Katrina shows why a national registry is sorely needed

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DAVE KEARNS ON IDENTITY MANAGEMENT
10/03/05
Today's focus: Katrina shows why a national registry is sorely
needed

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* A national registry of people could have helped hurricane
rescue efforts
* Links related to Identity Management
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
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Today's focus: Katrina shows why a national registry is sorely
needed

By Dave Kearns

I ended the last issue by saying that had the U.S. Real ID Act
been in effect prior to this year, lives could have been saved
and suffering could have been averted. Here's how.

In the wake of the devastating destruction caused by Hurricane
Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, which
was further compounded by the arrival of Hurricane Rita before
recovery could even be said to be fully started, one of the
major problems was the need to identify people and their
location.

Dead bodies were recovered from storm drains, streets and
shelters. People were rescued from rooftops and taken to
temporary evacuation sites only to be swept up again and moved -
perhaps multiple times. People were frantic for information
about family, friends and loved ones. But telephones weren't
working and it was impossible to reach the last known location
for lots of folks - either flood waters kept searchers at bay,
or hurricane winds had wiped out all evidence of the habitation.

Well-meaning people, hundreds of well-meaning people, started
Web sites where they hoped to co-ordinate information about the
missing and the found. But one person sitting in front of a PC
in California has very few resources to find anyone who could be
anywhere in the U.S. - evacuees were being sent to almost every
state in the union.

In the frantic effort to rescue people stranded by the storms,
families became separated. Parents couldn't find their children,
nor often their spouses. Privacy and child protection laws kept
both governmental and non-governmental agencies from creating
databases of the missing or the found.

I've said more than once in this newsletter that the technology
is easy; it's the people aspect that's difficult. Well-meaning
people couldn't understand why there weren't coordinated efforts
to establish a national registry of the displaced. Others
cautioned that creating such an aid would only hasten the
establishment of a national ID database with identity cards for
everyone and ushering in the era of Big Brother.

But if the Real ID Act had been in place, if each state's
Department of Motor Vehicles had established a uniform system,
then we would have been able to track folks as they were
shuffled from the Superdome to the New Orleans Convention Center
to the Astrodome to a temporary refuge in Arkansas - and then
back on a cruise ship docked in Mobile, Alabama (and some people
did make that journey).

We can pass laws to restrict how the data that states have in
their DMV database is used. We can prosecute those who misuse
the data. We can require a panel of judges to approve any
linking of the data. We should do all those things. Because
there will be another national disaster. There will be more
displaced and missing people. And when it strikes it will be too
late to construct the database we need in order to find and
identify them.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. How to solve Windows system crashes in minutes
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv7594>
2. Verizon CTO lays out next-gen network plans
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv7987>
3. McAfee, Omniquad top anti-spyware test
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv6901>
4. Digging out new rootkits
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv7988>
5. Skype: Hazardous to network health?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv7830>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Dave Kearns

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's
written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print
"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be
found at Virtual Quill <http://www.vquill.com/>.

Kearns is the author of three Network World Newsletters: Windows
Networking Tips, Novell NetWare Tips, and Identity Management.
Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these

respective addresses: <mailto:windows@vquill.com>,
<mailto:netware@vquill.com>, <mailto:identity@vquill.com>.

Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books,
manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing,
technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill
provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail at
<mailto:info@vquill.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by HP

Is password management, user management, implementing single
sign-on or sustaining compliance without going broke causing you
to lose sleep? Manage identities and passwords, mitigate
audit risk, establish a strong privacy compliance management
system and centrally track transactions with HP's
identity management solution. Learn how -- download a
whitepaper now.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=115811
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Identity Management newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/dir/index.html
_______________________________________________________________
Extended value chains are here to stay - application
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