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ID Topics

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

Ali · January 12, 2023 ·

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.

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/

Reality 2.0 Podcast: ID.me Vs. The Alternatives

Kaliya Young · January 31, 2022 ·

https://www.reality2cast.com/97

I chatted with Katherine Druckman and Doc Searls of Reality 2.0 about the dangers of ID.me, a national identity system created by the IRS and contracted out to one private company, and the need for the alternatives, decentralized systems with open standards. 

New America India US Public Interest Technology Fellow

Kaliya Young · August 26, 2019 ·

India and US Flag

I traveled to India in the Winter of 2019 to study their National ID System Aadhaar. This is the paper that I wrote:

Key Differences Between the U.S. Social Security System and India’s Aadhaar System (Kaliya Young)

Identity issues: Identity.Foundation vs. Decentralized.id

Kaliya Young · February 17, 2018 ·

So the the Decentralized Identity Foundation has an “identity challenge” with a project pretending to be it – with a very similar domain name and trying to do a token sale.  I have a theory that almost all legitimate projects with real people and real work going on behind them also have fake projects shadowing them.  Anyways.
Here is the REAL Decentralized Identity Foundation Website: http://identity.foundation. Its got working groups and code and a blog on medium.  Its got a whole bunch of real people and projects behind it.
They are working on supporting the emergence of an open standard called DID.
Microsoft just made an announcement about their support and product integration of these emerging open standards.
 

So the FAKE site is Decentralized.id

It looks really polished and the first page says
YOUR ID: DECENTRALIZED
The DID Foundation, Decentraling your ID over the Blockchain. Sounds good right.  Protecting Your ID, Providing Trust, Crypto-Positive. It says one should Join The Foundation – if you do you get DID Tokens!
Then creating a supply 20,000,000,000 of them. They are selling them for .ooo1 USD. They accept BTC, ETH and BCH.
So I checked out their real “address” is at a hot desking space in London.

Decentralized ID is owned by Mr. Sheikh Abdullah Naveed. HE also has a hardware consultancy Torquesol UK Ltd. He has some other companies too – Tapfer Technologies Ltd  and Fry-Wi Ltd
_____
This whole situation highlights the need to have identity verification for organizations too.  The good thing is that this is something that the British Columbia Government is working on with a project called Verifiable Organizations Network 

Is putting hashed PII on any immutable ledger(blockchain) is a bad Idea

Kaliya Young · February 3, 2018 ·

I decided to open a thread On Twitter for ID & security professionals to share why (/if) putting hashed PII on any immutable ledger(blockchain) is a bad Idea.
Not everyone agreed that it was bad if certain things were done right.
There were 15 direct responses and then a whole lot of subthreads. I have pulled out all the subthreads. All tweets are linked to. Yes…all of them. Let me know if i missed a thread and I will pull it in. Let me know if you post about this thread on your blog – I will post a link. Also I am giong ot share this with the identity gang list – you can join it here: https://lists.idcommons.net/lists/subscribe/community
Jeff Lombardo also made a summary of the conversation on his blog. https://x-iam.com/can-blockchain-solves-the-privacy-of-identity-connundrum.html
 
[Read more…] about Is putting hashed PII on any immutable ledger(blockchain) is a bad Idea

Digital Death a Matrix of Questions

Kaliya Young · October 19, 2016 ·

Digital Death Day, Privacy Identity Innovation

I was invited to give a talk at Privacy Identity and Innovation about the Digital Death and the conference that has happened a few times Digital Death Day.
I chose to lay out a matrix of questions that have arisen from the work. Enjoy the talk.

Digital Death a Matrix of Questions and Considerations from Privacy Identity Innovation on Vimeo.

