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Personal Data

Media Mention: MIT Technology Review

Kaliya Young · April 7, 2022 ·

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/

Exciting SSI announcement was not well received by some

Kaliya Young · December 17, 2018 ·

The Microsoft-Mastercard SSI alliance is great news, but some thought it was a bad thing.

By all accounts, Fast Company’s Cale Guthry Weissman is a good reporter who knows his audience. Informed that Microsoft and Mastercard were partnering to create a new kind of digital identity, he went to get some answers, assessed the situation, and wrote an article that called the alliance “frightening”

But the solution they offer–a one-stop, universal identification for any and all applications–would mean that every citizen would be entering into a system built by private companies that centralizes all of their personal data. Every digital company wants to be a data hoover, and this program seems to underscore the extent of this pursuit.
[…]
Overall, this announcement speaks to a common tone-deafness among large companies when it comes to privacy. While proving digital identity can certainly be onerous, some solutions may only imperil us even more.

  • Microsoft and Mastercard have a frightening plan to create “digital identities”, Fast Company 12/04/18

Weissman can be forgiven for such a sentiment; tech companies have a well earned reputation for turning their users into unwitting laborers  on data farms. But it should be noted that Mastercard isn’t “a tech company”. When Weissman reached the global credit card company for comment they explained their bold new venture with excitement, emphasising that they’re going to use trusted sources to give control to the user, who will “share only the information needed to conduct their transactions,” but it didn’t really seem to take. They came off like someone who walked into a party wearing a set of Google Glass, then tried to use the uncomfortable pause that it created to explain how his dork goggles weren’t just a mass surveillance tool, they were also going to change the world! The spokesman would have done better to explain that SSI applications are explicitly NOT “centralized” as Weissman came away understanding, but they appear to have got a bit carried away.

“The next update will let me see into your soul, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

It seems like a good solution because it is a good solution, but Mastercard won’t be able to sell it themselves

We have no reason to doubt that Mastercard’s excitement is earnest. Credit card companies live the third-party verification problem every day, because they’re third party verifiers. Mastercard sees ease-of-use and fraud prevention savings in this project that are meaningful, and are excited about being able to achieve them without having to handle customer data. They’re telling their merchants and cardholders: “Look! You’re going to FINALLY have control of your own verification process! No more 2 pieces of ID with a credit card, and we don’t even have to hand the process over to a data-harvesting behemoth to get it done! (You just know Facebook or Amazon would have underbid anyone to get their hands on card verification contract, and for all the wrong reasons.) But Fast Company isn’t inclined to take them at their word. After all, they are partnering with Microsoft, who would surely know what to do with a bunch of cardholder and merchant data.
Microsoft, for their part, declined comment, which is interesting since they have so many good people working on this project who could comment eloquently including Daniel Buchner, Pamela Dingle and Kim Cameron among others. Perhaps from the PR department the silence is born of experience. Microsoft is the butt of the funniest tech jokes, and is aware of the shadow they cast. There isn’t anything they say to the general public to convince them that an identity play they’re making isn’t just another way to sink their tentacles into their users a bit further. The process knowledge just isn’t out there. Best say nothing until it’s ready.

Microsoft have good reasons to be this helpful.

The Microsoft that dominated the 90s and early oughts got their lunch eaten by Google, Facebook and Amazon, who cornered users into a Faustian bargain that they didn’t even know they were making. Microsoft’s unbreakable hold on the enterprise software market financed attempts to compete in the data and advertising realm, but it’s clear by now that beating data harvesters at their own game isn’t in the company’s DNA. This identity play may be Microsoft doing the next best thing: taking them out at the knees by giving the data control back to the customers.
Facebook is able to give access Cambridge Analytica and others access to user data by virtue of the fact that they have it. They could (and still do) broker access to users via their data, because they have ongoing user consent. If the user revokes that consent, nobody is checking if they’re honouring that revocation.
But they can’t sell what they don’t have. A user-centred permissions system would allow individuals to give Twitch streaming access to their X-Box ONE account, or not. LinkedIN could offer seamless work history verification, which would allow for an easy transition into the corporate HR services business, handling payroll, insurance and benefits for enterprises – all newly simplified user centric verifiable credentials. There are all sorts of places Microsoft can organically grow their core software business once the framework is in place to allow users and organizations to provide and revoke data from each other… once they can get over concerns people have over how the system actually operates.
There is not yet an SSI killer app. While Microsoft would no doubt like very much to develop one, they’re probably just as happy having someone else strike the discovery vein that gets the public’s attention. Once the user base gets wise to their new-found control, a self-sovereign-ID-enabled Microsoft will be in a position to enter the 2020s as a major player in this new market place of decentralized identity and credentials under the true control of the user.
(With files from Braden Maccke. Feature image courtesy Humans Unlimited Blog.)

Rethinking Personal Data: 3 WEF reports

Kaliya Young · October 19, 2016 ·

I met Marc Davis at SXSW in 2010, we instantly clicked and began working together. He was on contract to develop pre-reading material for a WEF meeting in the fall about Personal Data. I contributed significantly to the document which became the basis of the first Rethinking Personal Data project Report, Personal Data the Emergence of a New Asset Class. [click on the image to download the report].
wef1
 
I remained actively engaged in the project and two of the Appendixes in the 2nd report were authored by me.  The MindMap of Personal Data Types and the Value Network Analysis of the Exploitive Personal Data Ecosystem (Both of these are in the My Data, My Value, 6 Sense Making Diagrams) [Click on the image to download the report PDF]
wef2
 
Diagrams that appeared in the third report I helped sketch out with Bill Hoffman. Here is the Third WEF report PDF [click on the document image].
wef3
WEF Report #3 write up on my Blog.
 

WEF Report #3: Unlocking the Value of Personal Data!

My Data, My Value: 6 Sense Making Diagrams

Kaliya Young · October 18, 2016 ·

I was invited to present in the Personal Data Track at the Cloud Identity Summit, 2016 in New Orleans.
This is the talk I gave. It also came with a two sided 11×17 sheet with all 6 diagrams (just below).

My Data, My Value: 6 Sense Making Diagrams from the Personal Data Ecosystem. from Kaliya "Identity Woman" Young

Diagrams for My Data, My Value: 6 Sense Making Diagrams from the Personal Data Ecosystem from Kaliya "Identity Woman" Young

Personal Data, My Value Six Sense Making Diagrams in the Rise of the Personal Information Economy Workshop

Kaliya Young · June 16, 2016 ·

This talk was presented at the 2016 Cloud Identity Summit. It was in the Rise of the Identity-enabled Personal Information Economy Track. It puts forward 6 Diagrams to make Sense of the overall Personal Data Ecosystem including What is Personal Data? What Happens to Personal Data? What are Market Models and how is it regulated?

My Data, My Value: 6 Sense Making Diagrams from the Personal Data Ecosystem. from Kaliya "Identity Woman" Young

Identity and Context: People and Personal Data

Kaliya Young · November 7, 2012 ·

I gave this talk for EduServe in Birmingham, UK, on November 6th, 2012.

Identity and Context : People and Personal Data from Kaliya "Identity Woman" Young

Your Identity/Your Data: What do women want?

Kaliya Young · June 29, 2012 ·

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.

ID & Data presented at SDForum TechWomen from Kaliya "Identity Woman" Young

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