Must we call it "Self-Sovereign Identity"? (hopefully not)
Must We Call It “Self-Sovereign Identity?” (Hopefully Not)
Thursday 21G
Convener: Timothy Ruff
Notes-taker(s): Scott Mace
Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:
Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:
Johannes: Sovereign is not a word people use.
Tim: This is about terminology, not concepts. If you have huge friction when the words escape your mouth, you start in a big hole.
Iain Henderson: IT management folks faces go blank when you say SSI.
Tim: Public evidence of that. Doc has used the phrase the baby got named. As if that term has been stamped. The reality is any word in any language just means what we all agree it means. A word like googol can come to mean a company. It would be okay if it really got named. It’s my contention that the baby hasn’t been named. Big organizations getting into this won’t use the term. Microsoft. IBM was, no longer. Mastercard. You will not find the term SSI. The allergic reaction that corporate entities. They use decentralized identity. Gartner uses BYO identity. That’s a mouthful. pknowles: Decentralized consent, identity. When I explain it to people, it’s a comm channel between two entities without anyone interfering with that channel.
Tim: One way to really throw people off is to start with identity.
Gabe Cohen: Something more marketing oriented, like privacy.
Marc Davis: Has the community ever done a standard branding exercise. We may think we all mean and want the same thing, but that may not be true. Good for surfacing shared assumptions.
Tim: Do we agree the name is problematic? How about a path forward?
Nathan George: I don’t know if rebranding it is worthwhile.
Tim: Fair enough.
Doc Searls: I’ll speak for the guy who came up with the term, Devin Lefreddo. I will put in the chat what we wrote about it in 2016. If the path forward starts on the corporate side and is limited to what corporations understand and agree to, we’re going to lose a lot. The vector starts with the individual. This pen is my pen. It’s not pen-as-a-service. If we give up because we need a word acceptable to people who can’t understand why I have control over how I disclose my veriable credentials, we’re going to lose. I’m in favor of keeping the term SSI, but will be hard to replace. Usage matters.
Johannes: What is the “it” that is being named here? The technology and the ecosystem applied to a particular set of circumstances, but where the money is drags it in a particular direction, doesn’t get taken up as much as it should. Therefore, what should the name stand for? Are individuals more important than the corporations? If market adoption is in a different place than intended, maybe these are two things.
Tim: Doc you said if we have to use a name acceptable to corporates --
Doc: Only to corporates.
Tim: To Johannes’ point, it’s what Doc said. I am carrying some things that I want you to accept. This is all about issuer holder verifier. Want orgs to be accepting of those.
Johannes: Corporate IT eliminates choice of IT. Whole idea of SSI among employees is the worst.
Joan Caballero: I deal a lot with the interface, work for a thing identity company that does B2B sales. Non-individual credential use cases. Data soverignity is a broader category. Data rights, data protection instead of privacy. I like those terms. If “it” is the tech stack, SSI stack.
Tim: There is data sovereignity. Let’s constrain it to the issuer holder verifier model.
Juan: To me that’s credentialing. Data-only use cases are still part of SSI but have no VCs.
Tim: Agree. Sam talking about KERI. Consistent attribution, the same key. All of that falls in this bucket. This is all going to stay academic until we get organizations to accept a new way of interacting with us. Get RPs to do things different than they do today.
pknowles: Entity instead of identity?
Josh Verbarg: Why are you so scared of the term SSI? A few years ago, the cloud was the naughty word. Now we have major corporations completely converted. Don’t be too scared. It takes time.
Riley: I have been thinking that SSI is not the issuer holder verifier model. I think that is VCs. SSI is a superset of that which encapsulates tech other than VCs. VCs are the first thing to be standardized, digital wallets and DIDs. But there’s a lot of other technologies that will work in conjunction. I would suggest either we decide what to call the entire big picture, I use SSI for that, otherwise, if talking about issuer holder verifier model, come up with a word just for that.
Tim: Great points Riley. In our hierarchy of values in our naming exercise, accuracy of the term is a little less important than palatability of the term. We’re choosing among a selection of inaccurate terms. The lesser poison.
Marc Davis: We’re having a scoping problem. SSI makes most sense when scoped as an ideological concept. Power relationships & control. When includes tech implementation strategies, it gets very confused. The term is being applied to specific tech strategies to implement a particular tech ideology. The “what” we’re talking about is ambiguous. Tim: No one bleeds SSI principles more red than I do, but the path to adoption of the thing that we love lies through organizations, government, public, private. We have to have something that doesn’t immediately cause those entities to cringe.
Marc: You have a way of talking about things in the community. Rename based on your strategy for the people you’re talking to. What language is needed for that? Different for true believer vs. corporate executive.
Tim: We need a public-facing term.
Hadil Elbitar: First heard about SSI in this conference. Been in identity space for 8 years now. I can’t for the life of me figure out a coherent definition for it. Main thing I’m missing is what is the problem we’re trying to solve. And how.
