White House seeks comment on trusted ID plan

25.06.2010
The White House is seeking comment on a draft plan for establishing a trusted identity system online, with the goal of making Internet transactions more secure and convenient.

Howard Schmidt, the White House cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to President Barack Obama, released a of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace on Friday.

The plan calls for the U.S. government to work with private companies to create an Identity Ecosystem, an online environment "where individuals, organizations, services, and devices can trust each other because authoritative sources establish and authenticate their digital identities."

The Identity Ecosystem would allow Internet users to complete transactions with confidence, Schmidt said in a on WhiteHouse.gov.

"No longer should individuals have to remember an ever-expanding and potentially insecure list of usernames and passwords to login into various online services," he wrote. "Through the strategy we seek to enable a future where individuals can voluntarily choose to obtain a secure, interoperable, and privacy-enhancing credential ... from a variety of service providers -- both public and private -- to authenticate themselves online for different types of transactions."

The White House is seeking comments on the draft plan on a at ideascale.com. A handful of people had already commented on the plan by Friday afternoon.