I've always considered the idea of a 'National ID Card' that indicates EXACTLY who you are and eliminates ALL forms of deception as a Utopian Ideal.

Privacy advocates will wet their knickers over such a thought...but if it's something that can eliminate [most] crimes of deception then oppositional arguments will be pretty darn weak.

On the net....re Brad's thoughts....it might put another barrier in the way of all those online nasties like paedophilia and cyberbullying....

....and Nigerian Scams.....

Sounds like a very bad thing to me actually. Yes, I like my privacy very much, thank you. I'm probably allready too old and cynic for this new stuff I guess.

Also, I see no reason why my friends would need to automatically know what I'm playing and where I was, even less the companies owning those services.

Actually, a bit of common sense and thinking eliminates most crimes of deception. But in our modern times, I guess, one needs a technological solution to every problem else the world would go under. *snark*

Federated ID's sound like the ultimate tracking tool for hackers, goverment and corporations alike. I think I'll pass on this future trend until it becomes clear who will profit most by it.

Or a better way to control whaqt you can or can't do on the internet; keep track of what you say and so on.  Yea this will be the day I stop using the internet all together.

Wrong!

Frogboy, read Craig Mundie's (Microsoft executive) proposed changes/treaties being hammered out at the UN.

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/01/30/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/

Internet 'Drivers Licenses' have near zero public appeal despite Time Magazine's and the NY Times full approval.  The only reason why those meida outlets support this ridiculous move is because people are dumping them over the internet.  China tried a similiar measure concerning blogs and the same people who support this measure cried foul on China for violation of human rights, hypocrites.

Federated IDs are a technical thing before they are a market thing. They make plenty of sense to me in a formal (business) context where domain trust relationships are contractual and trust violations would be actionable. But I'll have nothing to do with such a thing in the consumer market until we in the US see some fundamental legislation passed that shifts the consumer profiling balance of power from companies to citizens. As it stands, we in the US are by far the most heavily-dossiered people in history, and the vast majority of that personal profile information is in privately owned databases. Federated IDs as a private service would simply exacerbate the privacy/autonomy problems.

Or have I missed a revolutionary change for orgs like Facebook and Twitter that lets users retain ownership of the unique data that they input under their IDs?

That why I don't get this because I don't go to any of those above locations.  I guess I'm just not a social networking kind of person.

Exactly!  I don't like the idea of Federated ID's at all... too many eggs in one place.  Not that I'm into social networking anyhow, but if I were, I'd want to keep individual sites/memberships separate.