Kim Cameron: I have been resisting this whole use of the word sovereign, not that I’m ideologically opposed -- doesn’t work in Europe -- but it’s because it’s not accurate. Because we’re social beings, it includes statements by people other than ourselves. Would be better to have a more accurate one to express what’s going on. I would propose, VCs are proofs under the control of the people who present them. You don’t issue the proof, but you control its presentation. I suggest the idea of user-controlled proofs.
Doc: Kim, great to have you here! I like user-controlled proofs. It’s a noun. Self-sovereign is an adjective. What would the adjectival form be? Just use personal. It’s how we feel it, also going back to, it’s going to work with everybody. We’re at a moment now after 20 years on the identity front, may be not purely corporate. Like 1977 when personal computing came along and was scoffed at by IBM. When IBM invented the PC, it ceased to be ironic. I have proofs that I am Doc and that I’m David. Back in 2005 or 2006, as soon as they said identity provider, they bailed, never came back. Defined the way federated identity worked. I think personal does the job. I’m sure there are exceptions. Nathan brought up one in the chat.
Tim: So much in the chat.
Doc: 2 of Kim’s original laws apply here. One is user control, a critical thing. Another is minimal disclosure. Justifiable parties.
Tim: A simple decision. As far as the general term we use to push and press releases, internally at IIW, use SSI all day long. But the external facing term, here’s the conclusion I want to push forward. The term SSI has to go for those entities we need not to cause problems with. I’ve talked to more execs than anyone except maybe Drummond Reed. It’s a problem. Get rid of the big booger we have in our nose when we walk in the room? Do we have general consensus?
Doc: The question is what are you going to substitute?
Kim: Doc is talking about the adjective. I don’t know why we need an adjective. One reason we need the adjective is it always goes with the word identity. I did more than my share of getting that word used. The way identity has been approached so far is so far from grasping the problem of human identity, it’s basically a tainted concept. It doesn’t grasp anything other than the statements about who we are. It doesn’t grasp the selfness of being me. We’re still far away from that. We’ll introduce wallets as ways to organize our whoness. But we’re on the brink to have ways to recollect and assemble ourselves digitally. In the interim, we stop talking about digital identity, but say we have user-controlled proofs to get into web sites, and hospitals nowadays. We have to get concrete. Talk about proofs.
Tim: A wonderful attribute of the word proof, it’s very elegant use as a verb and a noun. The zero-knowledge proof folks. It’s interesting, you just put a fork in the word identity.
Rory Martin: Seems reminiscent of Agile Manifesto or Green New Deal. Those are principles. We need to separate the principles of SSI. VC term is problematic.
Tim: A big tradeoff with “personal”...it almost does sound like a product. Some friction associated with that.
Vic Cooper: These conversations come out of the context of the internet. When I think of it in terms of telecommunications, I start describe what we’re building as identity-based communications. Adding identity into the mix is a real selling point, helps define it from most telecommunications which is defined by the channel (chat, phone call, etc.). We really need something that just talks about how this is real identity. Whereas before we had broken or shadow identity.
Marc Davis: A great conversation, but again, the scoping issue. Different comments hit the problem at different levels. Ideological, identifying the principles. That’s where SSI comes out of. Second, tech implementations. Third, business value propositions. Trying to define one term that satisfies each of those scopes. Kim, the term user is good for systems, but not when talking about individuals and power relations. Personal is language is independent of any tech implementation. I don’t think one term works across all three domains.
Kim: People have been objectified and they understand that they are using things. Everyone sees themselves as the user of an app.
Marc: Regulators?
Kim: They know who uses the apps.
Marc: Within the ideological political scoping, there is the concept of the individual before using any system. That’s part of what SSI is getting that, this pre-user notion of selfhood.
Tim: Selfhood cuts out IoT, organizational identity. Let’s say we’ve got a Trojan horse here. Call it portable digital identity, then we get self-sovereignity. But if we get religious about it, name it, plant a flag, then we defeat our efforts. How do we get the Trojan Horse into the city.
Carl Youngblood: When you look at scopes, it’s always going to be mutually exclusive. What’s most effective when introducing the concept?
Tim: Influential thinkers called analysts. They create & name the category. Those who want to understand the category buy info from the analysts. Will never call it SSI.
Vic Cooper: SSI sounds like a high-tech additive. My thing is powered by SSI. Needs to be super simple. Should make your life easier. Makes logging in simpler. Scott Mace: The original Trojan horse was built by the Greeks as a trophy for the city of Troy. Think of this as a gift we’re giving to corporations.
Cam Geer: How did the term evolve from feature phone to smart phones?
Lisa LaVasseur: We had feature and smart phone language since the 1990s. The product development leant itself easily to that language. We had the language for a long time. Gartner had projected smart phone adoption probably in 1995.
Tim: No one has spoken up for the favorable term for Microsoft, which is decentralized identity. I also wrote a blog about how everything we’re doing with SSI is not decentralized, the literal definition of the term. We know some corporates like it?
Juan: … works with the Decentralized Identity Foundation. Decentralization is the end state. I would like to move in that direction.