We must understand the past to not repeat it

Kaliya Young · November 9, 2014 · 1 Comment

Please see the prior post and the post before about how we got to discussing this.
We can not forget that the Holocaust was enabled by the IBM corporation and its Hollerith machine.  How did this happen? What were these systems? How did they work? and particularly how did the private sector corporation IBM end up working a democratically elected government to do very horrible things to vast portions of its citizenry? These are questions we can not ignore.
In 2006 Stefan Brands gave a talk that made a huge impression on me he warned us and audience of very well meaning technologists that we had to be very careful because we could incrementally create a system that could lead to enabling a police state. It was shocking at the time but after a while the point he was making sunk in and stuck with me. He shared this quote (this slide is from a presentation he gave around the same time)
Stefan
It is the likability that is the challenge.
We have to have the right and freedom NOT to be required to use our “real name” and birthdate for everything.
This is the defacto linkable identifier that the government is trying to push out over everything so they can link everything they do together.
Stephan proposes another Fair Information Principle.
Stefan6
I will share more of Stephan’s slides because I think they are prescient for today.
Stephan’s slides talk about User-Centrism technology and ideas in digital identity – ideas that have virtually no space or “air time” in the NSTIC discussions because everything has been broken down (and I believe intentionally so) into “security” “standards” “privacy” “trust frameworks” silos that divide up the topic/subject in ways that inhibit really tackling user-centrism or how to build a working system that lives up to the IDEALS that were outlined in the NSTIC document.
I have tried and tried and tried again to speak up in the year and a half before the IDESG and the 2 years since its existence to make space for considering how we actually live up to ideals in the document.  Instead we are stuck in a looping process of non-consensus process (if we had consensus I wouldn’t be UN-consensusing on the issues I continue to raise).  The IDESG are not taking user-centrism seriously, we are not looking at how people are really going to have their rights protected – how people will use and experience these large enterprise federations.
Yes everyone that is what we are really talking about…Trust Framework is just a code word for Enterprise Federation.
I went to the TSCP conference a big defence/aerospace federation (who was given NSTIC grants to work on Trust Framework Development Guidance) where this lovely lady Iana from Deloitte who worked on the early versions of NSTIC and potential governance outlines for IDESG – she said very very clearly “Trust Frameworks ARE Enterprise Federations” and it was like – ahhh a breath of fresh clear honest air – talking about what we are really talking about.
So back to the Stephan Brands re-fresher slides on user-centric ID so we don’t forget what it is.
 
Stefan5
 

Stefan2
 
 
 
 
 
 
Stefan3
 
Stefan2
 
Look at these, take them seriously.
 

Dear IDESG, I’m sorry. I didn't call you Nazi's.

Kaliya Young · November 9, 2014 · Leave a Comment

The complaint was that I called my fellow IDESG colleagues Nazi’s. He was unsatisfied with my original statement about the tweet on our public management council mailing list. Some how this led to the Ombudsman taking on the issue and after I spoke with him in Tampa it was followed by a drawn out 5 week “investigation” by the Ombudsman before he issued a recommendation.
Then turns out after all was said and done there was never actually a formal complaint. There was the ombudsman taking action on his own. (its funny how organizations can use Ombudsman to not actually protect people with in institutions but use them as institutional forces to  push  people out who speak up and ask too many questions)
During the time I was being investigated I experienced intensive trolling about the matter on twitter itself. The trolling was done by someone obviously familiar with the situation who was upset. There were only 5 people familiar with them matter as it was ongoing through this investigation.During my own IIW conference the troll topped off the week by making implicit rape threats. This was very very disruptive and upsetting to me so much so I don’t even remember that  IIW.
Here is the tweet that I authored while pondering theories of organizational dynamics in Tampa and without any intent to cause an association in the mind of a reader with IDESG, NSTIC, nor any person or persons in particular note that I did not reference anyone with a @____ or add any signifying hashtags e.g., #idesg or #nstic in this tweeted comment. So unless you were reading everything you would never know I said it.
Tampa11
I own that the tweet was provocative but it was It was not my intent to cause harm to anybody or to the IDESG organization and wider identity community.
We can’t put documents up for community and public input and say “its 40 page document nobody has time to read” and laugh as if it is funny that the process is so bad that there is no ability for the body of the organization let alone the public to have insight. That is how not good things begin to happen no one is looking. I was trying to make a point that the meeting was being badly badly run and that poor process can lead to really bad outcomes.
I am very sorry if the tweet had an emotionally negative impact on people on the management council. I fully acknowledge that referencing anything relative to the Nazi era is triggering. It touches on our collective shame and surfaces vulnerability it is very hard to look at.
I also believe that we have to actually be prepared to do so. If we don’t examine the past we can’t be sure we will not repeat it. [Please click to see my my next post for this to be further expounded upon]
I didn’t choose to say anything along these lines because I was in the middle of a process with the Ombudsman I thought that would be honored and let to run its course.
I also didn’t feel one should feed internet trolls – one was being very aggressive and pestering me for an apology.
I think that we all need to keep in mind our roles as Directors of the IDESG when we interact with the public and with each other.
This includes hiding behind pseudonyms and aggressively trolling to get back at someone you are upset with. Which also happened – either deal with the issue in a formal process or take them out on twitter but do’t do both.
The whole process left my and my attorney puzzled. My attorney wrote a letter to the Management Council/Board of Directors with a whole bunch of questions and now that this is posted we look forward to their answers to those questions.
No one from he IDESG including the ombudsman ever responded or was concerned by the aggressive trolling and implicit rape threats on twitter by someone intimately familiar with the ongoing ombudsman process.
Abusive behavior towards women isn’t just a physical thing it is a psychological as well. I have felt unsafe in the Identity community since this incident. I am now setting it aside though and stepping forth in my full power.

