zOMG THEY'RE GONNA SHUT DOWN FOURCHIN!

Hey, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about. Controversy settled.

If it was exactly as advertised, might be kinda nice. But the first time it's used to track down someone's history or information in court (and it will), it will rightfully explode into 4th amendment confetti.

Oh, what the fuck.

Nothing about the internet has ever been anonymous.

God, why can't we just retire the word "cyberspace" already?

Many web sites are already doing authentication via Google, Facebook, and others. The market is already addressing authentication services, and some are based on open source technology. To say we need the government to "reduce the need for people to memorize dozens of passwords online" is disingenuous.

I love the notion that we suddenly need the government to enhance security on the internet. So this will be the next SSN then right? it will be an single point of failure for identity theft within a year.

But at least they can tell who is wikileakin to who! no more embarassing leaks of info.

If anyone really wants to be anonymous with such a system, it's still possible. Get SSL VPN access to an overseas system. Open an encrypted tunnel. Forward all your traffic through it. If you're feeling frisky, put something like Tor on either end. It will be slow--dial up slow--but it will be anonymous. Like Mahlti69 said, nothing we do today is really anonymous on the day to day internet. Some of you would crap your pants if you realized the amount of tracking that can be done for you just posting here if you did the following:

1. Turned on computer. 2. Loaded this page in the browser. 3. Logged in. 4. Posted.

The idea will undoubtedly fail for several reasons, however. 1-- every idea for such a unified theory of Internet login has been crap and the public reaction has uniformly been either "we don't care," or "hell no". 2-- if they legislate it, good for them. I'd love to see them get every ISP to willingly 2a--buy in and 2b--support it will absorbing the costs to them. Last, 3--any law will always, always, always lag behind technological innovation. DARPA designed the Internet to be nigh unkillable, and they really did a bang up job of that. If they restrict this by law, it will be largely trivial to sidestep that at times.

i might get worked up about this if i had even the tiniest inkling that this would actually happen. my work in the health care industry has taught me that everything is WAY more complicated than you think it is. we have (thus far) utterly failed to deploy anything even remotely related to a universal EHR (an electronic health record that could be reviewed and edited by any health care provider in the nation, so that any physician i need to see anywhere in the nation would have instant access to my full medical history), which is something of much more pressing need and value to society (and, incidentally, provides a greater opportunity to make money) than only having one set of login information for the whole internet. never gonna happen.

@3 you're joking right?

That's what they always say right before things get crazy...

Most of the stuff they keep on you is probably fake anyway. Teh internets say I ran up and down muddy hills in Bridle Trails Park for 1 hour 1 minute 28 seconds for a distance of 10.4 miles on Saturday, and I only ran 5 miles (and change) in 1 hour 4 minutes 28 seconds.

And to put #3's comment into further perspective...

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-…

This is even a terrible idea for the reasons they claim it's a good idea. The more implicitly people trust a system to verify someone's identity, the more devastating the consequences when that system is defeated.

I have no trouble remembering my password. I use the same one for everything:

1 2 3 4 5

(It's also the combination for the lock on my luggage!)

yeah, my password is password

you should use your wife or dog's name, boxcar.

that will take a google search to find and delay the hacker 0.001 seconds.

Fucking Slog ate my comment again.

This is a TERRIBLE idea. The worst idea I have ever heard.

Didn't the Gawker hack ring any bells with these idiots?

Having all of your logins be the same means that if ONE of them is hacked, ALL of them are hacked. The next Gawker -- and there will be plenty more -- means that not only are you hacked there but you're hacked at the bank too.

Even using your Facebook login for other sites is stupid. Facebook gets hacked all the freaking time. How many of your friends have been hit by the "get a free iPad" or "see who's been looking at your profile" phishing apps? Boom - they've got your other logins too now.

Seriously, did they even ask a real security expert?

reduce the need for people to memorize dozens of passwords online.

LOL wut?

@19 I think the point was to make it so that the government could backdoor us all day, legally.

@19 -- Chances are Locke's public pronouncements are a smokescreen. It will cause plenty public outrage, and under the cover of the media furor a more sinister bill will be passed... something that requires ISPs to stream your internet activity in realtime to the gummit databases as soon as you type the word "government".

IPv6 will make this a reality, regardless if we have a system in place or not to push this forward.

What @22 and @23 said.

All your future is belong to teh Private Internetz.

25 comments in, and nobody has said "mark of the beast" yet. I am depressed.

How does liberal, forward-thinking Seattle get fuckwits like Locke and Drug-czar-genius Kerlikowske into the national government? Holy shit.

gary locke is involved? well then you know how well that will work out don't you? gary makes al gore look like a fucking genius, and that takes some doing. really you do all realize that every phone call and internet everything you do goes through the filters at langley right? and then your hard drive has lamp light on it so every thing thats ever been done, every last key stroke and page veiw is stored there. theres nothing private about the internet, nothing at all!

Good thing my given name works for my manhunt profile: Rod von Hugendong.