Identity Woman

Independent Advocate for the Rights and Dignity of our Digital Selves

Media Coverage

Speaking at the 2023 Conference of the Plurality Research Network

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At the Plurality Research Network Conference 2023, which commenced on January 13, 2022, and continued through January 15, 2023, I delivered a lighting talk the first day.

A Little Introduction to the Conference

Researchers and practitioners from various domains, such as computer science, sociology, political ethics, and government, who are exploring plural technologies are brought together at the Plurality Institute.

Plural technologies are reusable computing platforms that promote collaboration and development across various social communities.

A Brief Overview of My Talk at the Conference

Plurality Research Network Live Conference

During my presentation at the conference, I discussed the issues and difficulties that are associated with digital identifier systems, including the following examples:

  • There is no way for us to influence the assignment of digital Identifiers (private namespaces and globally managed registries).
  • Architectures for phone home or surveillance systems (the OpenID authentication process).
  • There is no standard method for sharing attributes.

I also discussed how different groups, organizations, and political systems handled the management of their own boundaries historically using paper.

After that, dove into Decentralized Identity. I went through the identifiers that don’t fall under the category of private namespaces or global registries. In essence, the protocols of DID (decentralized identifier), together with the standard components of the DID document, as well as Verifiable Credentials. You can se my talk here.

I really enjoyed the other talks given that first day. You can see them all here – if you click on “show more” in the comment each different speaker has their own links.

IAPP Event: An Intro for Data Privacy Pros to Self-Sovereign Identity

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An event hosted by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) asked me to give a talk on the subject of self-sovereign identity and provide a foundational overview for privacy professionals.

The following are some of the primary issues discussed throughout the event:

  • Exactly what it means to have a self-sovereign identity.
  • The direction in which the space is moving.
  • What privacy professionals need to know.

The Panel was put together by Katharina Koerner, the Principal Technology Researcher at IAPP. Myself, Dominique Beron CEO of walt.id and Kristina Yashuda, who does Identity Standards at MSFT.

Kailya, Kristina, Dominique, Katharine

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is essentially a fresh take on digital identity solutions. Its goal is to empower users with additional options in managing their online identities and in deciding how much of their private data to make public.

In this manner, the self-sovereign identity technology provides assistance for the data reduction and purpose restriction tenets of privacy.

Simply click this link to see the whole video.

DWeb 2022 Talk: Decentralized Identity Open Standards

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At the invitation of the organizers of DWeb Camp 2022, I delivered a session on the subject of three open standards for decentralized identities.

Kaliya talking at DWebCamp – clicking on photo goes to the video.

Decentralized identifiers, verifiable credentials, and decentralized identifier communication were discussed throughout this session as three of the most important developing standards for decentralized identity.

Decentralized Identifiers: I went through a variety of issues in this standard, including how a decentralized identifier (DID) differs from private name spaces and globally controlled registries, what it looks like, the standard components of a DID document, DID specifications, and more.

Verifiable Credentials: In this section, I discussed what verifiable credentials are, how they function, as well as characteristics and benefits such as extensive expressive capacity and a vast array of potential applications.

Decentralized Identifier Communication: It is also known as DIDComm Messaging, and inside it, we are able to have peer-to-peer ownership of the social graph commons. During our presentation on this protocol for decentralized identification, I went through its viability and several uses, in addition to the mechanism behind it.

To that aim, I also discussed ways in which we might integrate many of the aforementioned open standards. In addition, two more standard ideas, the “personal data store” and “object capabilities,” have been offered in the conclusion.

Here is the link to the complete video:

https://archive.org/details/25-15-45_-_decentralized_identity_open_standards.qt

Forbes Quotes me on Social Media’s Future considering Safety & Identity

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I was cited in an article that was published in Forbes. The article was part of a series that was assessing the activities of 2022 on Twitter, the crazy policies of a new CEO, and the ramifications on the future of social media.

The article’s central emphasis was on the question of whether or not, in the near future of social media, users can feel secure while maintaining their individual identities.