Facebook so called "real names" and Drag Queens

Kaliya Young · September 25, 2014 · Leave a Comment

So, Just when we thought the Nym Wars were over at least with Google / Google+.
Here is my post about those ending including a link to an annotated version of all the posts I wrote about my personal experience of it all unfolding.
Facebook decided to pick on the Drag Queens – and a famous group of them the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  Back then I called for the people with persona’s to unite and work together to resist what Google was doing. It seems like now that Facebook has taken on the Drag Queens a real version of what I called at the time the Million Persona March will happen.
One of those affected created this graphic and posted it on Facebook by Sister Sparkle Plenty:
MyNameIs
Facebook meets with LGBT Community Over Real Name Policy  on Sophos’ Naked Security blog.
EFF covers it with Facebook’s Real Name Policy Can Cause Real World Harm in LGBT Community.
Change.org has a petition going. Facebook Allow Performers to Use Their Stage Names on their Facebook Accounts.
 
 
 
 

BC Identity Citizen Consultation Results!!!!

Kaliya Young · August 17, 2014 · Leave a Comment

This article explains more about the different parts of the British Columbia Citizen Consultation about their “identity card’ along with how it is relevant and can inform the NSTIC effort. [Read more…] about BC Identity Citizen Consultation Results!!!!

Resources for HopeX Talk.

Kaliya Young · July 21, 2014 · 1 Comment

I accepted an invitation from Aestetix to present with him at HopeX (10).
It was a follow-on talk to his Hope 9 presentation that was on #nymwars.
He is on the volunteer staff of the HopeX conference and was on the press team that helped handle all the press that came for the Ellsberg – Snowden conversation that happened mid-day Saturday.  It was amazing and it went over an hour – so our talk that was already at 11pm (yes) was scheduled to start at midnight.
Here are the slides for it – I modified them enough that they make sense if you just read them.  My hope is that we explain NSTIC, how it works and the opportunity to get involved to actively shape the protocols and policies maintained.

[Read more…] about Resources for HopeX Talk.

BC Government Innovation in eID + Citizen Engagement.

Kaliya Young · April 6, 2014 · Leave a Comment

I wrote an article for Re:ID about the BC Government’s Citizen Engagement process that they did for their eID system.
CoverHere is the PDF: reid_spring_14-BC
BC’S CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT:A MODEL FOR FUTURE PROGRAMS 
Because of my decade long advocacy for the rights and dignity of our digital selves, I have become widely known as “Identity Woman.” The Government of British Columbia invited me to participate as an industry specialist/expert in its citizen consultation regarding the province’s Services Card. I want to share the story of BC’s unique approach, as I hope that more jurisdictions and the effort I am most involved with of late, the U.S. government’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, will choose to follow it.
The Canadian Province of British Columbia engaged the public about key issues and questions the BC Services Card raised. The well-designed process included a panel of randomly selected citizens. They met face- to-face, first to learn about the program, then to deliberate key issues and finally make implementation recommendations to government.
[Read more…] about BC Government Innovation in eID + Citizen Engagement.

