Thought provoking: my morning mail reports that the ID card servers at the university are down and that this effects “card readers” across campus.  Reminds one that hubs are a target for assorted criminal activity.  I wonder what boundry crossings people are discovering they can’t make right now?

Meanwhile I’m told we citizens get our new regional transportation passes at the end of the month so that getting on the bus and subway will involve bringing the card into physical proximity of the toll collecting gates.  RFID I presume.  So this morning I wonder if that system has a central point of failure?

When you work on standards it’s always interesting how one constituency has concerns that another constituency has to struggle to appreciate.  That’s the real work.  In the early days of the Liberty Alliance one of these was how extremely reluctant, to the point that it had the potential to be a deal breaker, the web site builders were to add anything that might effect their reliability.  That’s a severe barrier to adoption for any identity provider.  It is very difficult for an identity provider to guarantee that the system administrator’s bonus will never be adversely effected.

If I can’t get into the pool today who will compensate me?