Tim: I playfully disagree. The basic premise is with our identity in a bunch of places, it’s actually decentralized today. The more I bring control to myself with a reasonable set of credentials, keys, identifier, I’m centralizing that.
Kim: You want to centralize the control of the individual. Decentralization is the technical end goal. Centralized systems are easily attackable. They’re not going to scale or sustain or the militarization of the internet which is currently underway. We’re living on borrowed time. It’s a very technical term. Scoping, we can talk about when we have a bunch of engineers in the room, but we can’t talk to the people who are going to use it. You need something really simple, has to be convey what the benefit will be to them. Under my control, and it can prove stuff. Some way to convey that. Why this is a good and important thing. Then, when talking to business and government, you leverage the fact it underlines what’s useful to the individual person. A way of talking about what is useful for the individual and the rest of the system. Does away with privacy problems that will become harder and harder. You eliminate all those privacy problems.
Tim: Would love to convey in the term that kind of individual control. That’s what SSI conveys that triggers the allergic reaction in the U.S.
Kim: In Europe, different.
Graybeal: Unfederated identity or credentials? Challenge is, presents different benefits to different people.
Tim: I like the term portable digital identity. Don’t like the word identity. But analysts could get behind it and is better than the current term, IAM.
Balazs Nemethi: I haven’t used SSI for a long time now. Brings up misunderstanding of how something can be self-sovereign. Decentralized digital identity. I do it because the tech is decentralized, but it explains it happens in the digital space. Not as it used to be. Can be explained much quicker than self sovereign.
Riley Hughes: Gartner and Forrester use DDID right now. Josh Verbarg: DDI, makes sense to me. Now I’m trusting all these other possible identity providers to give me an assertion about somebody. From a person point of view, you’re centralizing it. From a corporation’s point of view, it’s decentralized. A lot of these technologies are built on blockchain, and blockchain is about decentralizaiton. I understand where Microsoft and Gartner are coming from when they use that term.
Rory Martin: The term decentralized is more of a tech implementation term.
Tim: That’s my feeling.
Rory: Doesn’t connate value prop to laymen. Interoperability, I can have this ID, works across a multitude of systems, and rephrase SSI as independent ID. The other ones sound righteous.
Tim: I named Sovrin. I got to name it Indy when it got donated to Hyperledger. Indy stood for independent. I like portable digital identity. This is a hot topic
Carl: Interesting the words for independence, having learned Norweigan. unampengyskit?? (sp)
Vic: Couldn’t we highlight connections? Connections are a lot of the secret sauce that makes SSIO special. That’s what makes us sovereign.
Kim: Super simple identity. It could still be SSI.
Tim: Jonas made a great point. Aren’t we underselling it by talking about identity? We’re making trust digital. Are we having to kiss the ring of corporate world to make this happen? I don’t want to say it that strongly. The way identity works today is dictated by the corporations. They have to change their system. Find a term that works for them.
Joyce: Super Simple Identity. It’s like RSS [got different acronym]
Carl: Rather than disagree with them, insert a word that makes them want to know more.
Joyce: Just continue calling it SSI. It’s super simple identity
Scott: It’s Marketing 101.
Cam: It’s worth testing.
Tim: It’s just so wrong. My goodness, user names and passwords are far simpler.
Vic: It gets rid of effort. I’m not going to have to need that password before.
Tim: We need our UI to be done first.
Wip: It’s SSI, people don’t need to know what it is.
Vittorio Bertocci: Calling SSI super simple would be a self-defeating move. Talking with customers even deep into the identity space, SSI looks like an ivory tower effort. Been around for half a decade. Worked with Kim back in 2006. So far there is no mainstream. Naming is important, but I don’t think it’s the most important right now. Would not be true in a way that would expose you to more bad press.
Riley: I really like portable ID, PID. From federated to portable. Someone mentioned Trust over IP. That’s really the value proposition. Can be done in different ways.
Tim: I like the word portable as well.
Marc: Super Simple / Self Sovereign is clever. The actual tech implementation, what is the core tech substrate. Ideological, value prop, and tech implementation.
Tim: I’ll take that as a vote for SSI.
Cam: I’m a test and learn guy. Portable identity is one. DDID. See if they resonate in different industries and come back with some input.
Tim: I like it.
Doc: A vote for super simple identity.
Zoom Chat Transcript follows:
14:02:27 From Lisa LeVasseur : usability problems
14:05:10 From Juan Caballero : the baby has been branded :D
14:05:33 From Juan Caballero : yup those are the big 3
14:06:20 From Juan Caballero : I actually think BYOI means something slightly different that can overlap with SSI but not always
14:06:36 From Juan Caballero : although because Gartner is pushing it I don't want to use it :D
14:06:42 From Andre Kudra : For all I know we were using Bring Your Own Identity much before Gartner did… ;-)
14:07:01 From Juan Caballero : ^ I have the early records on vinyl ;)
14:07:28 From Nathan George : And some of the trouble like user-centric terms and similar have already been defined as different things
14:07:45 From Lisa LeVasseur : yeah there's a kind of myopia about it
14:08:46 From Lisa LeVasseur : do we agree the name is problematic?
