I'm writing this from an informal meeting of a group of people sometimes referred to as the Identity Gang (see, for example, the site that Berkman hosts related to it). I'm blogging this live, so bear with me while this post is syntactically incorrect etc. People are here from:

• Identity Commons (a whole bunch of people)
• NetMesh LID (myself)
• Broadband Mechanics (Marc Canter)
• Doc Searls
• Microsoft InfoCard (Kim Cameron, Mike Jones)
• SXIP (Dick Hardt)
• Shibboleth
• Berkman center for internet & society at Harward Law School (several people)

Update: Today's full attendee list is here.

We got an Identity Commons overview.

Shibboleth is three things:

• resarch project within Internet 2 middleware initiative
• technology to demonstrate
• specific technical specifications that allow others to interoperate with them

Kim Cameron is doing a short version of his InfoCard briefing. Turns out most people in the room (about 35) have already been briefed by him. Code will be available "soon" (with urgency in his voice). First shipment will let people look at how it works. Next version will allow people to plug in identity providers of their own. The desktop part on Windows is called the Identity Selector.

Berkman is trying create a dialog and solve issues at the interface of technology, law, and society.

Some discussion about "meta" as in "Identity meta-system". Kim explains that the meta-system in his view is not all that different as the step that allowed us from programming against specific graphics cards to a higher level: the graphics cards did not go away. Need to swallow a handful of WS-* protocols, but not all of them.

Fen suggests the identity system should be built on the blogosphere, instead of a standards body.

This will be the most attacked piece of code ever written. End-to-end security properties are very difficult to ensure if one works on an abstraction, rather than a plugged-in system itself.

Eric from Ping says they will take a SAML token and translate it into WS-Trust and hopefully demonstrate it this week on Thursday.

Phil Becker: how many things plugged into the browser before Mosaic, and how many after? We are at that very point in identity. It needs a "focusing embodiment".

Device identifier? How do personal idenfiers and device identifiers intermix?

Talk about "claims transformation".

Doc: the reason we have this meeting is by looking at the problem from the perspective of the user, not of the company. Example: ISPs block port 25. Can digital ids help?

Kim: lots of ISPs and DNS providers have written him. All of whom have an interest in becoming identity providers.

Kim: Microsoft has currently no firm plans to wire any of this into the browser. The enterprise people are committed. It's not a big plot in Bill Gates' head.

Question: how does InfoCard help with introducing a user to a website they have never gone to?

I just learned a new phrase from Kim. He said "I'm speaking in the architectural conditional", which Doc explained as "let me assure you, speaking as an architect, that 4-ft steps work just fine."

Long discussion on how to get users involved, requirements from users, whether it makes sense to get users involved. Discussion about where to take this group.