Let’s see some ID, please. The end of anonymity on the Internet?

[Thom Little]

As the joke goes, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog. But although anonymity has been part of Internet culture since the first browser, it’s also a major obstacle to making the Web a safe place to conduct business: Internet fraud and identity theft cost consumers and merchants several billion dollars last year. And many of the other more troubling aspects of the Internet, from spam emails to sexual predators, also have their roots in the ease of masking one’s identity in the online world.

Change, however, is on the way. Already over 20 million PCs worldwide are equipped with a tiny security chip called the Trusted Platform Module, although it is as yet rarely activated. But once merchants and other online services begin to use it, the TPM will do something never before seen on the Internet: provide virtually fool-proof verification that you are who you say you are.

Some critics say that the chip will change the free-wheeling Web into a police state, while others argue that it’s needed to create a safe public space. But the train has already left the station: by the end of this decade, a TPM will almost certainly be part of your desktop, laptop and even cell phone.

The TPM chip was created by a coalition of over one hundred hardware and software companies, led by AMD, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Sun. The chip permanently assigns a unique and permanent identifier to every computer before it leaves the factory and that identifier can’t subsequently be changed. It also checks the software running on the computer to make sure it hasn’t been altered to act malevolently when it connects to other machines: that it can, in short, be trusted. For now, TPM-equipped computers are primarily sold to big corporations for securing their networks, but starting next year TPMs will be installed in many consumer models as well.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ID/10441443

[MercutioATC]

1. Solution? Build your own computers...it's actually very simple.

Cheaper, most of the time, too.

[sonofliberty]

2. Goodey another boot heel to my civil liberties please!!!!! n/t

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. Of course, it won't work for identity checking at all

Because it only identifies machines, not people. Flawed from the start.

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[tridim]

4. Hackers will crack it the day after it's released

I'm not too worried, yet.

[Vinnie From Indy]

7. I can't remember the co. that unveiled a CD piracy

protected CD-Rom. They spent millions of dollars coming up with "uncrackable" cd's. If I remember they unveiled it on thursday and it was defeated by friday afternoon by some stoner with a sharpie marker.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Soooooo everybody wanna trade machines? I mean, if its the

chip there after, why not chip away at it in a simple manner, or would the chip tie its code to your id once you make a transaction online or some other thing.....

[bemildred]

6. I want to see the technology behind this statement:

"The chip permanently assigns a unique and permanent identifier to every computer before it leaves the factory and that identifier can’t subsequently be changed."

That almost has to be a chip (some piece of hardware) on the motherboard. In any case it's a highly questionable statement. Even if it is true that "it cannot be changed", you also have to make sure that "if cannot be duplicated" and "it cannot be copied".

Not that a hardware ID is a bad thing, as long as you control it.

[Neil Lisst]

8. I gnawed mine off and chewed it up.

The man ain't keepin' me down.

[mwooldri]

9. No end of anonymity on the 'Net.

It will get harder to remain anonymous but it is still possible. There's two ways of remaining anonymous in real life - that's to not divulge ID and stuff like that (hint: how do illegal immigrants manage to live so long in the USA?) - or to be on the "inside" and use an alternative ID (e.g. Witness Protection).

In cyberspace there's many ways to disguise your activities, anonymizer servers, dummy accounts, overseas servers, etc. How do you think the Great Firewall of China gets breached?

The technology in the message only ties the transactions to the MACHINE, not the individual executing the transaction.

Mark.