Archives for April 2020

I’m speaking at EXO World about the future of digital identity and what it will be like. In 5 minutes I managed to explain the old identity – how things work today with the pyramids where we are assigned identifiers. Then talking about the new digital identity systems originating from the Internet Identity Workshop (more on that below) and specifically how individuals can generate their own identifiers (not get them assigned by someone else) called Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and because of PKI – controlling the private keys they are in control. These come with Verifiable Credentials (VCs) that provides a universal language for any individual or organization to assert things about any other organization or individual. Given them that bundle of assertions in to a wallet or agent and then they can share it with who ever they want. It creates infinitely scalable low cost federation. If you want to learn more about it I have a book written about it A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity. I also do consulting and advising with a range of different types of clients to understand the technology.

I mention the Domains of Identity in the talk to..you can download from the site highlights from the book. It is is being published this summer by Anthem press. I end by sharing that ongoing work about data under the control of people is ongoing by these groups the Decentralized Identity Foundation is about to start a working group for Secure Data Stores, The work of MyData Global to create the values and technology for people to have control of their own data in personal data stores and the Me2B Alliance working on certifications for companies who are ethical with how they treat people’s data.

Internet Identity Workshop

IIW #30 the Internet Identity Workshop is coming up in two weeks! We have been gathering twice a year for 15 years! If you use “login with Google” you are using technology invented at our community that OpenID. Any time you link an account from one service to another like to Twitter that’s OAuth also invented at our conference. We have been the leading hub of innovation for Decentralized Identity. technologies. You are welcome to join us. We use Open Space Technology and co-create the agenda live the morning of the event.

PSA Today PodCast

I’ve got a Podcast now! I’m recording PSA Today with Seth Goldstein founder of Spartacus. the PSA stands for Privacy Surveillance and Anonymity . We have two episodes so far and more coming. Johannes Ernst was our first guest last week.

COVIDCreds

The Decentralized Identity Community is working together to consider the covid immunity certificate use-case that has emerged from a few places. The community has worked on spinning up a website – CovidCreds.com to talk about it. There is a Decentralized working group to support IPR protected space for key work items. There are white papers coming out shortly one written by the crew from ID2020 about how to do decentralized credentials right and the MyData one is about how to do human-centric contact tracing.

Lets Have a Plan

This is my blog that I started with my friend Karen Studders who is based in Seattle about the COVID19 situation. Most of the posts are hers but we work on them together. My one from last week was Welp, Singapore is Closing…it means this will last a long time.

It has been exciting to see people come to life asking themselves what they can do to address the situation. There had been a lot of hope that the world could follow what Singapore was doing with strong digitally enable contact tracing. However just over the weekend Singapore it announced it was shutting down and I write about that on my other blog.

The MyData Global Community is working on connecting those with data oriented applications together – to share what they are working on and collecting the information shared on a Trello Board. Each Wednesday at 7am pacific they are hosting a call.

There is another list of applications on the GDPR Hub.

The potential for a COVID19 Credential around immunity has arisen. SSI Covid Test Results group. You can get engaged if you are an SSI vendor or have expertise to contribute. There are three different groups, Use Cases, Tools, Governance/Rules and Coordination. The Decentralized Identity Foundation is working on defining a credential definition.

I am optimistic that the community can come together and credentials can be defined that work across the whole ecosystem but the closet is there and there are quite different architectures between the JSON-LD side of the community JWT and ZKP/Sovrin flavor that are inside. If we are going to have open standards and say we use them then lets do that – ok.