What is Sovereign Identity?
What is Sovereign Identity?
Tuesday 2A Convener: Drummond Reed, Christopher Allen, Phil Windley Notes-taker(s): Drummond Reed & Scott David
Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:
sovereign identity, digital identity, blockchain, policy
Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:
its not about Facebook or other social logins
its not about asymmetric power
its not just about legal identity or citizenship / but that could be one use
its not perfect
it can address the refugee use case
it is not a single identity
it can be contextual
it doesn’t have a administrative authority
it can run in parallel with other authority systems
it gives the individual control
it cannot be taken away
UN is thinking of tracking everyone to explain self-sovereign identity -
Why , why now?
Christopher Allen blog: http://lifewithalacrity.com
Phil Windley blog: http://windley.com
ID2020 - http://id2020summit.org
Web of Trust http://weboftrust.info — https://github.com/weboftrustinfo
IRespond - http://irespond.org
Suggestions
practical exercise of foundation - fairly straight forward summary of the current world issues.
how do you make it compelling
other terms
identifier
own agency and self determination
rebooting web of trust - experts on blockchain CTO of a major CA talked about a summary
could be called self sovereign identifier? to deal with the multiple entities?
anil john
Do we have to solve the refugee problem with sovereign identity? Can we just solve for the US for now?
what does it mean to be a person? what are the human rights of a person in the 21st century
censorship - resistant / power-resistant
1 billion undocumented identities
Notes from Scott David:
What is self-sovereign identity? And why?
Is it something new – different than user-centric identity? What is the difference?
What difference might it make?
Why should we care: Concern with co-option and market hegemony.
How begin to talk about something that allows a difference and prevent a power attacks.
Power imbalances in the system to be addressed.
Different language of needs now.
Merge the institutional and the individual needs and views on the issue.
10 principles of Christopher Allen – in Github – meant for comment and for further work. Leading to white paper from community of blockchain and identity people –
vision. https://www.lifewithalacrity.com
Phil Windley wrote a response http://windley.com Phil thinking about ID2020 summit – provide legal identity to 1.8 billion people who don’t have identity currently.
Most people don’t think about what life would be like without a legal identity for things like passports, getting kids into school.
Civil registration started in 1700s in France. Civil registration is basis for much other identity and social benefits. Control of identity is based on fact that can produce a piece of paper that others cannot produce.
Phil thought about Christopher’s blog post – Civil registration conflates two concepts: identify individual for lots of things that happen legally, and going to say that person is a citizen (part of nation state). Most legal identity systems don’t separate out citizenship and legal identity, and that can be a challenges as long as those are conflated. Self-sovereign identity may permit separation of identity from citizenship.
Possible that governments could accept a self sovereign identity system as basis for identity, and then write claims against identity that could be part of system.
Identity is nothing by self – it is the claims that mean everything.
Critical not to let the perfect get in the way of the good.
Systems that we are trying to fix/replace is not perfect either, so the solutions can be better without being perfect.
Need to articulate and use cases to help tease this out.
Loss of rights if not have identity.
Commonwealth nations as use case – have trust issues, but have much in common.
Q: Why is it singular? Why not self-sovereign identities (plural)?
It was clarified that it is not intended to suggest single identity.
Advocacy for switching to “identifier,” rather than identity.
Independence from other entities or context is a good reason to use identifier as a term.
Concern with “sovereignty” may be issue for existing sovereigns.
Note history:
Federated
User centric
Self sovereign
What is the difference of identity and identifiers.
Identity is about correlation
Identifiers is different.
People can correlate you any way they want.
Back to self sovereign identity
Desire to blend policy, technical, etc. all into one issue.
Question is whether you mean – adoption rates will depend on people believing the assertion. How make it compelling for service provider or relying party to be certain of the usefulness of the identity.
Lots of technology allows for avoidance of correlation – cryptography and blockchain, e.g.,
Consider who is going to trust this – want to relate to the policy makers that in absence of an identity issuer, can people be empowered to represent a persistent entity that someone can interact with.
Practical issues – ID2020 is aimed at unidentified people – solving that is important.
But there are other identity problems that are not solved by current systems. What will change so that not have to mail a birth certificate to get a passport. Question of what will replace it. It is a broader problem than just undocumented folks.
Also, self-sovereign identity system could run in parallel with existing systems and could run together for a while.
ID2020 concerns with taking the most exposed people earth, and introducing further challenges. Can result in additional exposures to people who are already at risk. In other cases can get by without being perfect, but here if mess up, can destroy people’s lives.
Return to Chris’ principles: Need data minimization and other control so that can reduce bad nation state actor harm.
Can mitigate the challenge –
Notion of execution – for ID2020 – want to connect up resources of tech folks with
UN community. UN community is inexperienced in identity issues. NGOs will b there and they are in need of solutions.
OIX will create white paper after ID2020.
Day after ID2020 event, there will be a facilitated workshop: information is at web of trust. http://weboftrust.info
Suggestion that best handles are in refugees and healthcare. That is a discreet use case.
User centric – term is less useful than self-sovereign identity.
What does declaration of human rights look like in the 21 st century.
Need for guidance on the issue. What mean to be a person, what it have.
Sovereigns don’t ask for permission. Develop it and be confident that don’t need to ask for permission for the “sovereignty”
It is a 15 year effort. Raise awareness and consciousness for support for it. www.evernym.com - sovereign identity on a permissioned blockchain. Stumbled into the issue while solving way to send message without knowing contact information. Novel solution to that issue that realized had broader application. When realized that blockchain was there, made the connection.
Sovereign identity – ultimate authority in a particular sphere. Autonomous is similar. Identity not given by government or company, or be taken away.
To close:
Following is Material on the board during the session:
Resources – see above for other links:
https://www.lifewithalacrity.com
https://weboftrust.info and github.com/weboftrustinfoevernym.com
Suggestions
1 Do a summary of current work and why sovereign ID
2. How do you make it compelling?
3. How does it relate to fundamental human rights
Its not Facebook or other social logins
Its not asymmetric power
Its not just legal identity or citizenship (but could be one use)
Its not perfect
It can address the refugee use case
Its is not a single identity
It can be contextual
It does not have an administrative authority
It can run in parallel with existing systems
It gives the individual control
It does not need to ask for permission.