Value Network Mapping an Ecosystem Tool

Kaliya Young · July 3, 2013 · Leave a Comment

My response, two years ago to the NSTIC (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace) Program Office issued Notice of Inquiry about how to govern an Identity Ecosystem included a couple of models that could be used to help a community of companies & organizations in an ecosystem co-create a shared picture. A shared co-created picture is an important community asset to develop early on because it becomes the basis for a real conversation about critical issues that need to be addressed to have a successful governance emerge.
The Privacy Committee within NSTIC has a Proactive Privacy Sub-Committee and before I went on my trip around the world (literally) a month ago.  I was on one of the calls and described Value Network Mapping and was invited to share more about the model/method and how it might be used.
Value Network Maps are a tool that can help us because both the creation of the map and its subsequent use by the companies, organizations, people and governments that are participating strengthens the network.   This is important because we are dealing with a complex problem with a complex range of players. In the map below we are in the top left quadrant – we NEED strong networks to solve the problems we are tasked with solving.  If we don’t have them we will end up with Chaos OR we will have a hierarchical solution imposed to drive things towards the complicated and simple but …given the inherent nature of the problem we will NOT fully solve the problem and fall off the “cliff” on the edge between simplicity and into chaos.
(In this diagram based on the cynefin framework developed by David Snowden architect of children’s birthday parties using complexity theory and the success of Apolo 13 )

 
So – what is a Value Network Map?
It models technical & business networks by figuring the roles in any given system and then understanding the value that flow between different roles.  Value flows include payment for the delivery of goods or services (these are tangible deliverables) but also intangible deliverables such as increased level of confidence because information was shared between parties (but was not contractually obligated and no payment was made).
Drawing from Verna’s book/site that lays out how to do it. There are four steps to a value network map.
1. Define the scope and boundaries, context, and purpose.
2. Determine the roles and participants, and who needs to be involved in the mapping.
3. Identify the transactions and deliverables, defining both tangibles and intangibles.
4. Validate it is complete by sequencing the transactions.
 
I’ve worked on several value network mapping projects.
I worked with the Journalism that Matters to document he old and new journalism ecosystem.I have lead several community Value Network Mapping efforts.


This projects highlights how the method can be used to talk about a present/past state about how things happen “now”. How do people today or 20 years ago share verified attributes with business and government entities one does business with?  If we understand the roles that exist in a paper based version/world How do those roles change in a future enable with technology and how do the value flows change and what new roles are created/needed?
A value networm map can be used to map the flow of rights and duties between different roles in an ecosystem can also be considered along with the flow of monetary and other value.
Two years ago I went with Verna Allee (the innovator of the method) to  the Cloud Identity Summit  to work on a map for my organization the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium focused on the “present state” map to explain what currently happens when someone visits a website and clicks on an add to go buy something and then is asked to provide identity attributes.
We took this FCC submitted map that has the individual at the center and data flows to the businesses, government and organizations they do business with and is sold on to Data Brokers and then Data Users buy it to inform how they deal with the individual all without their awareness or consent.

 
PersonalData-VNA-NowMapWe added in a wrinkle to this flow and asked what happens when an individual has to prove something (an attribute) about themselves to make a purchase.
Our hope was to do this and then work on a future state map with a Personal Cloud provider playing  a key role  to enable new value flow’s that empower the  Individual with their data and enabling similar transactions.
This is best viewed in PDF so if you click on the link to the document it will download.
Creating this map was an interactive process involving involved two dozen industry professionals that we met with in small groups.  It involved using large chart paper paper and post-it notes and lines on the map.   We came into the process with some of the roles articulated, some new roles were added as we began mapping with the community.
An example to give you a sense of what it looks like when you do it in real life is this map that shows how trust frameworks & the government’s reduction of risk in the credit card system.

