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General Services Administration, Defense Department Join Liberty Alliance


The addition of the two government groups hasn't stilled doubts that the group can attract enough users to its efforts to standardize Web authentication

By Antone Gonsalves, Techweb News
InformationWeek
March 5, 2003 12:00 AM

The U.S. General Services Administration and the Department of Defense said Wednesday that they have joined the Liberty Alliance Project, but the government support didn't put aside doubts that the group can attract enough users in its effort to standardize Web authentication.

The group was started two years ago by Sun Microsystems to counter Microsoft's own authentication system, called Passport.

The GSA is responsible for developing and implementing the infrastructure for common authentication services across the federal government. The initiative, part of the Bush administration's 24-step eGovernment plan, would enable people and businesses to use one identification and password in accessing multiple government services across agencies.

The Department of Defense is interested in the Liberty Alliance's work as possibly providing standard authentication for employees to access personnel, training, and financial databases.

Despite the additional support, high-tech researcher Gartner gives Liberty Alliance a 20% chance of success. The question is whether the feds will choose to use the technology only for government employees or for providing all Internet services to citizens and businesses.

"I don't believe the DOD and the GSA use will be meaningful in helping Liberty survive, if it's just for government employees," Gartner analyst John Pescatore said. "That's a tiny number in the grand scheme of things."

A reason for Gartner's skepticism is the failure of Liberty member America Online to use the technology for its 35 million subscribers.

"America Online hasn't been doing anything with the Liberty Alliance, and that took away their big reason for being," Pescatore said. "Having AOL subscribers is a big deal, without that there's just not a lot of momentum behind Liberty."

Further fueling skepticism are concerns over whether the Liberty Alliance can build trust among online shoppers who would opt-in to the service. Before people will agree to allow multiple companies to share the same user ID and password, they need to be convinced that the businesses won't share carte blanche the information they've gathered separately on the customer.

"Users will appreciate the added convenience of logging into multiple sites at once, but not at the price of more spam or invasions of their privacy," Jason Bloomberg, analyst for market researcher ZapThink, said in a research note.

Microsoft's Passport has also raised concerns over privacy issues. Following a year of negotiations, the company said in January that it had reached an agreement with the European Union to prevent violation of the EU data protection laws. The main change, which Microsoft said would be implemented globally, would give Passport users more control over how their personal data is shared among companies.

The Liberty Alliance released its initial version in July, which included technology for handling username and password registration. The next version is scheduled to allow the exchange of credit card numbers. Liberty Alliance technology is based on the Security Assertion Markup Language.



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