Identosphere 245 Sept 15-21: AI & Identity many articles • Digital Public Infrastructure Report on Safety • Kids Online Research • Swiss eID Comic
This is the weekly Identosphere Newsletter sharing highlights from around the web covering Decentralized and Self-Sovereign Identity curated by Kaliya Young, Identity Woman.
Upcoming
Registration Open for OpenID Foundation Hybrid Workshop at Cisco on Mon 20th October 2025
Internet Identity Workshop #41 October 21-23 Mountain View California
Agentic Internet Workshop* October 24th Mountain View California (*Inspired IIW by and hosted by the IIW Foundation )
W3C Credentials Community Group has a new APAC friendly time. CCG is a great community and reach out to Will Abramson if you want to share/present your work.
[Comic] (Swiss Federation) The English-speaking crew featured in the Swiss e-ID comics has finally arrived!
Social Services
(Beeck Center) [Report] Digital Doorways to Public Benefits: Beneficiary Experiences with Digital Identity (Executive Summary)
We believe it’s imperative for readers to hear directly from beneficiaries about their experiences. Multimedia clips are embedded throughout the report, and the short video below introduces you to the project and some of the beneficiaries we spoke to.
(Beeck Center) [Community] Digital Benefits Network – Digital Identity Community of Practice Interest Form
Identity and AI
Agentic Internet Workshop October 24th
The case for why we need it a lot is happening:
(Andor Kesselman) [LinkedIn] 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀 (𝗗𝗜𝗗𝘀) 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
- Agents can sign and verify messages without being tied to one vendor.
- Agents remain portable: their identity persists across platforms and organizations.
- Agents can transact across business boundaries, presenting verifiable credentials to prove compliance, authorization, or capabilities.
(Andor Kesselman) [LinkedIn] Agentic Commerce: Redefining the Customer Relationship
This is the crossroads where identity, law, and agentic payments meet:
- Identity Systems → technologies such as DIDs, verifiable credentials, and registries that let customers prove who they are on their terms.
- Law & Governance → liability and accountability frameworks that reflect the reality of non-human actors conducting transactions.
- Agentic Payments → embedding trust, compliance, and consumer protections directly into the flow of value.
(Heather Flanagan) Who Really Pays When AI Agents Run Wild? Incentives, Identity, and the Hidden Bill
The hidden costs of the cloud were supposed to teach us that efficiency ignored eventually becomes inefficiency entrenched. I’m not convinced people and organizations have learned that lesson, but regardless, AI is repeating that story, with energy, water, and carbon as the currencies.
(Verana Foundation) [Spec] Verifiable Trust v2 Specification
To rebuild a trustworthy internet, we need new communication channels - channels that are secure by design, based on mutual verification, and governed by decentralized trust. Connecting to a service, proving who you are, or creating an account should be as simple and safe as presenting a verifiable credential. A universal, open trust layer is essential for this vision to succeed. That’s the purpose of Verifiable Trust.
The Great Agent Payment Land Grab: Making Sense of 2025’s Protocol Wars
How Six Competing Standards Are Reshaping Commerce (And Why They’re All Missing the Same Thing)
(Auth0) Four Identity Security Essentials for a Trusted AI Agent Strategy
Is your AI agent strategy truly secure? Discover how robust customer identity and access management (CIAM) can build trust and protect your business.
(Andor Kesselman) Agentic Commerce: Redefining the Customer Relationship
As AI agents begin to transact on our behalf, a core question emerges: who truly owns the customer relationship?
[Book] Agent AI for Finance
This open access book provides an overview of the current state of financial argument mining and financial text generation, and presents the authors’ thoughts on the blueprint for NLP in finance in the agent AI era.
Why Extrimian’s AI‑First Approach Improves Digital Credential Solutions
Extrimian’s AI‑first philosophy refers to how we work internally, not how we verify credentials. Our agent Micelya organises knowledge and speeds up development and support.
[LinkedIN Post] The rise of orphan agents: autonomy without control
In July 2025, an AI agent at Replit, the online coding platform, deleted a live production database with data on 1k+ executives & companies. It ignored instructions not to touch production systems, and tried to conceal its actions.
This was a warning: the rise of orphan agents - autonomous systems operating without clear ownership, oversight, or accountability.
(Daza Greenwood) Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
AP2 creates the framework for a world where autonomous AI agents can securely and verifiably transact on behalf of users and businesses. It achieves this by introducing a system of Verifiable Credentials called "Mandates," which serve as cryptographically signed, auditable proof of authority and intent for every transaction. AP2 is not a new payment network; it is a data protocol that layers on top of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, ensuring it can work with any payment method—from credit cards to real-time bank transfers.
