Airport Perimeter Security

Leaving Singapore the other day at Changi Airport, I saw different model for security than what seems to be default of a single security checkpoint (e.g. X-ray machine and wand-waving, body-frisking attendants) for all gates.

At Changi, you don't go through security until you reach your gate, each gate has its own security checkpoint. The advantages of centralizing security seem clear - so I started thinking as to what might the advantages of this distributed model.

Theoretically possible would be security customized to the destination, e.g. for flights to political hotspots, full rigour (e.g. laptops get sniffed, every bag gets checked, random body searches, etc) for other destinations, less intrusive security. Travel to such 'safer' destinations wouldn't pay the price of security appropriate to riskier destinations. I don't know if they actually do this.

I saw a specific example of another advantage. As we moved through security at the gate for my flight to Tokyo, the traveller just in front of me was informed by the personnel that he was at the wrong gate. This sort of application-layer check isn't possible with the centralized gatekeeper security model - the gatekeeper doesn't have the application details and so can't apply security based on them.

SPeciation

In evolutionary biology, speciation refers to the process by which different species emerge out of some common ancestor. Species are defined by the ability of their members to interbreed successfully (this measured by creating viable offspring) so the emergence of two species from a single common stock implies that some genetic separation be established where there was none before.

By this criteria, SAML 1.1, Liberty ID-FF 1.2, and Shibboleth were not different species as the three of them participated (I hesitate to use a more common phrase for such co-operation) in a furious orgy of successful interbreeding to create SAML 2.0.

p.s. Evolutionary science has another term that those more cynical than I might apply to other creatures participating in the current Malthusian struggle to pass on their identity management genes.

Ning Identity

Ning describes itself as a playground for creating social apps. It provides a common layer of registration, authentication, tags, feeds etc onto which people can build a variety of socially-aware apps (e.g. Zagat-like restaurant reviews, Flickr-like photo sharing, etc). To enable the creation of new apps, developers can clone existing applications, and then tinker with the PHP to tailor as required. Much like 'View Source' for HTML/Javascript.

The SSO across all these apps is interesting. As its based on a 'global' identifier, the implication is that Ning would be able to correlate any one user's actions/identity across all these purportedly different applications.

It appears that Ning acknowledges this as a concern because the FAQ has the following

I want to use different email addresses and identities for different apps. Can I do that without creating two accounts?

Not at the moment. For now, you probably should just go ahead and use one of the many free email services that are happy to give you as many free email addresses as you want.