This was a small piece of the original map for the Personal Data Ecosystem (it did not end up getting included in the PDF version).  The roles are the orange flowers and the green arrows are tangible value flows and the blue arrows are intangible value flows.
So how could the Proactive Privacy Sub-Committee use this method?
At an IIW11 one of the practitioners of value network mapping came to share the method and we broke up into smal groups to map different little parts of an identity ecosystem. We had a template like this picking four different roles and then beginning to map.

The exercise is written about here on Verna’s website.
Scott David was a community member there and really saw how it was a tool to understand what was happening in systems AND to have a conversation about the flow of rights and responsibilities flow.
The method is best done face to face in small groups.  It helps if the groups are diverse representing a range of different perspectives.  A starting point is a use-case a story that can be mapped – what are the roles in that story and then walking through the different transactions.
So how do we “do” it. Well a starting point is for those interested in helping lead it to identify themselves in the context of the pro-active privacy committee.  We should work together  to figure out how we lead the community using this process to figure out the privacy implications and see where the money flows for different proposed solutions.
We can try to do a session at the upcoming July or October plenary.
We could also organize to do some meetings at:

  • conferences in the next few months were we can identify 5-10 interested IDESG members to participate in mapping an ecosystem chunk for an hour or two.
  • in cities around the country where we identify 5-10 folks who want to spend an hour or two mapping an ecosystem chunk.

It would be great if we decide to do this that the Secretariat lead by Kay in her role as Executive Director of the IDESG can support us in organizing this (That is why we are paying htem 2.5 million buck s to help us  do the work of  organizing in a meaningful way.
I am friends with Verna Allee and can ask her for advice on this however I think the kind of help/advice we need to really use this method and do it WELL would behove us to actually use NSTIC IDESG moneys to hire Verna to engage with us in a serious way. When I wrote my NSTIC NOI I did so thinking that their would finally be monies available to pay people to do community conference building work like this.  Perhaps it is not to late to do so.
 
 

Another Bill of Rights

Kaliya Young · March 13, 2013 · Leave a Comment

I did a collection called the Bill o’ Rights o Rama. 
Here is a new proposed one a Gamers Bill of Rights  based on another gamers bill of rights (this one looks beautiful)
Preamble
Gamers are customers who pay publishers, developers, and retailers in exchange for software.
They have the right to expect that the software they purchase will be functional and remain accessible to them in perpetuity.
They have the right to be treated like customers and not potential criminals.
They have the right to all methods of addressing grievances accessible by other consumer.
They have the right to the game they paid for, with no strings attached beyond the game and nothing missing from the game.
Gamers’ Bill of Rights
I. Gamers shall receive a full and complete game for their purchase, with no major omissions in its features or scope.
II. Gamers shall retain the ability to use any software they purchase in perpetuity unless the license specifically and explicitly determines a finite length of time for use.
III. Any efforts to prevent unauthorized distribution of software shall be noninvasive, nonpersistent, and limited to that specific software.
IV. No company may search the contents of a user’s local storage without specific, limited, explicit, and game-justified purpose.
V. No company shall limit the number of instances a customer may install and use software on any compatible hardware they own.
VI. Online and multiplayer features shall be optional except in genre-specific situtations where the game’s fundamental structure requires multiplayer functionality due to the necessary presence of an active opponent of similar abilities and limitations to the player.
VII. All software not requiring a subscription fee shall remain available to gamers who purchase it in perpetuity. If software has an online component and requires a server connection, a company shall provide server software to gamers at no additional cost if it ceases to support those servers.
VIII. All gamers have the right to a full refund if the software they purchased is unsatisfactory due to hardware requirements, connectivity requirements, feature set, or general quality.
IX. No paid downloadable content shall be required to experience a game’s story to completion of the narrative presented by the game itself.
X. No paid downloadable content shall affect multiplayer balance unless equivalent options are available to gamers who purchased only the game.

