Identity Woman

Independent Advocate for the Rights and Dignity of our Digital Selves

Media Coverage

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.

Quoted in Consumer Reports article on COVID Certificates

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How to Prove You’re Vaccinated for COVID-19

You may need to prove your vaccination status for travel or work, or to attend an event. Paper credentials usually work, but a new crop of digital verification apps is adding confusion.

Kaliya Young, an expert on digital identity verification working on the COVID Credentials Initiative, is also concerned that the rush to digitize important documents—including health cards and electronic driver’s licenses—will result in faulty designs.

“I’m happy about the digitization—just not happy about the failure to be discerning in those choices pushed by health IT people who don’t care about privacy pushing static QR codes like SMART Health Cards,” she says. Young says static QR codes can easily be copied by anyone who has access to them, and perhaps used by someone who is not the owner. “We will be stuck with bad systems that have baked within them privacy-infringing defaults.” 

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.

Human Centered Security Podcast

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I was invited to join Heidi Trost to join her on my new podcast focused on Human Centered Security. We had a great chat focused on Self-Sovereign Identity.

You can find it here on the Web, Spotifiy or Apple Podcast

In this episode we talk about:

What Kaliya describes as a new “layer” to the Internet to support decentralized identity, much like how html or email supported what came next.

The importance of open standards.

How to build a “digital wallet” paradigm that makes sense to people.

What SSI means for businesses/business models.

Kaliya is the co-author of “Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity,” and author of “Domains of Identity.” She is also one of the co-founders of the Internet Identity Workshop, which brings together people to help develop open standards for ways people can own and control their digital representations of themselves.

Wired UK Profile

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Last Year Molly Swartz a reporter who I first met via the MyData community talked to me about doing a profile and Wired UK said yes!

The article ran in their print edition and online. You can read here Wired UK and regular Wired.
I think it does a good job of reflecting the work that I have done and where we are now with these emerging technologies. It simplifies my journey to get to where I am now there is more to it and more nuance but for a 2 page article its fine.