White House preparing national Internet identity authentication plan

By Molly Bernhart Walker [1] and David Perera [2]

The White House plans to reveal June 25 a strategy for verifying the online identity of Internet users, said cyber czar Howard Schmidt, speaking June 22 during a Washington, D.C. conference.

"I want to make sure that the computer on the other end knows that it's me that's interacting with it," he told audience members of the Symantec Government Symposium 2010.

To that end, the White House will unveil a strategy for public comment called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. The strategy will not limit itself to creating authenticated identities for federal employees.

Rather, it will propose a common identification standard for members of the public, who would utilize it while accessing electronic health records, conducting online banking, shopping online or even just sending an email, Schmidt said.

"Everyone in my office digitally signs email," Schmidt said.

The trusted identity strategy draws on federal efforts such as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, the 2004 presidential mandate that federal employees carry a standardized identity card, Schmidt said. The HSPD 12 implementation strategy ended up giving federal employees a smart card containing a chip holding simple biometric information.

"We need to figure out how we get those things to work at the national level," Schmidt said.

National identity authentication will be voluntary and must take into consideration privacy concerns, Schmidt also said.