Obama makes call for secure national identity system

Don’t look now, but President Barack Obama today delivered a proposal calling on the private sector to create an online identity to help protect consumers from fraud and other scams online.

It’s not entirely clear what part of the private sector would be able to – or have the appropriate “private sector” incentives necessary to – create and deliver such a massive change to how the online world operates. But that didn’t stop President Obama from announcing the so-called “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” (pdf) anyway. But certainly ISPs and telecom service providers would be in the cross-hairs to help enable such a platform.

The plan tries to stay clear of requiring the creation of a “national ID” – which raises all sorts of privacy concerns – and instead focuses on fostering a single sign-on-style identity platform that would grease the rails of online commerce while also helping users to have more control over their identity. Today, online identity mostly revolves around consumers juggling passwords to access online sites that can all too easily be guessed, stolen or phished.

Said the President in announcing the new program:

“The internet has transformed how we communicate and do business, opening up markets, and connecting our society as never before. But it has also led to new challenges, like online fraud and identity theft, that harm consumers and cost billions of dollars each year.”

Among the examples used to show how such a system might work (and which involve telecom service providers): a telco granting a user a digital ID to view personal health information or a mobile operator delivering a similar ID via a smartphone.

So what’s next? Officials plan to hold a series of workshops between June and September to bring together companies and advocacy groups to begin to draft a trusted identity specification.