I was quoted in the following lines as part of a discussion on the pros and cons of maintaining anonymity and pseudonymity online:

“Kaliya Young, Identity Woman, recalls an incident with Kathy Sierra, a female blogger and game developer, who in 2007, experienced death threats online and finally gave up her tech career, withdrew from the blogosphere and from online life. Following that incident there were calls to create blogger codes of conduct to stop this online violence against women.”

“’Look, if the first bad instances of online violence against women were treated seriously and the perpetrators that were not known were held to account then we would be in a different place [today]. They were not.’ Weeve, the pseudonym, of the hacker and self-described neo-Nazi and white supremacist responsible for posting false information about Sierra, had gone unpunished. As per Young, ‘He should have gone to prison for that. I was at the conference when they got up and said Kathy isn’t here because of death threats! It affected my life as a woman working in technology. Instead, he was left alone and went on to commit more acts of terrorism.’”

About the other side, you may find me in the following lines, where I’m contributing to a discussion regarding the importance of transparency and verification:

“Young stresses that it will take ‘time, rigour, investment and a proportionate approach’ to see the payoff. She points out that there is also a middle ground and it’s possible to implement speed bumps to make it less appealing for bad actors to exploit a poorly designed platform. ‘Designing a social media platform with possible consequences including, but not limited to privacy and security risks in mind (like One Dot Everyone, a consequence scanning tool), can improve the design while exploring alternatives to identity verification. Privacy Impact Assessments and Human Rights Impact Assessments will also go a long way to mitigate risks.’”

“Young questions the process for verification. Who will decide a person is who they say they are? Given her work in the Identity space, development of a trust framework should be leveraged to deal with the complexities of identity verification. But it continues to call into question what individuals or groups are responsible for defining the rules for verification?”

“Young professes that Identity has its place online but argues that the systems including the governance layers need to be in sync. ‘So men like Galloway and Haidt can go on about this ‘real name’ stuff all they want. Until the systems they built actually work as claimed and that men who use their real names and are known will be held to account, then what business do they have suggesting that?’”

Now, the purpose of this section is to provide a response to the following question: will technology save us? In the passage that follows, I am referenced as follows:

“Social media accounts have been around for a long time and Young makes clear they are, for the most part, run and managed by real people, attached to other real identities online that have more credibility: I think that analog is the new digital – meaning people will seek out and connect and value time with each other in person.”

Lastly, I am cited in the following lines on the remark that identity verification on social networks does not compute or make sense:

“As per Young, identity needs careful and thoughtful consideration:

There is a difference between the platform knowing who someone is and the whole world knowing the same. Who is enforcing what type of ID? Like Doctor, Young signals the marginalized, and those who have been suffering the abuse on the platform for over a decade. The rules for verification need to incorporate the varying definitions of identity that include cultural, general and local perspectives.”

You can read the full article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hessiejones/2023/01/04/will-the-future-of-social-media-mean-the-coexistence-of-safety-and-identity/?sh=5851ac587fba

Quoted in IEEE article about Worldcoin and their shift to Digital ID.

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I was asked to offer my perspective on the risks associated with the biometric data of Worldcoin, which was included in an article Spectrum IEEE published.

A crypto currency, Worldcoin, aspires to become the most globally and uniformly distributed cryptocurrency ever by allocating the same modest number of coins to every individual on Planet. The business has spent the last year creating a system that allows other parties to utilize its vast registration of “unique humans” for various identity-focused applications.

However, Worldcoin’s biometrics-focused approach is being greeted with widespread concerns regarding privacy, security, and transparency.

Here is the section of the article where I was mentioned about the possible risks posed by Worldcoin’s biometric data.

“It’s also questionable how useful the concept of ‘unique humanness’ really is outside of niche cryptocentric applications, says Kaliya Young, an identity researcher and activist. Identity plays a broader role in everyday life, she says: ‘I care what your university degrees are, where you were born, how much money you make, all sorts of attributes that PoP doesn’t solve for.'”

