Authorities are investigating whether New Zealand should follow California's lead and make it a criminal offence to impersonate others including politicians on the internet, notably via Twitter and Facebook.

,,,Now we all know that there are lots of standards in identity (SAML, WS-Federation, OpenID, CardSpace, etc.) but -- so far -- none are perfect for the cloud. Still, work is going on. OASIS has recently formed a technical committee (TC) to examine this issue, called the "Identity in the Cloud" TC.

WSO2 is shipping an open source--based identity application that runs in the cloud and is aimed at helping companies avoid building internal systems for identity management and authentication...WSO2 Cloud Identity lets administrators provide strong authentication using electronic IDs for users based on popular open standards including SAML 2.0, OpenID and Information Card token-based standards, according to the company. WSO2 Cloud Identity can issue cards or tokens for identity management, and support incoming SAML 2.0, OpenID and CardSpace authentication requests, the company said...

Frustrated by what they see as a lack of
cloud-driven innovation from major IT suppliers, three huge global banks
are banding together to form an IT buying consortium that will not only
drive down their costs but also give them the option of creating their
own highly secure global cloud infrastructure and network rather than
relying on IBM, HP, Oracle, and Microsoft to deliver those solutions in a
timely manner.

Facebook's latest attempts to integrate more closely with the wider web have reignited controversy over its approach to user data. The social network's Open Graph protocol, announced at developer conference f8, is coming in for vocal criticism from prominent bloggers and state regulators. Allegations range from suggestions the protocol will leave members open to blackmail to claims Facebook is trying to dominate the web rather than make it more open.