David Heath, writing in "The Sydney Morning Herald" last week (link below) asks, "What do identity and trust have in common?" His answer: not very much.

A quick search shows that the word "trust" is mentioned in about 30% of the Identity Management newsletters archived online. Most recently, we've had, "Who do you trust?" (http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/dir/2004/0322id1.html) and "Oblix' Circle of Trust" (http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/dir/2004/0405id2.html), but a full half of the issues in March dealt with "trust" in one form or another.

Now I often rant about the misuse of terms (frequent readers will know my feelings about the phrase "LDAP directory," for example) and for too long I've overlooked the use of "trust" as what amounts to a euphemism within the sphere of identity management.

If you look up the meaning of "trust" (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=trust&r=67), the first definition you find is: "Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing." But in identity management, when we talk about "trust" (as in the phrase "Circle of Trust" used by the Liberty Alliance) what we really mean is iron-glad legal agreements, or bomb-proof data storage facilities.

If we really trusted a business partner, if we could firmly rely on their integrity and character, then there would be no need for multiple page, mind-numbing legal mumbo-jumbo covering every possible (and some very improbable) event that could occur and assign blame (or, as the lawyers call it, responsibility) for the less than salubrious events.

Many of us chuckle when we hear of movie or sports stars signing pre-nuptial agreements. After all, if you can't trust your potential spouse why bother to get married? The mere existence of a "pre-nup" should imply that there's no trust involved.

Similarly, vendors (and even corporate IT managers) often ask me, as well as other journalists, to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) before talking to us about products, projects or services. This certainly implies that they can't trust the press to not divulge inadvertent problems that might arise during a presentation.

Oracle and other software vendors imbed language in their license agreements that enjoin customers from publicly discussing the performance of the products. They evidently don't trust the users to be fair and impartial.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.