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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Civil Liberties Groups Join NSTIC Cybersecurity Workshop at MIT



By Sarah Cortes - Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU"), the Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF"), and Electronic Privacy Information Center ("EPIC") participated in framing cybersecurity issues at MIT this week. These groups raised concerns or quietly noted issues on day two, the final day of the workshop related to the White House initiative called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace ("NSTIC") held at the MIT Media Lab this week.

Additionally, standards consortiums like w3c and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) sent representatives who raised concerns or asked questions that shaped the direction of the evolving strategy.

Seth Schoen (pictured above), Staff Technologist at EFF, participated on a panel. He challenged the notion that a secure internet cyberidentity program like NSTIC would increase overall internet transaction security. "There may be increased pressure to provide highly verified identity credentials as it gets easier to do so," Schoen pointed out, citing a number of court rulings where consumers' privacy was protected only because the court deemed the technical challenges too difficult.

Originally published at  CCTVcambridge.org/NSTIC