14:09:25 From Lisa LeVasseur : do the problems warrant changing the name?
14:09:33 From Marc Davis : There are many aspects I like about the name as a “political” strategy.
14:09:48 From Gabe Cohen : Forget problems. Are there more benefits that could be had with a different name?
14:09:57 From Juan Caballero : ^ well put
14:10:06 From Marc Davis : +1000 Doc
14:10:14 From Andre Kudra : Our article "Bring Your Own Identity" published in June 2017. See page 6 of pdf:
http://www.teletrust.de/fileadmin/images/publikationen/broschueren/ix/170522_TeleTrusT-Heise-Sonderbeilage_Sicherheit_und_Datenschutz_01_2017.pdf
14:10:30 From Andre Kudra : Don't know when Gartner started, though.
14:10:33 From Nathan George : Polarizing names can be more powerful, if they motivate the right people to opt-in and the wrong people to opt-out
14:10:52 From Juan Caballero : ^ Yeah, I remember last year
14:11:01 From Marc Davis : +1 NathanGeorge
14:11:03 From scottmace : Lime Bikes are bikes-as-a-service
14:11:11 From Juan Caballero : when Rouven said he had the hardest time selling SSI to emirates, and I was like... do we want Emirates funding this? hehehehe
14:11:17 From Lisa LeVasseur : ugh. that's what the world needs: more polarization
14:11:53 From Juan Caballero : (to Lisa's point, I mean that their money comes with strings and backdoors, not that they're bad or illegitimate people)
14:11:53 From Nathan George : It isn’t about intentionally leaving people out, it is about convincing the most helpful people to actually help us.
14:12:58 From rileyhughes : Joined the meeting late, there’s 7 hands up. Whoof, good conversation already I guess!
14:13:21 From Nathan George : Johannes++
14:14:02 From Celine Takatsuno : +1 to doc.who do we want to name this for? humans? corporations? governments?
14:14:35 From dsearls : Celine, all three. To me it's like the word "personal." All three of those entities knows what that means.
14:14:39 From Marc Davis : Useful to unpack both parts of the term: “Self” and “Sovereign”. “Self” is the IMHO key as lowest level locus of control and agency. “Sovereign” is a political term which has its own issues, but as a radical restructuring of individual vs corporate or state power, I think it gets at the key disruptive aspect of the term. It embodies an ideology intentionally. Question here is if the change in terminology is a change in ideology, or merely a tactic as part of a larger ideological effort.
14:14:51 From Iain Henderson : self sovereign identity is not any more understandable to individuals than it is to corporate IT. 14:14:59 From Lisa LeVasseur : +1 Iain
14:15:03 From Juan Caballero : +100 Iain
14:15:32 From Celine Takatsuno : Thanks @Doc. That. Also, branding is hard ;)
14:15:46 From dsearls : here is Devon Loffreto on self-sovereign identity: http://www.moxytongue.com/2016/02/self-sovereign-identity.html
14:16:29 From Nathan George : The “shield against the dragon” type theme?
14:16:36 From Marc Davis : @doc I actually prefer the term “Personal” to Self”
14:16:42 From Jonas Jetschni : Isnt SSI fundamentally about trust that is shared?
14:17:38 From dsearls : Actually, "personal identity" might work. The moment we're at here, finally, may be where computing was in 1977, when "personal computing" first came up. The whole notion that computing could be personal and not just corporate or governmental was anathema to both of those types. "personal computing" to them was an oxymoron. And it remained so until IBM itself created the PC.
14:17:50 From Nathan George : It isn’t just about the holder. Each role is important and the system has to be balanced between them, we focus on self because they were perhaps the most underrepresented previously
14:18:07 From Andre Kudra : Couple of thoughts:
Corporate IT has absorbed these terms:
14:18:19 From Nathan George : meh
14:18:19 From Andre Kudra : PKI - Public Key Infrastructure
14:18:20 From jimfenton : “Self sovereign” bothers me because it makes it sound like it’s only what I have to say about myself that matters. That ignores identity as informing and being informed by our relationship with others.
14:18:27 From dsearls : See if it works. Substitute "personal identity" for "self-sovereign identity" and see if it works. I think it does. 14:18:29 From Nathan George : jimfenton++
14:18:35 From Andre Kudra : SSO - Single Sign-On
14:18:38 From Marc Davis : Need to distinguish ideology layer from technology layer. “Self-Sovereign Identity” is IMHO technology agnostic.
14:18:43 From pknowles : Self-sovereign entity
14:19:02 From Andre Kudra : Are these terms any better than SSI?
14:19:12 From Juan Caballero : @Marc did you see Karyl's slideshow from Tuesday?
14:19:17 From Juan Caballero : she did exactly that :D
14:19:19 From Marc Davis : I did not 14:19:22 From Marc Davis : :-)
14:19:27 From jimfenton : Any use of “sovereign” sounds too political IMO.
