This past weekend I finally got onto a bunch of mailing lists for NSTIC including the governance one. (you can too)
It is a generally accepted best practice that governance systems should be developed by the communities that need to live by them. With NSTIC the stakeholders were handed a charter and bylaws created (primarily driven by the vision of one guy) in the NSTIC National Program Office. They kept saying “there is consens” around the charter and bylaws…but there wasn’t they were sort of thrust upon us and not developed by us. We chose to accept them for now and are now in the process of re-visiting the bylaws handed to us and we agreed to for a short period to get things going.
The draft by-laws include a privacy standing committee that has veto power over the outcomes of Identity Ecosystem Steering Group.
[Read more…] about NSTIC Governance….Privacy Interests
Big Ideas
Kaliya for Mayor!…nope NSTIC
Update August 18th:
Thank you to all the people and organizations who vote for me in the NSTIC election – I WON! . I ran with my association to Planetwork and I am the Consumer and Citizen Advocate delegate for the next 6 months on the Management Council of the Steering Committee of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. You can learn more about my candidacy and the election on this post. You can track the group/community progress at IDEcosystem.org.
I will be working hard with the AARP to grow the number of citizen and consumer advocate groups who are participating in the NSTIC process.
Original Post:
I’m Running for Mayor NSTIC!
Learn how to vote for me and get involved at Kaliya for Mayor .org
Here is the video!
[Read more…] about Kaliya for Mayor!…nope NSTIC
It's NSTIC election time!
So it’s NSTIC election time!
I’m running for the Consumer (And Citizen) Advocacy delegate position on the Management Council of the Steering Committee for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace! Learn how to vote for me and get involved at KaliyaForMayor.org and see my campaign video.
[Read more…] about It's NSTIC election time!
Real Names vs Nyms at Quora & Unconferences
I am again in a #nymwar [wikipedia & Botgirl’s Scoop.it] situation that I actually care about. I have been denied full participation in Quora for a long long time now because my last name was listed as IdentityWoman (ironically my answer to why having control over your identity and personal data online matters did go through but then was put into suspension when they insisted on changing my name to a WASPonym).
Now there is a thread all about an unconfernece for women of Quora and they have mentioned both Unconference.net my business and She’s Geeky that I founded in the threads. I for this one important conversation bow to the “feudal lord” of Quora as their humble “content producing servent” share my so-called real name…and help them have a good unconference and raise the issues of real name requirements within the context of real human beings who engage with the site all the time and hopefully staff as well. Until we have the freedom to choose our names for public interactions on the web – to define our own identities based on our context and how we wish to appear where – we do not live in a free society.
Before they “banned” me for having the wrong color skin name. I got to write an eloquent to this question (posted below since it isn’t on their site).
Why does owning one’s own online identity and personal data matter?
and was voted to the top (with 5 votes) by others…but now that answer isn’t there cause I didn’t use my real name.
So now you can’t see it…this is akin to not letting me sit somewhere in a public space because the color of my skin is the wrong one OR I happen to sit in a wheel chair to get around and there isn’t room in our restaurant and they are in violation of American’s with Disabilities Act.
The women of Quora are talking about organizing an unconfernece and found two of my organizations/sites and are enthusiastic about them. I am totally unable to talk to them about their ideas or my sites unless I pass their “real names” test….you know like a pole tax … that Bob and I talked about in our Cloud Identity Summit closing Keynote about Identification and Social Justice (slides and videos will be online soon).
My answer to:
Why does owning one’s own online identity and personal data matter?
We own our own bodies – we have freedom and autonomy to move around the physical world. We have rights and freedoms; If our physical lives are terminated there are consequences.
In the digital world many people are not the primary “owner” of their own identity (in digital space the equivalent of a physical body is a persistent identifier like an e-mail address or a URL or phone number). Most people’s identity on the web is “under” terms and conditions of a private company and they can terminate people’s accounts, their identities, without recourse.
Many companies with which people have their identities “under” choose to in exchange for providing identity provisioning services and things like e-mail. They also track and aggregate user’s activities on their services and across the web via cookies and other beacons. This profile of activity has real value and is being used by the companies to profile them and then sell abstract versions of the profile information on ad exchanges.
Some have said we live in an age of digital feudalism, where we are serfs on the lords’ manors (the large web portals).
Having the freedom and autonomy to choose who we are online and how we express ourselves is important to ensuring a free society with rights and liberty.