Recent Activity Pt 4: Europe Week 1

Kaliya Young · November 27, 2011 · Leave a Comment

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.

G-Male is a Good Listener, Maybe too good.

Kaliya Young · September 1, 2011 · 2 Comments


Ok, now we know what is wrong 🙂 Google is on the [autism] spectrum.

“The obstacles primarily exist in the realm of social interaction. The fundamental problem is akin to blindness, as the term social blindness suggests.”

They keep doing well meaning but awkward feeling things because well they know how to technically but it isn’t how human beings act or want to be treated.
[Read more…] about G-Male is a Good Listener, Maybe too good.

Is Google+ is being lynched by out-spoken users upset by real names policy?

Kaliya Young · August 28, 2011 · 5 Comments

Following my post yesterday Google+ says your name is “Toby” not “Kunta Kinte”, I chronicled tweets from this morning’s back and forth with  Tim O’Reilly and Kevin Marks, Nishant  Kaushik, Phil Hunt,  Steve Bogart and Suw Charman-Anderson.
I wrote the original post after watching the Bradley Horwitz (@elatable) – Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) interview re: Google+. I found Tim’s choice of words about the tone (strident) and judgement (self-righteous) towards those standing up for their freedom to choose their own names on the new social network being rolled out by Google internet’s predominant search engine disappointing.  His response to my post was to call me self-righteous and reiterate that this was just a market issue.
I myself have been the victim of a Google+ suspension since July 31st and yesterday I applied for a mononym profile (which is what it was before they insisted I fill out my last name which I chose to do so with my online handle and real life identity “Identity Woman”) 
In the thread this morning Tim said that the kind of pressure being aimed at Google is way worse then anything they are doing and that in fact Google was the subject of a “lynch mob” by these same people.  Sigh, I guess Tim hasn’t read much history but I have included some quotes form and links to wikipedia for additional historial context.
Update: inspired in part by this post an amazing post “about tone” as a silencing/ignoring tactics when difficult, uncomfortable challenges are raised in situations of privilege was written by Shiela Marie.  
I think there is a need for greater understanding all around and that perhaps blogging and tweeting isn’t really the best way to address it.  I know that in the identity community when we first formed once we started meeting one another in person and really having deep dialogues in analogue form that deeper understanding emerged.  IIW the place we have been gathering for 6 years and talking about the identity issues of the internet and other digital systems is coming up in mid-October and all are welcome.  The agenda is created live the day of the event and all topics are welcome.
Here’s the thread… (oldest tweets first)
 Note all the images of tweets in this thread are linked to the actual tweet (unless they erased the tweet).  [Read more…] about Is Google+ is being lynched by out-spoken users upset by real names policy?

Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte"

Kaliya Young · August 27, 2011 · 21 Comments

This post is about what is going on at a deeper level when Google+ says your name is “Toby” NOT “Kunta Kinte”. The punchline video is at the bottom feel free to scroll there and watch if you don’t want to read to much.

This whole line of thought to explain to those who don’t get what is going on with Google+ names policy arose yesterday after I watched the Bradley Horwitz – Tim O’Reilly interview (they start talking about the real names issue at about minute 24).

[Read more…] about Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte"

Lets try going with the Mononym for Google+

Kaliya Young · August 27, 2011 · 6 Comments

Seeing that Google+ is approving mononyms for some (Original Sai, on the construction of names Additional Post) but not for others (Original Stilgherrian Post Update post ).
I decided to go in and change my profile basically back to what it was before all this started.  I put a  ( . ) dot in the last name field.  In my original version of my google proflile my last name was a * and when they said that was not acceptable I put my last name as my online handle “Identity Woman”.
[Read more…] about Lets try going with the Mononym for Google+

Nymwars: IRL on Google's Lawns.

Kaliya Young · August 5, 2011 · 3 Comments

We need to bring this struggle to Google IRL (In Real Life – physical, real world, meet space). Here is my thinking on why and my ideas about how.

WHY:  Even women with privileged access to Google insiders and who have real name handle combinations are not getting reinstated.

[Read more…] about Nymwars: IRL on Google's Lawns.

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