Other possible titles:
- So Long and Thanks for all the Identity
- Goodbye awesome technology; Hello Awesomer Technology
- CardSpace? What’s CardSpace?
Over on the Claims Based Identity Blog they made an announcement that they have stopped development of CardSpace v2. CardSpace was an excellent technology, but nobody used it. Some of us saw the writing on the wall when Microsoft paused development last year, and kept quiet about why. For better or for worse, Microsoft stopped development and moved on to a different technology affectionately called U-Prove.
U-Prove is an advanced cryptographic technology that, combined with existing standards-based identity solutions, overcomes this long-standing dilemma between identity assurance and privacy. This unlocks a broad range of scenarios that have historically been out of the reach of both the private and public sectors - cases where both verified identity information and privacy are required.
So what exactly does this mean? Central to U-Prove is something called an Agent:
Specifically, the Agent provides a mechanism to separate the retrieval of identity information from trusted organizations from the release of this information to destination sites. The underlying mechanisms help prevent the issuing organizations from tracking where or when this information is used, and to help prevent different destination sites from trivially linking users’ actions together.
Alright, what does that really mean?
Short answer: it’s kind of like CardSpace, except you—the developer—manage the application that controls the flow of claims from IdP to RP.
The goal is to enable stronger control of the release of private data to relying parties.
For more information check out the FAQ section on Connect.