Adding some more: About one’s social graph… The links in your social graph in the current architecture of the web exist within particular contexts – you have friends in Facebook or Followers on Twitter or Professional Contacts on LinkedIN. Those links, those connections in a “social graph” are ulitmately owned by the company within which you made those links. If you choose to leave any one of those networks – all your links to those people are terminated.
This is an architecture of control. You are locked into those systems if you don’t want to loose the links to others in them. To own your own identity would be to have an identity that would give you the freedom to not loose the links to your contacts, they would be peer to peer autonomous of any particular service.
The next time there is a major social revolution like in Egypt governments are not going to try and turn of the internet or mobile phone system it is likely they will simply call facebook ans ask them to terminate the accounts of dissidents.
Your Identity/Your Data: What do women want?
I presented to SDForum Tech Women’s group about Identity and Personal Data. I presented and also got input from the women attending about how they understood their own identities and what they want to have happen with their personal data.
Info Sharing Agreements! Support it! Make it Real!
Joe Andrieu and the Information Sharing Working Group has put a lot of work and effort into creating a Standard set of Information Sharing Agreements represented by a standard label. They want to invest in user -research to make it really work.
I am putting in $100 and I encourage all of you to do the same. They need to raise $12000 in the next 8 days.
See the Kickstarter Campaign here.
TEDxConstitution Drive: The Identity Spectrum
As part of Tedx series focused on Identity, I gave a talk on “The Need for Limited Liability Personas.”
UnMoney & NewWallSt
March 11th.
TEDx New Wall St.
re-imagining banking re-built for the Information Age in Silicon Valley on a New Wall Street, as described in the attached press release, and here http://.www.TEDxNewWallStreet.org
April 24th.
UnMoney Convergence
Fosters dialogue and collaboration among the range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems and to explore connections with issues of land and property tenure. In addition to topics on alternatives to the current currency systems, we invite all who are looking at new ways to look at land tenancy and stewardship, hard currency versus energy, time and food based currencies. We are looking for synergies between folks who see the need for more grounded, materially based economics and those looking at the spiritual, energetic and values based approaches.
Register here!
Website here (might be new in a few days).
Speaking at RSA on a panel about NSTIC.
Kaliya “Identity Woman” Hamlin, Executive Director of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consoritum is speaking on a panel at RSA about NSTIC.
It is moderated by Jeremy Grant the head of teh NSTIC Program Office and includes fellow panelists Michael Barrett from PayPal, Jim Dempsey from the Center for Democracy and Technology and Craig Spiezle fromt eh Online Trust Alliance.
On being an accidental NSTIC Pilot Yenta
The first person who I heard calling herself a Yenta was Deborah Elizabeth Finn who I met via my participation in the Nonprofit Technology world and the NTEN community. She is “the Cyber Yenta” helping nonprofit folks figure out their technology needs and match making. Yenta is a Yiddish word for a woman who is doing mate matchmaking.
[Read more…] about On being an accidental NSTIC Pilot Yenta
The new Google+ Names process
Today people were tweeting/writing about the new google+ names policies. Well. I just went through it and it involves many screens and an appeal into the Kafkaesqe googleplex that takes up to 3 days before they approve your name request. I think they should to this to EVERY user cause how do I know your name “is” David Smith…it just doesn’t trigger their dictionaries prompting inquiry into the legitimacy of your name…Ok but I digress…lets see how this works.
First you are discouraged from changing your name and limited to the frequency you can do so. You have to click “change name” to do anything.
[Read more…] about The new Google+ Names process
Recent Activity Pt 4: Europe Week 1
Week one in Europe was busy. The day I arrived Esther picked me up and we headed to Qiy’s offices where i got to run into John Harrison who I last saw a year ago at IIW Europe. He is organizing a consortium to go in for FP-7 money (80 million) put out for projects around Identity in the European Union.
Wednesday was Nov 9th Identity.Next convened by Robert was great bringing people together from across Europe. 1/2 the day was a regular conference and 1/2 the day was an UnConference that I helped facilitate. I ran a session about personal data and we had a good conversation. I also learned about a German effort that seemed promising – Pidder – their preso in The Hague
November 10th I headed to London for New Digital Economics EMEA along with Maarten from Qiy. It was fantastic to be on stage with 5 different start-up projects all doing Personal Data along with one big one 🙂
- William Heath, Founder & Chairman, Mydex
- John Harrison, Personal Information Brokerage
- Marcel Van Galen, CEO/Founder, QIY
- Luk Vervenne, CEO, Synergetics
- Herve Le Jouan, CEO, Privowny
- Richard Benjamins, Director of User Modeling, Telefonica Digital
It was clear that the energy in the whole space had shifted beyond the theoretical and the response from the audience was positive. I shared the landscape map we have been working on to explain elements of the overall ecosystem.
