Federal Privacy Commission Discussion Paper on Identity

Yesterday, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart released a discussion paper entitled Identity, Privacy and the Need of Others to Know Who You Are:

"The paper describes the core concepts of identity, including identification, authentication, attributes, common identifiers and tokens."

"With this information, Canadians can begin to evaluate critical issues that will affect their lives – such as a proposal for a national identification card. Several of the proposals for such a card being discussed in jurisdictions around the world would make it far easier to track individuals – is this loss of privacy a reasonable cost to pay for the promised benefits of a national identification card?"

"This discussion paper is one component of the work being undertaken on identity issues by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, both in Canada and internationally. For example, we are contributing to the work of the ISO Working Group on Identity Management and Privacy Technologies, as well as several other international working groups."