14:19:28 From Andre Kudra : When we are moving from SSO to SSI, we are just changing one letter. ;-)
14:19:36 From Juan Caballero : http://www.slideshare.net/KarylFowler/introduction-to-selfsovereign-identity
14:19:47 From Nathan George : Lots of what credentialing is used for in practice isn’t private or “personal” at all, it is very public and about getting bits from A to B to C with the most integrity
14:19:55 From Juan Caballero : ^ YES
14:20:05 From Marc Davis : +1 NathanGeorge
14:20:11 From Juan Caballero : certainly everything Spherity has been able to get someone to pay us to do
14:20:29 From Marc Davis : This debate is in programming terms a “scoping” problem
14:20:54 From Nathan George : This is where John’s Trust over IP came from, trustable data fluidity actually seems more important in many of these cases
14:20:57 From dsearls : Nathan, if this is all about moving credentials between what we used to call relying parties and identity providers, we've only re-invented federation. The individual needs agency in this thing.
14:21:02 From Juan Caballero : who's taking notes and where? in the google doc?
14:21:21 From dsearls : Scott is taking notes.
14:21:22 From Juan Caballero : can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
14:21:27 From Juan Caballero : particularly when it comes to marketing :D
14:21:36 From Nathan George : Dsearls, agreed. Just trying to turn it over to see if something pops out from the other perspective
14:21:49 From riley : yes and that’s what I’m getting at too
14:22:27 From Nathan George : Subject-centered federation doesn’t quite capture it.
14:23:02 From Juan Caballero : ^ also sounds hard to explain
14:23:37 From Carl Youngblood : “User-controlled credentials”
14:24:21 From Todd Gehrke : Portable credentials
14:24:34 From Carl Youngblood : +1 Todd I like that
14:24:51 From Juan Caballero : I'm not getting this bicep "SSI" tattoo removed guys, it's for keeps
14:25:04 From Carl Youngblood : haha
14:25:10 From pknowles : Decentralized credential model
14:25:15 From Timothy Ruff : I've recently heard the simple "Portable Digital Identity" and I kinda like it
14:25:34 From Lisa LeVasseur : to me, the ethos <with which i do agree> transcends the iam domain.
14:25:36 From Iain Henderson : Yes, that’s the best so far
14:25:39 From Celine Takatsuno : thanks for that @Hadil
14:26:03 From Timothy Ruff : @Iain Which?
14:26:16 From Iain Henderson : Portable Digital Identity
14:26:25 From Juan Caballero : Philip Sherbourne's work with Akasha Foundation is along these lines
14:26:35 From Juan Caballero : He always insists "identity is always interpersonal"
14:26:37 From jer : User Centric
14:26:42 From Lisa LeVasseur : yes @Kim
14:26:45 From Gabe Cohen : Privacy preserving/user-centric ..?
14:26:47 From Nathan George : Don’t do direct API integration anymore, give out signed statements and let others assert them on demand…
14:26:50 From Juan Caballero : and there's a lot of recent work on data unions and data guilds that even data ownership need not be so emphatically INDIVIDUAL
14:27:00 From Carl Youngblood : @Juan good point. Identity only makes sense in a social context.
14:27:14 From dsearls : @Kim "user controlled proofs"
14:27:18 From Lisa LeVasseur : @uan -- ownership and production
14:27:30 From Lisa LeVasseur : @Juan
14:27:56 From Juan Caballero : @Lisa, you mean like, "seize the means of data production?" I've seen that graffitid on walls here in Berlin!
14:28:14 From Marc Davis : @Kim Given your points about social embeddness/construction of the self, is the “self” part inaccurate or the “sovereignty” part inaccurate, or both?
14:28:33 From Lisa LeVasseur : :) I mean data production also isn't solely individual. some is co-produced.
14:28:40 From Juan Caballero : toootaaallly
14:28:42 From Nathan George : @Marc probably both
14:28:54 From Paul Dunphy : The term “Trusted Identity” gets quite far with corporates. Is there an extension of that?
14:28:59 From Iain Henderson : As Doc has said before though, ‘user’ is only common to the tech industry and the drug trade
14:29:00 From Nathan George : But together they sort of work, maybe, if your not in Europe, we guess.
14:29:05 From Juan Caballero : delegation thinking sometimes feels like shoehorning the collective into the individual
14:29:23 From Josh Verbarg (State Farm) : SSI is Identity Federation on Steroids from my point of view.
14:29:28 From Juan Caballero : Iain is right-- late capitalism atomizes and insists on the individual scope
14:29:31 From Iain Henderson : Personal Identity and Personal Proofs
14:29:39 From Juan Caballero : nothing more late capitalist than the pharma trade and the software racket
14:29:43 From Celine Takatsuno : +1 Iain
14:29:47 From Marc Davis : I have a big issue with the term “user” because it only exists in relationship to a “system”. Need term which is prior to any individual’s engagement with a system. I agree with @doc to use “personal” rather than “user”.