Digital Death Day was November 11th in Amsterdam was small but really good with myself, Stacie and Tamara organizing. We had a small group that included a Funeral Director a whole group form Ziggur. We were sponsored by the company formerly know as DataInherit – they changed their name to SecureSafe. Given that Amsterdam is closer then California to Switzerland we were hopping they would make it given their ongoing support…alas not this year.
One of the key things to come out of the event was an effort to unite the technology companies working on solutions in this area around work to put forward the idea of a special OAuth token for their kind of services perhaps also with a “Trust Framework” that could use the OIX infrastructure.
It as also inspiring to have two two young developers attend.
- Leif Ekas travelled from Norway – I had met him this summer in Boston when he was attending summer school at BU and working on his startup around aspects of digital death.
- Sebastian Hagens – Sebastix
It made me wish Markus had made it there from Vienna.
When I was at TEDx Brussels I was approached by another young developer Tim De Conick well more accurately visionary who got some amazing code written – WriteID.
Given the energy last summer at the Federated Social Web Summit and these new efforts that could all be connected together/interoperable. I think there is critical mass for a developer / hacker week for Personal Data in Europe this Spring Summer and I am keen to help organize it.
Recent Activity Pt 2: Canada & Boston
Immediately following IIW (post here). I headed to Canada to speak at the International Women in Digital Media Summit.
The iWDMS brings together professionals from traditional and digital media communities, as well as educational/research institutions from around the world. With high level keynotes, cross-sector dialogue, expert panelists, controversial debates and structured networking, the Summit will promote knowledge-sharing, and will explore innovation, skills gaps, policy and research in digital media–including gaming, mobile, and social media–and the impacts on and advancements by women globally.
I gave an “Ideas and Inspiration” talk for 20 min about the Personal Data Ecosystem called The Old Cookies are Crumbling: How Context & Persona aware personal data servcies change everything and will transform the world and was also on a panel about New Media Literacies.
There are a few things I took away from this event:
1) Countries like Canada are very small with just 30 million people and the center of commercial/intellectual life in Toronto an event like this really brings together a core group of high profile women in the media production business that represents much of the industry.
2) Both the government of Canada, provinces like Ontario and universities like Ryerson are very serious about attracting and retaining top technology and media talent with a variety of tax and investment incentives.
3) See point (1) because of that …one must think internationally about appeal and distribution of any media across the whole world not just one market.
4) The way they talk about diversity used lang had language I never heard before the term “designated groups” included folks with disabilities, first nations people (in the US they would be “American Indians”), women, and ethnic minorities.
5) The idea that people shouldn’t be stalked around the web to “monetize” them was new and provoked some thinking amongst those who made their living developing metrics.
It was great to connect to Canada again and I hope that with the IIW coming up in Toronto in February some of the women who I met there can attend and consider how media can change with new tools for people to manage their identity and data.
I got to meet up with Aran Hamilton (@Aranh) who coordinated efforts around the NSTIC of Canada in Toronto. We outlined the possibility of a Satellite IIW in Toronto and I learned more about what is going on there. Basically up to point (1) above…Canada is small. 95% of people have a bank account and of that something like 85% have accounts with one of 5 banks (Bank of Montreal, Toronto Dominion Bank/Canada Trust, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotia Bank) and there are 3 telco’s. So it seems like getting an NSTIC like system in place in Canada could involves meetings with a few dozen people. They have the added advantage that Canadians have a higher trust in their government and institutions like banks and telco’s and have fewer “privacy rights” organizations. So our IIW should be interesting and I hope that we can get some good cross over between the January 17th event in DC and this one.
After Toronto headed to the 4th MassTLC Innovation Unconference. It was great to be joined by Briana Cavanaugh who is working with me now at UnConference.net. The community was thriving and it was the biggest ever unconference that I have run at 800 people and lots of sessions. Jason Calacanis who apparently has relocated to Boston was there. Jeff Taylor was there and had a rocking “un-official” after party that he DJ’ed. The most notable costume was a guy in a suit with a 99% on his forehead. Yes Occupy Wall Street became a halloween costume.
Recent Travels Pt1: IIW
IIW is always a whirlwind and this one was no exception. The good thing was that even with it being the biggest one yet it was the most organized with the most team members. Phil and I were the executive producers. Doc played is leadership role. Heidi did an amazing job with production coordinating the catering, working with the museum and Kas did a fabulous job leading the notes collection effort and Emma who works of site got things up on the wiki in good order.
