"The Liberty Alliance has published a White Paper (15 page PDF) about interoperability of Liberty with 3rd Party Identity Systems. Specifically, it talks about possible Liberty interactions with Passport, PingID, 3D-Secure, and Shibboleth." [Digital ID World]

Having participarted in the design and implementation of 3D-Secure and built several prototypes of Passport-enabled 3D-Secure ACS (run by card issuers), I was intrigued by this paper.  After reading the paper, I am disappointed because it is vague, trivializes critical issues, and avoids politically sensitive areas.

In its discussion of Passport, the paper describes a way to support Passport users in a Liberty domain and a way to support Liberty user within the Passport domain.  Level of discussion is, unfortnately, in the realm of possibility and not practicality.  I saw no incentives for Microsoft to integrate Passport with Liberty this way.

Its discussion of 3D-Secure was even worse, providing no answers beyond suggesting that two can co-exist by having merchants use Liberty to SSO and 3D-Secure as payment authorization.  As to other possibilities, it states:

"We believe it would be technically feasible to build a much deeper integration between the two protocols. However, the forces at play are commercial in nature, and involve the future development and adoption of both Liberty Identity Providers as well as the evolution and adoption of the 3-D Secure protocol. Therefore, we are reluctant to speculate as to whether any such deep integration will occur."

What is the point of SSO if customers have to use two different identities (one for Liberty and another for 3D-Secure) to buy something.  Isn't it more natural to have card issuers serve as Liberty Identity Providers?

At this point, I am disappointed by the lack of progress Liberty Alliance is making.  Liberty needs to move on and get real fast.