A message from Mike Shultz about identity resolution
By Mike Shultz, President and CEO - Infoglide Software
Identity is personal. It is about you: who you are, who you know, what you do. Personal. Because of this simple fact, any form of government or business oversight is viewed with alarm. I’m concerned about it too.
I am the CEO of Infoglide Software, a company that provides advanced Identity Resolution products. Identity resolution is the process of determining who is who and who knows who. Very high tech, very powerful. As Jeff Jonas has pointed out, if technology like ours (his company SRD had a similar product, and IBM acquired them to develop their EAS solution) had been in place before 9/11 we would have been able to connect all the terrorists that acted that day. But looking at who is who and who knows who goes straight to identity and, as I said, identity is personal. The seeming conflict between identity resolution and privacy is very real for me and probably for most of you too.
We had these concerns in mind when we started developing our business intelligence software. It was important to all of us here that we didn’t create some sort of Big-Brother-enabling technology. As a result, we designed software that can resolve identities across multiple sources while protecting data privacy and security. That technology is now the new core of the government’s Secure Flight program after it suffered some early setbacks.
Now, there’s no question that our government has to be involved in identity resolution. The impact of the events of 9/11 clearly make this an imperative. The good news is that our government is under constant scrutiny as it relates to the freedoms that we all enjoy. From Congressional oversight to privacy advocates, the government invests in assuring that it does not unreasonably trample on personal rights.
Could the government use our software in a way that it was never intended for and invade your personal privacy? Sure, theoretically. I also suppose I could use a hedge trimmer to clip my toenails, but even figuring out a way to do it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
Our software was designed to protect privacy, and the government is using it in the way that it was designed. As I said earlier, I’m the CEO of a software company, but I was a citizen before I was a CEO and I’ll be a citizen after I’m a CEO. And the citizen that I am sleeps fine at night knowing what I know about how the government is balancing identity resolution and privacy. The people we work with there take that balance very seriously, and so do I.
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