We had a session that highlighted all the different standards bodies standards and we are now working on getting the list annotated and plan to maintain it on the Identity Commons wiki that Jamie Clark so aptly called “the switzerland” of identity.
We have a Satellite event for sure in DC January 17th – Registration is Live.
We are working on pulling one together in Toronto Canada in
early February, and Australia in Late March.
ID Collaboration Day is February 27th in SF (we are still Venue hunting).
I am learning that some wonder why I have such strong opinions about standards…the reason being they define the landscape of possibility for any given protocol. When we talk about standards for identity we end up defining how people can express themselves in digital networks and getting it right and making the range of possibility very broad is kinda important. If you are interested in reading more about this I recommend Protocol: and The Exploit. This quote from Bruce Sterling relative to emerging AR [Augmented Reality] Standards.
If Code is Law then Standards are like the Senate.
Identity in the Contexts of the Future OR Participatory Totalitarianism
This is the latest from Google in their “names policy”
We understand that your identity on Google+ is important to you, and our Name Policy may not be for everyone at this time.
Kinda sounds like the owners of stores in the south who said their stores were not for everyone especially black people who didn’t have skin color they liked. It is a fundamentally discriminatory policy. If we don’t have the freedom to choose our own names in digital space and the freedom to maintain different identifiers across different social spaces we will end up in a very creepy world…Here is my TEDxBrussels talk.
[Read more…] about Identity in the Contexts of the Future OR Participatory Totalitarianism
The Nymwars and what they mean: summary of my posts to date.
Update: Google relented a bit, however I am still waiting to see if my name of choice was approved. You can read about the process I had to go through here. The New Google Names Process
—————–
For those of you coming from the Mercury News story on the NymWars exploding…
I STILL have my Google+ profile suspended for using a [ . ] as my last name. Prior to that I had “Identity Woman” as my last name and prior to that… before I ever got a G+ profile and since I started using Gmail and Google Profiles I had a [ * ]as my last name. [see the complete list of posts about this whole saga below]
It is my right to choose my own name online and how I express it. Names and identities are socially constructed AND contextual… and without the freedom to choose our own names, and the freedom to have different names (and identifiers) across different contexts we will end up with a social reality that I don’t want to live in: Participatory Totalitarianism.
[Read more…] about The Nymwars and what they mean: summary of my posts to date.
Personal – a personal data service is LIVE!
It is a big day 11-11-11 for many reasons. One is that Personal emerged out of closed beta. Yeah! When I first met and talked with Shane Green, I was so excited because I met a kindred spirit who shared core beliefs with the community around IIW (user-centric identity, VRM etc). I knew after spending 5 hours in 2 days talking to him that with his experience, personal leadership, and the funding they had already secured (from Steve Case and others) that they were going to make a big splash when it finally launched.
As a bonus, the whole topic of Personal Data got coverage in AdAge yesterday mentioning both Personal and Reputation.com in an article:
Why Your Personal Data Is The New Oil
I think the biggest thing Personal has going for it its focus on design and usability. Wire protocols (the technical bits of moving data and formatting it) are easy compared to how people can easily understand, interact with and manipulate the vast range of personal data they have, that is information which is personal TO them – not their tweets and photos that they proactively share, but all the “stuff” they should have a record of somewhere. Their car serial number, passport number, codes to garage doors for baby sitters and the kids allergies that need to be shared with playdates, school and the soccer team.
They are using OAuth, a key open standard, in their connectors linking information you have at one site to your personal vault in their store.
It is pretty simple when you get started.
1) You can add empty gems and fill them out.
2) You can share them with others… and also revoke permissions.
Anyone who sees a gem you have given access to has to agree to your “control” of the data and that when it is revoked they don’t keep a copy of it. They also can’t share it with others without your permission (you would give that other party access to your gem if you wanted to share with them).
3) You can look for gems that have already been created by others about things they own or preferences/needs they have.
4) And get the mobile app.
Now that they have launched, I am going to dive in and start playing with gems and sharing relevant ones with friends and colleagues.
Other key items to note are the coming anonymity features they are planning on rolling out.
We believe strongly in your right to remain anonymous when you choose. At present, we only support remaining anonymous when publishing community gems, but will be rolling out new anonymity features in the very near future.
Web Wide Sentence Level Annotation -> Hypothes.is
I first met Dan Whaley last spring via an introduction from Jim Fournier co-founder of Planetwork. I was inspired by the vision he was working on building Hypothes.is – a way to have sentence level annotation of news and other articles on a web wide scale. Really a foundation for peer review on the web. The motivation for his work is to support greater discernment of the truth around climate change and other key issues facing our society and our planet. (Another area I could see this being really useful right now is around accountability in the financial system and ways to make that real.)
