National Cyber ID

The federal agency called the National Agency for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, or the NSTIC, an acronym you have probably never heard of, is making important decisions that may affect the way that you go on-line. The agency is seeking to promote safety and security of on-line transactions because identity theft incurred by a consumer on-line can take 130 hours and over $600 to resolve. The agency wants to create a unique log-on ID for each person in America that they can use securely for everything they do on-line, from banking to shopping to many other things. Obama made the following justifications for the plan:

"By making online transactions more trustworthy and better protecting privacy, we will prevent costly crime, we will give businesses and consumers new confidence, and we will foster growth and untold innovation"

He went on to stress that the program will be in no way mandatory, and consumers will still be able to choose to do certain transactions on their National ID and certain transactions anonymously.

However, I believe it is always important to be skeptical of such programs, as the scope is hardly ever limited to the original intentions. Your Social Security number, for example, was originally created only for the purpose of paying and receiving Social Security. The scope of that number has been greatly exceeded and is now used to track all sorts of information about you. Although the National ID program is voluntary now, in the worst future case, it could eventually be a requirement of any access of the internet at all and give the government the ability for total on-line tracking of your activity. So I want your thoughts: should the federal government get into the game of on-line commerce and banking security or should this be left to private companies?

Source:http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/obama-aims-to-fight-identity-theft-with-new-online-id-plan/