Identity Theft Expert Speaker Robert Siciliano www.IDTheftSecurity.com; Chertoff: Control of identity critical in 21st century

Chertoff states; “I’m going to submit to you that in the 21st Century, the most important asset that we have to protect as individuals and as part of our nation is the control of our identity, who we are, how we identify ourselves, whether other people are permitted to masquerade and pretend to be us, and thereby damage our livelihood, damage our assets, damage our reputation, damage our standing in our community.”

Chertoff was the single brightest light in the Bush administration. He will be sorely missed. The statement above has been posted to my homepage as a graphic here www.IDTheftSecurity.com I encourage you to steal it from my homepage and post it everywhere.

We are functioning in an environment in which we have yet to be identified or authenticated. There are hundreds of forms of identification in circulation with little security, the social security number is a national ID available everywhere see here, there are thousands of variations of the birth certificate, there are kids on college campuses everywhere selling fake IDs and credit is wide open.

All of this contributes to the exasperating problem of identity theft. It will only get worse and it wont get better until there is a degree of accountability. Accountability begins with identifying and authenticating the borrower/citizen etc.

The controversial Real ID Act is flawed. So is Microsoft’s operating system. So are airbags. But we use them because they work, and they offer a degree of security and functionality that we need. Real ID is a step in the right direction.

Smart-cards, biometrics in all its forms, multi-factor authentication, whatever it takes. We need to be properly identified. And to all those that say “at what cost, civil liberties, privacy?”, oh please. You already gave up all your privacy for 10% off at that shoe store. Privacy is dead. Move on. Our only concern is to manage our circumstances and begin to securely identify and authenticate.

Privacy advocates and politicians who fight Real ID do so because they are ill-informed and/or grandstanding. The day will come when we all are properly identified. And until that day, millions and millions of people will suffer at the hands of criminals because of an utter lack of accountability.

Her is an example of a country doing it right, its not perfect, but it certainly trumps what we have in North America and most of the civilized world. http://www.emiratesid.ae/mainenglish.html.

Heres a video discussing the use of the social security number as a primary ID;