He asked me to be a part of the project as an advisor particularly around identity issues and technology options for identity. He is taking my advice and coming to IIW this coming week. Its an honor to be amongst other distinguished advisors like Brewster Kahle, John Perry Barlow, Mark Surman and others..
He has been working on a development plan and has a solid on one in place. He has launched a Kickstarter Campaign and stars in the video that articulates the vision of the project. If you are inspired by the vision I encourage you to contribute.
Open Letter to Google+ Profile Support
On Sep 19, 2011, at 11:25 AM, Google Profiles Support wrote:
Hi,
Thank you for contacting us with regard to our review of the name you are trying to use in your Google Profile. After review of your appeal, we have determined that the name you want to use violates our Community Standards.
I am curious what community developed the standards? If there really is a community behind them, where can one engage in dialogue about them and have one’s needs addressed.
Please avoid the use of any unusual characters. For example, numbers,symbols, or obscure punctuation might not be allowed.
(.)’s for last names are permitted for mononym people. I am making this choice.
If you search my name “Kaliya” in Google, I am 1/2 of the links, the other 1/2 are for the Hindu mythical figure that happens to share my name.
It is my name. I claim name sovereignty.
Most users choose to use their first and last names in the common name field in order to avoid any future name violation issues.
I am not “most users”. I am unique individual with my own name.
How can a name be in violation? What is a “name violation issue” anyways? Who says?
I feel violated by this experience because I do not want to use my (soon to be ex-) husband’s (who I’ve been separated from for 3 years) last name, Hamlin, as the headline on MY profile. I am fine listing it in the “other name” field – it is an “other name” to me.
I do not want to use my old last name, Young, last used in 2004 before my professional career began. I am also fine listing this the “other name” field as some who knew me before this date will be able to find me this way. Again, it is not appropriate for the headline on my profile.
I was fine using my professional handle/title “Identity Woman” as my last name for the headline of my profile but this was rejected by your acceptable name algorithms for having a space in it and being words not commonly in last names.
I actually do often list “Identity Woman” as my last name when I attend conferences so it is on my badge prominently on my badge because my current last name (my ex-husband’s name) isn’t relevant. My Identity Woman professional handle IS relevant to the context, being at a professional conference so I choose to use it as my last name.
I decided when I began using Google+ that I would present and put forward information relevant to and related to my work persona Identity Woman and I am sticking with this persona in this context. My Gmail address is after all identitywoman@gmail.com.
Last week I went back to what I had before we began this name silliness back and forth a symbol in my last name field on my Google profile for the last 4 years. I have gone ahead and listed other names as “Hamlin, Young, Identity Woman”. You are refusing this option. This seems like the best compromise position all around. A win-win.
So I am not really sure where to go with this. Is there a human being I can talk to? How do I actually move through this process. Continuing to interact with faceless, first name only people in e-mail and via ever changing rejection notes on my profile is not working for me.
You can review our name guidelines at http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271
If you edit your name to comply with our policies in the future, please respond to this email so that we can re-review your profile.
I am not editing my profile. I want to talk with a human being to resolve this or alternatively we can a committee meeting with your team at Google.
This feels like I am being put on trial for my choice of name.
It feels dehumanizing and unjust. I expect better from a company like Google.
Regards,
-Kaliya
Sincerely,
Bennett
The Google Profiles Support Team
ps. What is your real name? I am curious to know more about you by looking you up on the internet and then maybe will have a better idea about how to persuade you to let my name be.
Getting Started with Identity
Welcome to the Identity Woman Blog
I am an advocate for the rights and dignity of our digital selves.
Where I am in the World
Latest Media & Papers
Posts about Identity & NSTIC
Organizations and Events I share leadership in
Click more to see below the line and find out all this.
[Read more…] about Getting Started with Identity
Potential Future: Google-Zon
With the nymwars unfolding (Nym = Pseudonym , Anonymous and other varities on this theme) this video of the Google-Zon story in the year 2014 seems more prescient then ever.
Please watch the video on the Original Site the way it was done is amazing.
EPIC in this video stands for the Electronic Personalized Information Construct
The computer writes a new story for every user (sound like the Filter Bubble?) everyone contributes and in exchange gets a cut of the revenue…
We stand for the exact oposite vision at the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium where people have control over their own data and manage the rights to access it and shape things.