14:30:01 From Juan Caballero : user smacks of server-client hierarchy :D
14:30:11 From Marc Davis : +1 Juan
14:30:14 From riley : personal proof system
14:30:35 From riley : if we all spit out as many permutations of the options as we can, we might eventually find one that we like :D
14:30:48 From Carl Youngblood : It’s the only way some of us can participate!
14:32:53 From Juan Caballero : I feel like "User-controlled proofs" is a MUCH more precise name for the technology
14:33:04 From Juan Caballero : and "decentralized identity"is a MUCH more precise name for the business case
14:33:19 From Juan Caballero : (and/or decentralized credentialing/ credential infra)
14:33:35 From Nathan George : Every large organization tends to chafe at the term. Unless we _like_ that it makes them uncomfortable we should reconsider it. Sometimes doing something shocking is valuable, but you have to live with it.
14:33:48 From Lisa LeVasseur : there is a way to do a poll
14:33:56 From Juan Caballero : we all came! your title was "let's change the name" :D
14:33:58 From Gabe Cohen : Can vote with the yes/no next to “raise hand”
14:34:10 From Marc Davis : @Juan Need to separate terms used to express: ideology; technology; business value.
14:34:50 From Juan Caballero : @Marc - no one should ask me to weigh in on the ideology side, I am a pinko literature professor :D
14:35:18 From Carl Youngblood : @Juan huge fan of pinko literature. Don’t sell yourself short. ;-)
14:35:37 From Juan Caballero : "DEFINING SELFHOOD WITH WALLETS" is the most American thing I've ever heard
14:36:11 From Nathan George : Is it about selfness though, I like to think of the most important part as the relationships and our right to choose within each of those contexts. Which is why I think Kim’s concreteness helps.
14:36:24 From Carl Youngblood : “User-controlled proofs” seems a bit underwhelming for a grand unifying moniker.
14:36:31 From Lisa LeVasseur : +1 digital identity is a meaningless phrase for everyday people.
14:37:19 From Juan Caballero : ^ I tend to concur
14:37:55 From Marc Davis : +1 @Rory
14:39:57 From Balazs Nemethi : "personal" is short when it comes to IoT
14:40:06 From Lisa LeVasseur : +1 rory--separating the principles [which transcend the identity part of technology]
14:40:58 From Juan Caballero : On the issue of identity, Christian Kameir once told me something like (hope i'm not misquoting), "99% of the time people say 'identity' and mean 'profiles', as in 'racial profiling' and 'data profiles'. credentialing is only a consensual form of profiling."
14:44:23 From windley : The problem word in SSI isn’t “sovereign” it’s “identity"
14:44:55 From Lisa LeVasseur : for me, it's both @Phil
14:45:00 From Lisa LeVasseur : :)
14:45:04 From Cam Geer : +1 Timothy
14:45:25 From Cam Geer : Call Ulysses! ;-)
14:45:44 From Juan Caballero : the name that gets it built is the best name
14:46:11 From windley : So, why not just talk about trustworthy digital credentials and forget identity and sovereignty
14:46:48 From windley : Then we “start with the wallet”
14:47:05 From Nathan George : @windley That seems to +1 Kim’s position about user controlled proofs
14:47:08 From Cam Geer : we’re looking for the “invention is the mother of necessity” event which will be named by the market. We can keep floating them until it sticks or is coined
14:47:21 From Lisa LeVasseur : <btw, interesting anecdote maybe: most everyday people have no idea what SMS stands for.>
14:47:22 From Marc Davis : @Juan please do weigh in. I feel like I’m out on a limb here trying to separate the scoping of terms for ideology vs. for technology implementations.
14:47:55 From Dan Marino : As mentioned earlier, I do think that the DID communication is very important. So in addition to “trustworthy digital credentials”, we have “ubiquitous authenticated communication” or something.
14:47:57 From Jsearls : +1 Lisa, ditto ATM
14:48:00 From Juan Caballero : ^ Haha, I was only halfkidding when I said I should recuse myself for the ideology portion :D. But yes, me and Karyl agreed with that separation of concerns!
14:48:12 From Juan Caballero : (@Marc)
14:48:31 From windley : STP!!
14:48:39 From Celine Takatsuno : +1 cam
14:48:41 From jimfenton : SO @Phil, if “identity” is the problem word what will we call IIW?
14:49:15 From Jsearls : IIW
14:49:16 From windley : Cause it’s endorsed by history, to take a phrase from Nathan. :)
14:49:24 From jimfenton : :)
14:49:45 From Lisa LeVasseur : Joyce :-)
14:50:06 From Cam Geer : an offering to Poseidon!
14:50:18 From Gabe Cohen : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeo_Danaos_et_dona_ferentes
14:51:19 From Vic Cooper : “My hot rod of an application is powered by SSI” It sounds cool enough that I don’t even care what it means
14:52:04 From Marc Davis : @TimothyRuff your points about focusing on the language that gets adoption of a given technology seems to imply that the adoption of the current technology is equivalent to having the desired ideological change effect. I am skeptical of that personally because the ideological goals could have several possible technology implementations and I worry that the view of technology adoption necessarily driving ideological change, seems to me to imply a technodeterminist view of how social and political changes occur.
