* What does a Canadian commissioner have to do with Kim Cameron’s Seven Laws of Identity?
Privacy is a hot topic these days. You can always tell the really hot topics because politicians want to get involved. Last week, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Ann Cavoukian staked a claim to being at the forefront of privacy issues on the Internet. She did this by becoming an evangelist for Microsoft’s InfoCard identity system.
As far as I know she’s an unpaid evangelist, but she may be angling for something to do when she leaves politics – if that is her intention. According to the commisioner’s Web site, “Dr. Cavoukian joined the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner in 1987 as its first Director of Compliance. In 1990, she was appointed Assistant Commissioner. Prior to joining the IPC, Dr. Cavoukian headed the Research Services Branch for the provincial Attorney General. Dr. Cavoukian received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in criminology and law, and lectured on psychology and the criminal justice system.”
With that background, you would expect she would thoroughly understand identity theft, identity fraud and related illegal activities. But according to Cavoukian, “Confidence [in the Internet] is already eroding as a result of spam, phishing and identity theft, which leaves online consumers vulnerable to the misuse of their personal information and minimizes the future potential of e-commerce.” Yet most disinterested but knowledgeable observers will tell you that what is termed “identity theft” is overwhelmingly done off-line by friends, relatives and good old-fashioned “dumpster diving.”
She also shows a decided naïveté about Microsoft when she says: “…an ‘Identity Big Bang’ is expected to happen once an open, nonproprietary and universal method to connect identity systems and ensure user privacy is developed in accordance with privacy principles. Microsoft started a global privacy momentum.” Imagine using the words “Microsoft” and “nonproprietary” in the same paragraph!
But just to show she isn’t entirely in Bill Gates’ pocket, on her Web site she thanks Kim Cameron for developing the “7 laws of identity” then tells us that they aren’t enough and proposes her own: “Dr. Cavoukian’s 7 Laws of Identity: The Case for Privacy-Embedded Laws of Identity in the Digital Age.” According to her press release, her proposals “[incorporate] additional key insights from the privacy arena. An extension of [Cameron’s] 7 Laws, they encourage privacy-enhanced features to be embedded into the design of the IT architecture and be made available early in the emerging universal identity system.” She’s learned well from Microsoft as she embraces and then extends its work!
All in all, Cavoukian’s grandstanding isn’t entirely bad. It does draw some much needed attention to privacy and identity issues from the general public and the popular press. It may excite other politicians to try to be associated with identity. And it introduces the Seven Laws to an even wider audience while drumming up lots of support for making Cameron the world identity czar (Pope? Emperor? All-seeing eye?). Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
