing bigger projects - Liberty Alliance, primarily.