Another one:

“Worldcoin’s biggest challenge may not be the functionality of its technology but questions of trust. The central goal of blockchains is to avoid relying on centralized authorities, but by using complex, custom hardware to recruit users, the company is setting itself up as a powerful arbiter of digital identity. ‘Worldcoin posits that everyone in the world should have their eyeball scanned by them and they should be the decider of who’s a unique human,” says Young. ‘Please explain to me how that’s not ultracentralized.‘”

You may read the complete article by clicking on the following link: https://spectrum.ieee.org/worldcoin

The Future of You Podcast with Tracey Follows

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I was invited to discuss self-sovereign identity on Episode 7 of The Future of You Podcast with the host, Tracey Follows, and a fellow guest, Lucy Yang.

On this podcast, we discussed digital wallets, verifiable credentials, digital identity, anonymity and self-sovereignty.

  • Why digital identity is so important and how it differs from the physical realm
  • Tools currently in development to enable self-sovereign identities
  • Whether anonymity or pseudonymity is feasible while maintaining accountability
  • How digital wallets might evolve and consolidate across the public and private sector
  • The principles of physical identity that must carry over into a digital solution and the importance of Open Standards

Listen online: https://bit.ly/3w1cxbu

Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3vIB9qK

Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/3w3fqbN

Listen on Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3w0hWQ1

Listen on Amazon Podcasts: https://amzn.to/3KBBC29

Media Mention: MIT Technology Review

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I was quoted in the article in MIT Technology Review on April 6, 2022, “Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users.”

Worldcoin, a startup built on a promise of a fairly-distributed, cryptocurrency-based universal basic income, is building a biometric database by collecting data from the financially disadvantaged in the developing nations, in exchange for cash incentives.

Below is the paragraph which I am quoted in, with regards to Worldcoin’s business.

Others remain unconvinced that Worldcoin can actually reach everyone in the world—and instead, serves as a distraction from ongoing work to create new identity paradigms. Identity expert Kaliya Young, while declining to comment on Worldcoin specifically, says that “it’s common for companies to claim that ‘if everyone in the world was in our system, everything would be fine.’ Newsflash: everybody is not going to be in your system, so let’s move on and talk about how we solve problems” in online identity.

You can read the entire article by following this link, https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/

Exploring Social Technologies for Democracy with Kaliya Young, Heidi Nobuntu Saul, Tom Atlee

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We see democracy as ideally a process of co-creating the conditions of our shared lives, solving our collective problems, and learning about life from and with each other.

Most of the social technologies for democracy we work with are grounded in conversation – discussion, dialogue, deliberation, choice-creating, negotiation, collective visioning, and various forms of council, assembly, conference, and so on.

Democratic technologies, thought of and used in this way, can be applied in creative new ways that enable people to become more engaged with each other, with better results and less wasted, counter-productive energy, thus moving towards more successful, enjoyable self-governance. They operate at a variety of scales from small groups, organizations, and networks to whole societies.

RxC Live Talk – September 2021

Techsequences Podcast: Self-Sovereign Identity

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I chatted with Alexa Raad and Leslie Daigle of Techsequences about self-sovereign identity: what identity is and how we’ve lost control of our own identity in today’s world.

Click on the link below to listen.

https://www.techsequences.org/podcasts/?powerpress_pinw=252-podcast

“Who are you?”. Answering that may seem at once easy and yet incredibly complex.  In the real world, we are born with, gain or develop aspects of our identity.  But distinguishing who is who is a lot more complex online.  Multiple entities assign IDs and keep track of our activities. Identity models have evolved from the traditional or siloed model to the federated models.  The common denominator however is that you are not in control of your identity. Join us for a conversation with Kaliyah Young, expert in self-sovereign identity, on how we as individuals can gain control over what is uniquely ours: our identity.

Is it all change for identity?

