Sun's Liberty bid gets fed support

The two federal agencies said they will join Liberty to consider ways of centralizing their troves of electronic information with a common authentication system. The GSA said it will explore of ways to implement authentication technology across the federal government's Web sites as part of the Bush administration's 24-step eGovernment initiative. The administration hopes for a common authorization and voucher system by June.

The Defense Department said it is interested in creating a common authentication system for its automated power, personnel, training and financial databases.

Liberty was launched in 2001 by Sun Microsystems as a way to thwart Microsoft's own authentication system, called Passport. Like Passport, Liberty technology is meant to manage computer users' multiple online identities and information using a single sign-on technology. Its members include Visa International, United Airlines, AOL Time Warner, Fidelity Investments and Vodafone.

Its technology is based on the Security Assertion Markup Language, which enables single sign-on functions and user registration.

An initial version of Liberty was released last July by Sun and its allies. The first version included technology to handle username and password registration; the next version is set to allow information such as credit card numbers to be exchanged as well.

Sun in January began releasing software products that use Liberty.