US unveils plan to make online transactions safer

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the murky world of the Internet, how do you ever really know who you're talking to, who you're buying from or if your bank can actually tell it's you when you log in to pay a bill?

Amid growing instances of identity theft, bank account breaches and sophisticated Internet scams, the government is looking for ways to make those transactions in cyberspace more secure.

But officials must tread carefully, as efforts to create identity cards, personal certificates or other systems of identifiers raise privacy worries and fears of Big Brother tracking its citizens online.

In a draft plan released Friday, the White House laid out an argument for a yet-undeveloped, voluntary identification system and set up a website to gather input from experts and everyday Internet users on how it should be structured.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100626/D9GIT3KG1.html

[PSPS]

1. "raise privacy worries and fears of Big Brother tracking its citizens"

But officials must tread carefully, as efforts to create identity cards, personal certificates or other systems of identifiers raise privacy worries and fears of Big Brother tracking its citizens online.

What a load. How about the Patriot Act? How about the wholesale interception of everyone's telephone calls and email? They don't "raise privacy worries?"

[bemildred]

2. You have no privacy on the web.

The web is about publication and convenience and reference and shopping and entertainment and discussion and looking things up.

Only high grade encryption offers any measure of privacy on the web. Anything you want private, don't put it on the web, or encrypt the heck out of it. I suggest the former. Encryption is a big pain to manage, and that still does nothing about "social engineering".

[SILVER__FOX52]

3. Fuck the Government.

Leave the Web, alone.

[Heywood J]

4. If someone else wants to pay my bills, let them!

I don't need a government ID for online banking, I have a password that I chose (and change) and SSL encryption.

[Iowa]

5. I agree...

Furthermore, there are too many critical problems that should be addressed, but aren't being addressed. It's getting damned tiresome seeing these twits wasting time and resources "fixing" things that aren't broken. And really... what is their true intent here?. Is it really about protecting us from identity theft and related issues? Does anyone really believe that? The government's underlying intent is almost never what they say it is. It almost always involves catering to the needs of corps, and it is almost never about making this country a better place for average citizens.

Bottom line... they should keep their lying, duplicitous, sleazy paws off the internet. If they want to educate people about password selection and encryption, that might be time well spent, but we all know that's not what this is about.