Feds Strive For More Secure Web

The White House on Friday released a draft strategy for a system to make online transactions safer and digital identities more secure.

The plan, announced in a Friday blog post by White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt, envisions a future where people would not be required to use complicated or dangerously insecure passwords for online transactions with their banks or a business. Instead, people would be able to get a secure digital identifier from a variety of service providers — and then use that identifier to prove who they are as they perform their online transactions.

“Privacy and security require greater emphasis moving forward,” Schmidt wrote in his blog post. “The technology that has brought many benefits to our society and has empowered us to do so much -- has also empowered those who are driven to cause harm.”

Schmidt wrote that the draft strategy calls for the creation of an “identity ecosystem” where “individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on.”

In its report on the draft strategy, Information Week said the proposed system would include comprehensive identification and authentication standards and a better definition of the rights and responsibilities of varies entities involved in online transactions. The strategy pointed out that new laws might be required to “address liability concerns and establish enforcement mechanisms that provide accountability," according to Information Week.

Once the “ecosystem” is defined, the government hopes to spark adoption by making the federal government an early adopter of the standards and by promoting and encouraging related private sector products.

The federal government has set up a Web site to detail the draft strategy and ask for input from experts and the public.

Ari Schwartz, vice president at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Associated Press that any move to improve identity systems raises many concerns.

"The whole thing is very difficult to do and privacy is one of the more difficult pieces of it," Schwartz said, adding that the system has to balance efforts to maintain privacy while still finding out enough about someone to ensure his identity.