Common ID mandate

Last Friday, the White House issued a presidential directive calling for a “Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors”.  The policy is mandated to be completed by March, 2005 and by November 2005:

“… the heads of executive departments and agencies shall, to the maximum extent practicable, require the use of identification by Federal employees and contractors that meets the Standard in gaining physical access to Federally controlled facilities and logical access to Federally controlled information systems.”

This is big news: a common standard for identification credentials to be used for both physical and logical access for the roughly 60 million US government employees and contractors.  The contactors have a very important role to play.  Once big contractors like Boeing, SAIC, Raytheon, etc. start giving smart cards to all their employees for use on government work, they’ll naturally want to leverage the investment on the commercial side as well.  I’ve often said that real credentials and validation are the only ways to solve common problems such as phishing and identity theft.  Just as with the development of the Internet, the federal government is once again the main initial catalyst for new technology that’s going to change the foundations of mainstream business transactions in the near future.

The big question: If this grows past government employees, can we do it without infringing on people’s rights?  I think we can.

[The small question: Is the “near future” near enough for my investors to make a healthy return?  I think it is.]