I'm really of two minds on this topic: On the one hand, stable legally enforced identities on the internet that everyone has possession of would be a boon to e

I'm really of two minds on this topic: On the one hand, stable legally enforced identities on the internet that everyone has possession of would be a boon to ecommerce, they would be the foundation for any conceivable framework for performing binding transactions over the internet, and would drive a lot of new business, and enable new business models. On the other hand, mandatory public identification of everyone, even in situations where it's unwarranted would be an Orwellian nightmare. And letting people require trustworthy identities in frivolous contexts (equivalent to asking people to show you their driver's license at a party, or to shop at a supermarket) is a bad idea, an extremely attractive to ethically challenged marketers bad idea at that. The gripping hand of course, is that we can't not do this. As a society we have set ourselves on the path where the benefits outweigh the risks, and the risks of not creating a trustworthy system of identity that does it's best to guarantee both the security of transactions (non-repudiation) and the freedoms that come with pseudo- and ano- nymity outweigh the benefits of sticking with a broken system of partial identification, where identity theft is a simple matter of copying the right strings to the right places. Frankly if you read the PDF referenced in the story, it's not as bad as some of the comments in this thread seem to think it is, the people involved have obviously been reading Kim Cameron, and aren't completely at sea on the privacy issues, or the social implications. That doesn't mean that this process doesn't bear strong scrutiny, but it does give me hope that this necessary piece of infrastructure won't get implemented in the absolute worst way possible.