The big news right now is who will be running Obama's broad new cyberspace programs - in particular, who will manage the cybersecurity and cyberwarfare aspects. Right now, it appears that there will be a "cyberczar" (as yet unchosen) who will report to the National Security Council and National Economic Council (the latter because part of this role will involve bank security). The Pentagon may also be setting up its own cybersecurity division.

These are the immediate issues, but when I read through Obama's Cyberspace Policy Review (released today with his announcements), I found an odd nugget of information buried at the bottom of his "near-term action plan":

Build a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the Nation.

It sounds innocuous, but in fact it has profound implications that touch on security issues that have been giving the government (and industry) headaches for years.

Here is what a "cyber-security identity management vision" really is: A plan for how the government will establish and track your identity online. One of the biggest problems for law enforcement and business has been the way people can take on many identities online, which are very difficult to verify. This has allowed people to become prolific spammers (because you can send mail under any name you like), as well as fraudsters on sites like eBay. All of this is a result of the way web services "manage" identities - you can pick any name you like when you sign up for email or Paypal or whatever.

The government and its various federal agencies have been trying for years to figure out how to deal with this. Several years ago, I participated in a meeting at the Federal Trade Commission to discuss the possibility of creating an email system called "sender authentication" (to be implemented nationally) where you would have to verify your identity in a fairly rigorous way before being allowed to send email. No more fifty mailing addresses. The idea was to discourage spam and phishing, which is an understandable goal. But I and many others argued that this system would also crush free speech. No longer could you send an anonymous email, or participate in a mailing list under a pseudonym to protect your privacy.

I think Obama's "identity management vision" falls squarely into this history of debate over how to prevent crime by rolling back the proliferation of identities online. Yes, the "strategy" as described rather vaguely in Obama's "near-term action plan" involves a lot of hand-waving about privacy and civil liberties. But the fact is that if the government is coming up with an identity management plan, that means the government is trying in some sense to manage your identity or identities online - essentially to trace back your hottie77@gmail address to a real name, just in case hottie77 starts doing something illegal. Or allegedly illegal.

And here's where my not-so-wild speculation about Facebook identities comes in. Many companies have turned to Facebook as an "identity management" system (including Gawker Media), allowing people to log into their services using their Facebook identity. The reason is simple: Most people only have one Facebook identity, and they stick with it. There's a general notion that your Facebook identity is your authentic identity, or at least an identity that you keep over time, and that its characteristics can be traced back to who you are in real life. Therefore, having you log into every web service, from io9 comments to Digg to (possibly in the future) Paypal, is a way of managing your identities. Instead of having a separate identity for each of those services, you have one. Easy to manage, easy to trace.

Why shouldn't Obama's cyberczar just cut a deal with Facebook (and maybe a few other social networks like LinkedIn) and turn those profiles into your authentic identities? So you can send mail and buy things using your Facebook ID, and that's how you'll be tracked. Hey, you're already on Facebook right? And you can set your profile to "private." So it's easy and "privacy enhancing." (Never mind how easy it is to get around those privacy settings - pay no attention to that black hat behind the curtain.)

The scenario I'm describing is, in essence, how the Social Security Card became the twentieth century's identity management system starting in the 1930s. These cards were not originally intended as ID cards, or as a way to authenticate your true identity. They were just a way to manage government assistance to those who needed it. But they became an ID card simply because everyone in the US had been issued one. When the government and businesses needed a way to track people's identities, it became the easy choice. Showing your social security card meant that you couldn't just come up with random new names for yourself every time you signed a form or took a job.

Though people in the US now think of the Social Security Card as the "obvious" form of ID, it took years for it to evolve from a simple social assistance card to an "identity management vision."

You heard it here first: The next evolution of identity management in the US will grow out of Facebook. So watch what you are putting in your profile. You may be using it to open bank accounts in years to come.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie will be released as a "Standard Edition" DVD, a "Director's Cut" DVD, and a Blu-Ray version offering the Director's Cut and all manner of special features... including the ability to sync up with Facebook and nerd out with other people watching the movie at the same time without having to, you know, actually be in the same room as them:

In an industry first, Warner Home Video is set to announce a plan to sync up "friend" networks on Facebook with the interactive community-screening features of Warners' Blu-ray Disc releases, starting with the release of "Watchmen Director's Cut."

The studio partnership with the social network Web site will use the BD-Live interactive feature on high-def discs, allowing "Watchmen" purchasers to view the film simultaneously and share comments with their Facebook friends.

But that's not all; the movie will also be simultaneously released on iTunes, Amazon on Demand, as well as PPV on television, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, although in different formats (Only iTunes and Amazon will be offering the Director's Cut, at least to begin with). Weirdly enough, the Standard Edition DVD will feature only the theatrical version of the movie, lacking any bonus features whatsoever; for DVD owners, the only place to find them will be the Director's Cut special edition, which offers a second disc of bonuses (including director commentary) for just six bucks more. Given that choice, why would anyone buy the Standard Edition?

The release date for the discs hasn't been finalized, but is expected around this summer's San Diego Comic-Con, at the end of July.

Warners teams with Facebook for 'Watchmen' [Hollywood Reporter]

It's only a matter of time until all great stories are told through Facebook status updates, wall commentary and relationship hearts. But what if the surviving members of the human race from Caprica had Facebook aboard Battlestar Galactica.

