Telepocalypse

Knowing me, knowing you

Someone else is also having problems with nuisance calls. This tells us that the identity infrastructure of telephony needs updating or replacing. I only want to receive calls from people who are willing to assert their identity. Today's telephone system doesn't enable that. Technically, it could on the current switched infrastructure, and it is a matter of governance that holds us back. In reality, it won't happen that way. The hardest part if creating identites that can be persistently pinned onto real people, who then carry liability for what they do. Services like Hotmail only have a weak value to the identities created because the only barrier to getting one is a turing test to prevent automated registrations. I can create and abuse as many accounts as I like.

Will it take government action to solve this, or can the market do it? The problem is that creating a compelling match between a biometric identity and a virtual one has traditionally been the role of government. Think driving licences, passports, social security numbers, and so on. Should governement try to make those into platforms for commerce? Sounds like a complex trade-off between the interests of the state, its population and it the commercial sphere. A political quagmire.

Or is the credit card in my pocket with my photo on it and a chip embedded a better basis for a communications identity solution? In the tradition of branded brands will your future cell phone say "Handset by Nokia, Network by Verizon, Identity by Citibank"?

The identity infrastructure for the future of communications has clearly yet to be built.