We must understand the past to not repeat it

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)

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at these, take them seriously.