Well if they did you can sure as hell bet that EVERYONE would have been talking about fat Lee (and you know he'd yell at his friends for tagging him in pics where he looked tubby.) And what about all the relationship statuses changing back and forth for Baltar and his harem? They'd need to get a multiple partner tag somehow.

Battlestar Book tells the BSG story through facebook feed, and it's hilarious.

battlestarbook - Free Legal Forms

The idea is from Tara Gelsomino, who says it's heavily inspired by DeeDee Baldwin's Austenbook. It's all pretty adorable. Quick, someone please do an Ubik Facebook, so I can read "dammit cigarettes stale again!" updates.

The show, produced by NASA's Langley Research Center, will remind people just how much they owe to the organization, according to executive producer Mike Finneran:

Our goal is to show how NASA has changed and continues to change all of our lives in a positive way... We do this by examining how technologies developed by or for NASA are being used in everything from space exploration to everyday consumer products.

NASA TV Show Spotlights Space-Age Spin-Offs [TMCnet.com]

(Note: We're not judging these things on their own merits as entertainment, or science. We're looking at how much we hated their versions of the future.)

The Invasion. In this movie's future, we encounter extraterrestrial life forms, and they're like Prozac parasites. They make everybody ridiculously well-adjusted and devoid of affect. Many people complained about the new upbeat ending, but it would have been great if science had overcome the parasites in a clever, believable way. Instead, we got the magic tacked-on rescue, followed by the easy miracle cure. Blah.

Spider-Man 3. Yet another movie about an alien parasite that changes your behavior. This one causes extreme singing and dancing foolishness, plus bad emo hair. The struggle with the Venom parasite, so intense and disturbing in the comics, becomes campy and dumb. And not unlike Invasion, SM3 has a pat -feeling resolution to the parasite dilemma. Sure, it makes sense that our future holds struggles against behavior-modding creatures, but do they have to be so boring?

Bionic Woman. This TV show should be just our flavor of near-future dystopia. Normally, we love an evil brain-sucking corporation that implants its technology into a woman and then believes it owns her. Unfortunately, BW just isn't bleak or brutal enough to be a fun dystopia. Instead, it's just wishy-washy. The bionics actually make Jaime wimpier instead of stronger. And the evil corporate overlord starts baby-sitting Jaime's sister and washing her dishes. Why?

Chuck. Another NBC TV show about a human who absorbs spy technology, another boring bleak future. Chuck gets the whole CIA/NSA spy database in his brain, but the spymasters who want to use him are ruthless and scheme to murder him as soon as they can line up a replacement. Too bad Chuck is such an annoying squealer that we root for him to die so we can get Chuck 2.0 instead.

I Am Legend. This movie belongs on the "worst" list because of that horrible tacked-on ending, which made The Invasion look like Citizen Kane. First of all, the science-magic device of the mutant's blood containing the anti-plague serum isn't explained at all. And then the salvation of the human race turns out to be this crappy little whitebread New England town, walled in against the heathen plague vampires. Bring back the Partridge Family plague survivors from Omega Man!

Y: The Last Man. In previous years, this comic-book series would have been on our "best futures" list. But it gets on the "worst futures" list for 2007 because of that bogus explanation for how all the men died. Sure, every man on the planet dropping dead at once was never going to have a totally logical explanation. But the explanation we get is just nonsensical, mystical and weirdly anti-science. (There's an alternate explanation involving the Israeli military and a botched bio-weapon, but it's discounted.)

Facebook's Death Grip. We'll all have too many Facebook friends to cope with in the future, net-preneur Jason Calacanis told the Washington Post. Now that Calacanis has thousands of Facebook friends, he just can't deal with all the friend requests and other trivia. So he's outsourcing his friend-management to an intern. In a few years, we'll all be in the "death grip" of overwhelming friend management that will prevent us having a real social life and make us hate our friends. Sign us up!

Future Files: The Next 50 Years by Richard Watson. The reviews and interviews of this book alone make it sound hilarious. For starters, in the future we'll have "ethical bankruptcy" to let us launder our reputations, because all our mistakes will be exposed online. And we'll suffer from "time-famine" and "space-anxiety." D00d! Anti-globalism will crush the European Union. The items in your fridge will talk to each other and formulate a possible dinner menu. Freud, Einstein and Darwin may well be debunked. But global warming won't be much trouble. My favorite part: he doesn't actually know what Friendfinder is. He thinks it's a service that tells you where your friends are currently located. Right. And Alt.com is all about tracking alternate timelines.

The Dark Space by Marianne De Pierres. This space-opera novel takes place in a dark future where humans have colonized Orion. And it falls back on one of my pet peeves: the far-future society that somehow mimics our own past. The human settlers on the planet Araldis somehow live in a crappy copy of Renaissance Italy. Except that it's all cyber, so instead of saying "bambino," they just say "'bino." Which we kept thinking was short for "albino." Oh, and an outer-space God speaks in 1337-speak.

Heroes. And finally, another NBC TV show. (Poor suffering NBC.) We didn't hate everything about "volume two," but the visit to the evil plague future was boring. And the hero-visits-horrible-future trick already happened in season one. This time around, it felt really peremptory, like "here's your horrendous death-future, so suck it bitch." Plus it would be worth losing 98 percent of the world's population to get rid of that boring Irish woman.