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Wednesday 9th July 2003
COMMENTARY - THE INTERNET IS DYING
| DIGITAL IDENTITY
The underlying factors driving demand for digital identity are actually very strong. In addition to the increasing frustration of using the Internet, we have the post 9/11 requirement for security in all aspects of our business and personal lives. Increasingly we need to feel we have more control over our digital records of all sorts wherever they are.
You might argue that this (digital identity) is a long term solution, that we can't wait that long, that it's too expensive etc. I would argue that the technology to do this is here and ready right now. Digital identity is no longer a technology issue it is a cultural issue. And the climate is absolutely right when people recognize the solution and vote for it with their feet and wallets. DS
LINKS:
In April this year I wrote about the BT Authentication Service. I have been referring to it regularly since, because this is an outstanding initiative and represents the future. This is a premium report available to Silver and Gold members.
CBDi Report
CODA:
This week I report on Liberty Alliance that has just released a business guidelines report on identity federation. It looks like they have just started to realize how difficult the task is that they have set themselves. However I have bad news for them - they are trying to solve the wrong problem - they need to be worrying about basic identity BEFORE we get to federating it. If we don't solve that, their work will be completely wasted.
CBDi News Report
CODA FROM RV: Part of the mythology of the Internet includes its anonymity. Many people are attached to the fantasy that you can disassociate yourself from your Internet persona - so people visit certain websites, download certain images, and are indignant to discover that this makes them subject to police investigation. On the internet, no one is supposed to know you are a dog - or a rock god. Authors post gushing reviews for their own books on Amazon, disaffected employees gossip on newsgroups, adults pose as children etc.
One scenario is the emergence of three distinct Internets. A fantasy world, in which people can move freely and anonymously, repudiate their identities and actions at will,
and participate in communal software development. A corporate world where everyone has proved their identity. And a child-safe world, where every child must show a birth certificate, and adults are only admitted with a good reason and a police check.
It saddens me that the freedom of the Internet has been destroyed for many by the behaviour of the few. This is an example of the pattern known as the Tragedy of the Commons. But there is no use pretending we can continue to graze our goats on the meadows, when a few selfish people have reduced it to bare earth. | We suggest the approaches being adopted to resolve the current crisis caused by email marketing will not work. We need to accelerate comprehensive authentication systems.
"The Internet is dying; within a year it will be unusable".
This comment was made to me just the other day by someone who is well versed in the industry and not prone to hype or exaggeration. This person is almost completely overwhelmed by email marketing; for every useful email he receives, he also gets several hundred more. It costs him real time and money.
What has this to do with CBDI, Web Services and SOA you might ask? All of us get rubbish email of course. We use Inspectors and filters, but it costs us time and money. But not just in the volumes of trash . . . . for example last week's CBDI Newswire included a word that is an everyday, ordinary word that caused serious numbers of the Newswires to be bounced by email inspector software. I wasn't using any out of the ordinary word - topically, the word I used has a strong association with "Wimbledon, set and match". But in the same way that I have to refer to email marketing by a euphemism, I can no longer use this word in an email without risking mass rejection. I now wonder what other words I should not use.
Just today we received a mail from a well known Consumer Portal saying that CBDI is generating high volumes of XXXX complaints. They are no longer accepting emails from our domain!!! I know that many of the newswires that I am personally signed up for, get automatically screened out and go straight into the junk folder to be deleted, by my own inspector. So CBDI and other similar businesses are being badly impacted by others actions.
And just in case you are sitting smugly behind your corporate firewall and don't see too much trash, and have reliable delivery mechanisms, have you looked at your children's, partner's or parents in-queue recently? Is the Internet still a safe place for them to work and play?
These thoughts set me to thinking that we are all looking at this problem in the wrong way - enterprises, industry, governments and lawyers, we are trying to stop the unstoppable, and it's not going to work. We have to turn this around and look at the motivations of the players involved and then use technology appropriately. So, apart from a serious impact on the CBDI business, what has this got to do with Web Services and SOA you might well ask?
THE ROOT PROBLEM
If any one of us even fleetingly considers committing a crime, most of us are instantly dissuaded from this course because, notwithstanding statistics, there is a reasonable chance we will be identified, caught and convicted. The root of the problem is that individuals can masquerade behind fictitious and probably multiple identities. Some have become very good at doing this. If the law in the US, Germany or the UK is altered, they can always move the server to some remote country that is beyond the law.
IDENTITY MANAGEMENT - OR DIGITAL IDENTITY?
Over the past year we have heard many vendors suggesting that Identity Management is the key to Web Services. There are certainly many vendors working hard on their identity management servers and tools, however it appears that most of these solutions are focused on internal enterprise and B2B related identity management. There seems to be much less real activity surrounding individual and consumer identity.
Of course Microsoft famously failed to win hearts and minds over its Hailstorm initiative, which was intended to do precisely this, and it seems that no one else has dared to step into this space.
YET - in our humble opinion, INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY is the real key to . . . . well not just Web Services, but actually the future of the Internet.
Imagine if you will, being able to set your (and your children's) filters so that you only communicate (whatever the mechanism) with parties that are prepared to authenticate their identity with the equivalent of a notary. Whilst the Internet would carry on as it does today, there would be a trusted Internet operating as a virtual Internet within the common physical infrastructure. Once the take-up of authentication passed a critical mass, email marketers would lose interest because there would be no real commercial interest in continuing, so the physical capacity problem would be resolved through the operation of natural market forces. Genuine email marketers would presumably be pleased to authenticate themselves.
BUT IT WON'T HAPPEN - WILL IT?
There are many forces opposing widespread authentication. Microsoft found this out to its cost. Rather more pragmatically we might say that at the moment there is no real market demand for authentication. But I would paraphrase that by saying that until people understand what something can do for them, there is no demand. They simply cope with life as it is until someone shows up with a brilliant idea. Consider there was no demand to replace the bow and arrow with the Gatling machine gun until it was invented. Same with the horse and cart and the automobile.
It was the same with the credit card. The first credit cards were introduced in 1958. However it took until the late 1960's before the credit card industry managed to persuade consumers it was a good idea. Subsequent history of cards speaks for itself - last year VISA evidently did nearly $900 Billion revenue in North America alone .
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