[Am-info] Liberty Alliance Membership Grows

[Fred A. Miller]

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Liberty Alliance Membership Grows

The Liberty Alliance said Wednesday that it has added several 
corporate heavyweights, including Hewlett-Packard and 
MasterCard International Inc., to its management board, 
boosting its effort to create a global standard digital
identity protocol. Such a standard would make business and 
personal transactions over the Internet easier and more secure, 
according to the alliance.

Seven companies have joined the board as founding members in 
recent weeks, including American Express, AOL Time Warner, 
France Telecom, General Motors, HP, MasterCard, and a yet-
unnamed major commercial bank. Existing members are Bell
Canada, Global Crossing, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Openwave Systems, 
RealNetworks, RSA Security, Sony, Sun Microsystems, United 
Airlines, and Vodafone.

Wednesday's announcement may have added a number of high-
profile names to the alliance's board, but one big player is 
still missing: Microsoft. Its Passport service is the current 
leader in digital identity management, with more than 165
million accounts. Microsoft's participation could be key to the 
alliance's success, but there's been some question over whether 
it will join. "I think it will happen," says Tony Scott, chief 
technical officer of General Motors. "I've been involved in 
some of the discussions, and I've been very encouraged by their
interest."

Scott says there are many reasons why GM is interested in 
developing a digital identity standard. "As a developer of Web-
based applications, if there's multiple competing standards out 
there, it increases our development costs, and that's not 
something we like." A standard would also help boost 
productivity. GM is doing lots of collaboration with 
engineering firms, suppliers, and purchasers, he says, and 
every one of those external relationships requires a
security model and contractual agreement. "It's a huge 
administrative burden," says Scott. "With a working global 
interoperability standard, we could put that structure in as an 
overlay, and eliminate a lot of mumbo jumbo." - David M.
Ewalt

For more on the alliance:
Liberty Alliance: No Passport Needed
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFRY0Bce7K0V20Syx0Ai

The End Of Anonymous Surfing?
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFRY0Bce7K0V20Zhl0AM

- -- 
Fred A. Miller
Systems Administrator
Cornell Univ. Press Services
fm@cupserv.org

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