(Michael Becker) Building Your Digital Twin: Why Every Knowledge Professional Needs to Control Their AI Presence and How
A digital twin is essentially your AI-powered intellectual double—a sophisticated system that learns from your work, thoughts, and expertise to represent your knowledge and decision-making patterns (over time, it may even become “smarter” than you). Think of it as creating a virtual version of your professional mind that can interact with others, answer questions based on your expertise, and extend your influence beyond the constraints of time and physical presence.
Kids Online
By aligning digital innovation with child rights from the outset, we not only protect our youngest citizens—we build a better digital society for everyone.
[Research] Nerd Harder: A Typology of Techno‐Legal SolutionistLogics in Child Online Safety Laws
Travel
[Biometrics Update] Amadeus and Lufthansa complete EUDI Wallet testing for travel
Travel technology company Amadeus and air carrier Lufthansa have announced they have successfully completed tests in using the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet for the travel industry.
During the Phase 3 testing, the EUDI Wallet was integrated with Amadeus software to support the online check-in process, bag drop, pre-security check and flight boarding.
Digital Public Infrastructure
[DIACC] Recognizing Ontario’s Commitment to Building a Unified Canadian Workforce
In a time of economic uncertainty, global competition, and pressing labour shortages, Ontario’s “As of Right” initiative is a crucial step toward unlocking opportunities, enabling skilled professionals, including architects, engineers, geoscientists, and electricians, to contribute more quickly and effectively. This approach has the potential to protect workers, support employers, and help deliver critical nation-building projects without unnecessary delay.
Economic Value of DPI: A Focus on ID and Interoperability
* There is an urgent need to shift the focus from systems to outcomes.
* Bridging the trust gap: Why infrastructure alone doesn’t guarantee ID use
* Economic value of DPI for women and youth
* Reframing the conversation for Africa
DPI Implementation & Execution Guidance
20 implementation suggestions to bring digital infrastructure in your country to life
Sri Lanka digital ID faces a legal showdown
Two fundamental rights petitions to halt the implementation of Sri Lanka’s Unique Digital Identity (SL-UDI) program have been filed within a space of a month in the country’s
GovStack Wallet Building Block Specification v1.0.0.
The GovStack Wallet Specification plays a key role in advancing GovStack’s long-term vision of modular, interoperable digital government services.
Canada’s Digital Sovereignty: Stop Talking, Start Building
Here’s the choice:
* Own our digital infrastructure and own our future.
* Or stay the digital branch plant of the world—paying rent, following someone else’s laws, and watching our best companies get sold of
A preliminary mapping exercise shows that, of the 43 recommendations across 9 principles of the Framework for technology providers, MOSIP’s platform, processes, and practices align with over 30. In addition, MOSIP has provided inputs drawn from its engineering and technology practices for consideration in strengthening the UN Universal DPI Safeguards Framework.
Standards
ToIP and DIF Announce Three New Working Groups for Trust in the Age of AI
1 The Joint ToIP/DIF Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group :standardizing a new approach to one of the oldest and hardest problems in digital trust: proof of personhood,
2 The ToIP AI and Human Trust Working Group: Applying ToIP solutions to enhance human trust in AI technologies & Integrating AI technologies to better solve trust challenges in the context of human and AI interactions.
3 The DIF Trusted AI Agents Working Group (TAIAWG) first meeting of the TAIAWG will be September 30, 2025, at 8 AM PST
OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance 1.0 Final Specification Approved
(Captin Compliance) How C2PA Rewires Trust—And Why Privacy & Identity Are the Real Test
Thoughtful
[LinkedIn] (Jamie Smith) Sovereignty isn't about total independence, or about where the data sits. It's about *agency and capacity
Ultimately, digital sovereignty comes down to a choice: to actively participate in shaping your organisation's digital future, or to cede that control to others. Operating by default is what happens when strategy is absent.
(Heather Flanagan) Kill the Wallet? Rethinking the Metaphors Behind Digital Identity
“Much like ‘the cloud’ (really just someone else’s computer) or ‘the superhighway’ (I never have figured that one out), the metaphor of a ‘wallet’ has become a convenient shorthand for a tangle of technical, policy, and usability decisions.”
In Memorium
(Ashish Jain) It was a sobering experience to attend Andrew's memorial service yesterday.
Yesterday made it clear I wasn’t the only one carrying all these stories. With so many #identrati in person (and online), the ceremony felt like a special edition of #IIW. Where else would you hear OpenID, Infocards, bearer tokens, and self-asserted claims referenced in the eulogies? At one point, I half expected Dale or Mike to grab a whiteboard and start an unconference session.