Harvard, tech firms push data privacy

Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society is joining with a consortium of technology companies, including IBM Corp. and Novell Inc., today to unveil an ''open security" project aimed at creating software to give people more control over their online identities.

The initiative, which is set to be spelled out at a forum in New York, is code-named Higgins, after a long-tailed Tasmanian mouse symbolizing the ''long tail" of micro-markets -- dozens of websites and online retailers of interest to an individual -- that sponsors believe will be tapped by the user-centric identity management system they are developing.

For individuals, such a system promises a ''single sign-on" enabling the sharing with third parties of personal information, ranging from bank and credit card accounts to medical records and phone numbers, said John H. Clippinger, senior fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School.

Clippinger said the system will enable people to share tiers of their digital data with different parties, giving broader access to doctors, for example, than to cable companies.

''The web wasn't designed with a security layer in it, so we're addressing that missing piece," Clippinger said. ''This is a whole new system called 'open security' where the control point is the individual."

For the past year and a half, a social physics research group at the Berkman Center has been studying ways to create more trusted networks, with the goals of improving the online experience for people and businesses and making it easier to avoid spam by allowing individuals to specify with whom they want to communicate.

Parity Communications, a Chestnut Hill technology company, developed software that will serve as a starting point for such a system, but larger companies like IBM and Waltham-based Novell are also contributing to the effort. Berkman is planning a conference in June that will demonstrate some applications and benefits of the Higgins system.

Tony Nadalin, chief security architect for IBM in Austin, Texas, said Higgins will be an application framework around which developers can write and improve programs through an ''open source" approach that is gaining popularity in the world of computing.

The system would run on top of InfoCards, a new feature Microsoft plans to offer in its new Vista operating system, but it could also work on Linux or other alternative operating systems.

Many of the technical details remain to be worked out and will be rolled out incrementally, said Dale Olds, distinguished engineer at Novell in Provo, Utah. Olds said one concept under consideration is embedding applications as Internet browser plug-ins that automatically could transfer appropriate information from an individual's data profile, called a ''context" or ''persona," when he or she visits a website.

Companies like IBM and Novell also would seek to incorporate Higgins technology into their own products or services.

''Allowing consumers to gain more trust in the Internet is a benefit to us all," Olds said. ''And that could provide more of a space for Novell."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.