The White House Wants to Issue You an Online ID.

The White House Wants to Issue You an Online ID. HT: Motherboard.

A few years back, the White House had a brilliant idea: Why not create a single, secure online ID that Americans could use to verify their identity across multiple websites, starting with local government services. 

The New York Times described it at the time as a "driver's license for the internet."

Sound convenient? It is. Sound scary? It is.

Next month, a pilot program of the "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" will begin in government agencies in two US states, to test out whether the pros of a federally verified cyber ID outweigh the cons.

The goal is to put to bed once and for all our current ineffective and tedious system of using passwords for online authentication, which itself was a cure for the even more ineffective and tedious process of walking into a brick-and-mortar building and presenting a human being with two forms of paper identification.

The program is just entering a test phase with select state government agencies only (there are currently plans to expand the trial out to 10 more organizations.) 

But it's not far-fetched to think we're moving toward a standardized way to prove our identity in cyberspace the same way we do offline.

The White House argues cutting down on inefficiencies and fraud would bolster the information economy. In an era where we have cars that drive themselves and flying robots delivering beer, you have to wonder how much longer people are going to put up with standing in line at the DMV for four hours to hand a teller (with a taxpayer-paid salary) a copy of your birth certificate and piece of mail to prove you are you.

If an analysis of the pilot programs in Michigan and Pennsylvania find the centralized ID saves time and money and spares us the DMV line, privacy advocates are going to have a hell of a fight ahead of them.Read the full story here.