14:52:51 From Marc Davis : @Vic cool
14:52:53 From Jonas Jetschni : Do we need a terminology that fits into the evaluation of identity? Centralized ID, Federated ID, Social ID, ??? 14:53:12 From Cam Geer : Digital Identity?
14:53:21 From windley : Internet Identity?
14:53:41 From Jonas Jetschni : +1 Internet Identity
14:53:44 From Lisa LeVasseur : I'm interested in collaborating on a paper or something on the ideological principles. Anyone?
14:53:50 From Vic Cooper : Short words and Acronyms are incredibly powerful. Think about TSA PreCheck. People know it’s a great thing without even knowing what TSA stands for
14:54:11 From Jsearls : +1 Vic
14:54:13 From Andre Kudra : That's more like chaotic identity. ;-)
14:54:20 From Marc Davis : “Decentralized” can refer to the loci and architecture of power and control vs. a given technology implementation, so it has promise as a term that can Trojan horse in interesting ways.
14:54:23 From Marc Davis : +1 Vic
14:54:47 From Marc Davis : +1 @Kim
14:55:41 From Paul Dunphy : In the spirit of making the conversation easier with executives - we internally we chose use the term “decentralised identity”. I don’t regret it…
14:55:44 From Marc Davis : But, “decentralized” is an opposite metaphor to the individual being the central locus of control.
14:55:58 From windley : I like “decentralized” as describing the “architecture of power”. SSI allows anyone to issue, hold, or verify any credential. That’s a diffusion of power well past something like, say, Oauth
14:56:00 From Andre Kudra : Yes, Vic, indeed. Like PKI and SSO. See also my earlier posts here in Chat.
14:56:13 From Juan Caballero : In political terms, decentralization actually means local, bottoms-up power relations--- which is my endgoal on the IDEOLOGICAL side as well as the technical side :D
14:56:26 From Juan Caballero : @Windley +1
14:56:32 From Marc Davis : +1 @Juan ;-)
14:56:36 From Cam Geer : +1 Juan
14:57:10 From Jsearls : +1 Juan “Subsidiarity”
14:57:21 From windley : Some posts:
14:57:27 From windley : http://www.windley.com/archives/2018/10/decentralization_in_sovrin.shtml
14:57:49 From Vic Cooper : How about Effortless ID?
14:57:54 From Marc Davis : Preach @Kim! Love it!
14:58:03 From windley : http://www.windley.com/archives/2016/08/an_internet_for_identity.shtml
14:58:39 From windley : http://www.windley.com/archives/2017/09/is_sovrin_decentralized.shtml
14:58:41 From Jsearls : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
14:58:50 From Vic Cooper : Connected ID?
14:58:54 From Celine Takatsuno : +1 to kim. this community and technologists and gov’t and corporates may all converge on a name at some point. the individuals out there will likely pick up the name of the first product that uses SSI that has true market adoption. (in branding exercises they’d use kleenex as the example here.
14:59:27 From Cam Geer : PDI?
14:59:30 From windley : http://www.windley.com/archives/2016/10/on_sovereignty.shtml
14:59:30 From Riley Hughes : Shorten it to “portable ID”
14:59:32 From Carl Youngblood : What about just Portable Identity
14:59:40 From Carl Youngblood : Do we have to have the digital in there?
14:59:57 From Christoph Menzer : Can we control our internet identity as humans!? Or can we, in best case, control our devices, which control our internet identity? With control over the key, self-sovereign begins.. DID is only an identifier, VCs are my identity, right?
15:00:09 From Jan Taylor : What about Mobile ID?
15:00:23 From windley : Sounds like something for a phone
15:00:46 From windley : +! Christoph
15:01:06 From Cam Geer : DDI / DDID/
15:01:14 From Juan Caballero : DDID:Docs
15:01:20 From Cam Geer : ddID
15:01:34 From Carl Youngblood : “Portable credentials”
15:01:54 From Vic Cooper : The secret sauce of SSI is the way it connects people, orgs & things. Why not highlight that in the name?
15:02:15 From Lisa LeVasseur : Is this an accurate separation of scopes and ergo names: (1) ideological / ethos, (2) enabling technology, and (3) consumer facing product names?
15:02:28 From Marc Davis : @Josh exactly!
15:02:30 From Riley Hughes : Vic, that’s the secret sauce for your use case. But there are lots of use cases that don’t need pairwise DID connections at all
15:02:31 From Cam Geer : “Hey, what’s your ddID?”
15:03:02 From Celine Takatsuno : great observation @josh
15:03:07 From Cam Geer : +1 Lisa
15:03:37 From Lisa LeVasseur : he became one with the sky
15:03:56 From Marc Davis : +1 @Rory
15:04:00 From Riley Hughes : +1
15:04:08 From Riley Hughes : And decentralization is a buzzword which turns some people off
15:04:17 From Timothy Ruff : +1 Rory, but I prefer "Portable" over "interoperable"
15:04:58 From Graybeal : portable universal identity
15:05:01 From Vic Cooper : Good point @Riley but aren’t connections is a huge part of most SSI use cases?