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Opening Plenary EEMA’s Information Security Solutions Europe Keynote Panel

Last week while I was at Phocuswright I also had the pleasure of being on the Keynote Panel at EEMA‘s Information Security Solutions Europe [ISSE] virtual event. We had a great conversation talking about the emerging landscape around eIDAS and the recent announcement that the EU will work on a digital wallet and open standards for Europe.

Here is a link to the video if the embed isn’t working.

ISSE Opening Plenary

Cohere: Podcast

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I had the pleasure of talking with Bill Johnston who I met many years ago via Forum One and their online community work. It was fun to chat again and to share for the community management audience some of the latest thinking on Self-Sovereign Identity.

Click on the image to get to episode

Kaliya Young is many things: an advocate for open Internet identity standards, a leader in the identity space – including hosting the Internet Identity Workshop, a published author, and a skilled Open Space facilitator.

On this episode of the Cohere podcast, Kaliya joins Bill to discuss the history of online identity, what events led us to the consolidation of identity into a few centralized platforms, and what steps we need to take to recover and protect our online identities.

Podcast: Identikit with Michelle Dennedy

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Click on the Image to get to the podcast

For the opening episode of ‘Identikit Sequent X’, Michelle Dennedy welcomes Kaliya Young, also known as The Identity Woman, to Smarter Markets for our latest series examining the evolution of digital identity, and how self-sovereign identity, specifically, can advance a consent-based economy.

Kaliya is one of the world’s leading experts in self-sovereign identity and identity on the blockchain. She is the co-author of ‘A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity’ and is widely known as The Identity Woman; also the name of her blog and twitter handle. Ms. Young has committed her life to the development of an open standards-based internet layer that empowers and enables the people and was named one of the most influential women in tech by Fast Company Magazine.

Navigating Digital Identity in Political Economies RxC Talk.

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We had a great conversation about digital identity in Political Economies and specifically a paper with a proposal by Bryan Ford.

Life on Intersections: Digital Identity in Political Economies

Most digital identity systems are centralized (e.g., in big government or technology organizations) or individualistic (e.g., in most blockchain projects). However, being in the world is fundamentally social and intersectional — we are all part of networks. So how might we formalize digital identity in a way that better reflects this complex reality? This panel with leading social technology and computer researchers explores more robust digital identity approaches and potential application areas in political economies.

Defining Self-Sovereign Identity: Coding Over Cocktails Podcast

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Are you in charge of your own digital identity? How do you share “verifiable” information about yourself on the internet?

Defining Self-Sovereign Identity with Kaliya Young: Coding Over Cocktails Podcast

I had the opportunity to discuss digital identity with Kevin Montalbo and David Brown, two co-hosts of the Coding Over Cocktails Podcast. The topics we covered were: the different domains of identity, how our identities are currently held and managed by corporations, civil society, and governments, and why we should advocate for the rights of our digital selves.

You can listen to the entire podcast and read the transcript of the show by clicking on the link below!

https://www.torocloud.com/podcast/digital-identities-kaliya-young

Also, you can watch the short “preview” of the show on YouTube.

Quoted In: Everything You Need to Know About “Vaccine Passports”

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Earlier this week I spoke to Molly who wrote this article about so called “vaccine passports” we don’t call them that though (Only government’s issue passports). Digital Vaccination Certificates would be more accurate.

Early on when the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative was founded I joined to help. In December the initiative joined LFPH and I become the Ecosystems Director working to support the community along with my colleagues Lucy Yang the Community Director and John Walker as the Community Architect.

Quoted in NYT

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I was quoted in this article about Tim Berner’s Lee and the Solid Project.

….“No one will argue with the direction,” said Liam Broza, a founder of LifeScope, an open-source data project. “He’s on the right side of history. But is what he’s doing really going to work?”

Others say the Solid-Inrupt technology is only part of the answer. “There is lots of work outside Tim Berners-Lee’s project that will be vital to the vision,” said Kaliya Young, co-chair of the Internet Identity Workshop, whose members focus on digital identity.