15:05:08 From Cam Geer : Indy ID
15:05:09 From dsearls : I like "independent identity"
15:05:48 From Timothy Ruff : Me too
15:06:01 From Timothy Ruff : kinda close to self-sovereign though
15:06:19 From Juan Caballero : Unabhaengigkeit
15:06:22 From Carl Youngblood : uavhengihet
15:06:37 From Juan Caballero : not-hanging-on-[anyone else]-ness
15:06:41 From Jonas Jetschni : Arent we underselling us with identity? Isnt the topic much big as we bring trust to digital?
15:06:47 From Carl Youngblood : @Juan precisely!
15:07:02 From Todd Gehrke : Relational identity model
15:07:07 From Marc Davis : @Kim love it
15:07:18 From dsearls : "super simple identity" SSI +1 Kim!
15:07:37 From Hadil Elbitar : ^ lol :D
15:07:45 From dsearls : My vote is for that one, and I didn't expect to like any of them.
15:07:48 From Paul Dunphy : We should validate the usability before committing to that one :)
15:07:56 From Marc Davis : “Super Simple” is a great way to explain a value proposition.
15:08:10 From Gabe Cohen : It’s super simple - you own it
15:08:10 From Jsearls : Super Simple Identity!
15:08:14 From Cam Geer : it’s a practical move on the part of this community to drive adoption
15:08:15 From Vic Cooper : I like Super Simple!
15:08:22 From Hadil Elbitar : and no one would have to stop saying SSI
15:08:28 From Chris Eckl : super simple +1
15:08:48 From Balazs Nemethi : Super Sexy Identity? -- :)
15:08:52 From Lisa LeVasseur : i didn't expect to be saying this either, but the beauty of SSI is that it's open to multiple interpretations.
15:09:15 From Paul Dunphy : I think that’s decentralised identity works for the same reasons
15:09:39 From Juan Caballero : PGP
15:09:41 From jimfenton : Asynchronous Transfer Mode ??
15:09:43 From Juan Caballero : it's pretty good!
15:09:50 From windley : +! Jim
15:09:57 From Micah McG : SSI is v2 to SI
15:09:59 From Gabe Cohen : Some secure identity, stupidly simple identity
15:10:02 From Marc Davis : SSI as global scope: ideology scope = “Self-Sovereign Identity”; value proposition = “Super Simple Identity”; what is the technology term for SSI?
15:10:24 From Juan Caballero : you can hit "NO" if you hate it
15:11:03 From Drummond Reed : Super Simple Identity, is that it?
15:11:15 From dsearls : Yes, Drummond.
15:11:19 From Jan Taylor : Simply Secure Identity
15:11:23 From Drummond Reed : I’ve been saying we should call it “SSI” for months now!
15:11:26 From Carl Youngblood : Usernames and passwords are not simpler. A brief glance at the number of records in my 1password app will attest to that.
15:11:29 From Juan Caballero : @Jan +1
15:12:48 From Marc Davis : +1 @Carl
15:12:53 From dsearls : I'm down to 800+ login/pw combinations. Simple!
15:13:04 From Marc Davis : @Doc ditto
15:13:04 From jimfenton : We need to remember that “identity” or whatever you call it goes way beyond authentication (e.g., username/password). Apples and oranges.
15:13:11 From Stephen Curran : +1 to Doc
15:13:15 From Timothy Ruff : My PW manager makes un/pw simple for me
15:13:39 From jimfenton : Timothy +1
15:13:53 From windley : Many people *hate* the word “trust”
15:14:03 From jimfenton : Yes I do
15:14:45 From Riley Hughes : Single sentralized identity
15:14:51 From Riley Hughes : Only problem is you have to spell centralized wrong :)
15:15:13 From Vic Cooper : That would be TOIP @Marc
15:15:17 From Jsearls : Super Secure Identity
15:15:37 From Vic Cooper : Super Simple Identity running on TOIP
15:15:43 From Juan Caballero : Test drive!
15:15:45 From Lisa LeVasseur : so to be clear, we're naming the technology, yes?
15:15:49 From Marc Davis : @Vic +1
15:15:56 From Andre Kudra : Vic +1
15:15:59 From Drummond Reed : +1 to SSI. It’s already become the term the majority of the market is using. Why would we try to move away from it now.
15:16:18 From Andre Kudra : SSI will not go away easily any more in the world.
15:16:18 From Riley Hughes : Agree with Drummond.
15:16:21 From Marc Davis : Thank you!
15:16:28 From Jan Taylor : Thank you!
From Cam Geer to Everyone: 03:17 PM thx!
From Juan Caballero to Everyone: 03:19 PM Thanks all! Sorry I spoke too much!
From Marc Davis to Everyone: 03:20 PM @Juan love your contributions!
That was my scoping point
From Timothy Ruff to Everyone: 03:20 PM Thanks Juan. :)
From Juan Caballero to Everyone: 03:21 PM great problem to have
