Identosphere #32 VCs for machine learning • Facebook vs Apple's enforcing consent • On Digital Health Passes
Upcoming events, funding opportunities, podcasts, videos, thought-leadership and technical information, developments and breakthroughs in decentralized identity putting users in control over PII.
Thanks to our patrons!
The IIW 32 Book of Proceedings is coming out in a few days, so we’re waiting to publish our “IIW 32 Digest” until that’s out, to be more in sync.
That means you have a little extra time to subscribe to our Patreon and get an overview of the workshop that organizes the sessions by topic, with a selection of text and an image as available. You’ll have an easier time to get the overall picture of the event, and find the type of information you’re looking for.
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Coming Up
2 eSSIF-Lab calls: 1 webinar • May 27
technical coordinator (TNO) and open call manager (FBA) will be answering all your questions about the application process, the programme and the value of the eSSIF-Lab’s Open Calls, live on air.
Self-Sovereign identity Trust in NGI • May 17 • NGI Forum • NGI Forward
The Dutch Government´s Strategy for Digital Identity May 13 • ID4D Webinar Series
Funding Opportunities
Infrastructure-Oriented Open Call • Deadline July 7 • up to 155,000 €
targets open source technical enhancements and extensions for eSSIF-Lab Framework which fall within the SSI concept
2nd Business-oriented Call ongoing • Deadline July 7 • up to 106,000 €
business solutions that make it easy for organizations to deploy and/or use SSI and must fall within the SSI concept
Podcast
Trust Over IP 101 with John Jordan, André Kudra, Karl Kneis, Scott Perry & Paul Knowles Northern Block
As we’re looking to move from the current internet era towards this new era of digital trust, I think it would be helpful if you were able to give an overview of how we got here.
Frontier Talk #3 | Dr. Carsten Stöcker - Decentralizing Provenance in an Industry 4.0 World Kuppinger Cole
In this episode, Raj Hegde sits down with Dr. Carsten Stöcker, Founder & CEO of Spherity to understand how #decentralized identity is transforming the end-to-end supply chain lifecycle.
[…] the intersection of exciting concepts such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized identifiers (DIDs).
Video
How to Create New Verifiable Credentials with Customizable Schemas (Video)
https://northernblock.io/products/ssi-enterprise-cloud/. In this video, we will demonstrate how to create new Verifiable Credentials with custom schemas using the NB Orbit enterprise app. Once the credential schema is created and the attribute fields specified, the enterprise user can then publish a credential definition to whatever root of trust they are using, in our case a Hyperledger Indy network.
Words of Wisdom
How the cookie poisoned the Web
Have you wondered why you have no more privacy on the Web than what other parties grant you (which is none at all), and that you can only opt in or out of choices that others provide—while the only controls you have over your privacy are to skulk around like a criminal (thank you, Edward Snowden and Russell Brand, for that analogy) or to stay offline completely?
Disrespect for the hustle
Nothing absolves you from building a meaningful product, obsessing over every detail, and taking care in its craft and design. It’s hard to do that if your whole focus is on leads. Why do you exist? Who are you helping? How? These questions can’t just be a story you tell - they have to be your deeply-held reason for existing.
Apple’s new ATT and Why Facebook Is Hitting Back Hard
ATT forces apps to ask users, clearly and up front: Do you want us to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites? The app can briefly justify its reasoning for tracking and, most importantly, the user can say yes or no.
SSI Explainers
Digital Identities Explained
‘A digital identity is information on an entity used by computer systems to represent an external agent. That agent may be a person, organization, application, or device.’
Can a Verifiable Credential-based SSI Implementation meet GDPR Compliance?
Let’s examine how SSI meets each of the articles from #13 to #22.
UNISOT ID – Part 1
UNISOT, through its UNISOT ID service, offers our customers control over their data. Under self-sovereign identity model users who have one or more identifiers (something that enables a subject to be discovered and identified) can present claims relating to those identifiers without having to go through an intermediary. In the following sections we will outline how SSI can change the way you interact with others on the Internet as well as in the real world.
Why Digital Health Passes are the smart and responsible way forward - Blockchain Pulse
Moving forward, as other states start to roll out their own Health Pass solutions, it will be crucial to ensure interoperability between platforms. The emphasis on interoperability will allow other states Immunization Information Systems (ISS) to seamlessly connect with Excelsior Pass or any other digital health pass. We envision a future that will include multiple Health Pass solutions, giving organizations and consumers the ability to choose which to utilize.
SSI in the Wild
Building an SSI Ecosystem: Digital Staff Passports at the NHS
How does a functioning credential ecosystem get started? This post goes deep on Manny Nijjar’s work to create a program for using digital staff passports in the sprawling UK NHS bureaucracy.
Use Case: American Electric Power
What kind of strategy will take you to being a next-generation utility company? For AEP Ohio, a large electric utility company based in Columbus, this challenge began with a comprehensive review of their entire ecosystem and which identified their key pain points for innovation.
Recap: OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains
a few key learnings from the forum
Moving forward with Digital Health Passes
We envision a future that will include multiple Health Pass solutions, giving organizations and consumers the ability to choose which to utilize. This is why my team and I have put an emphasis on the interoperability of our solution. In addition, easy communication between state and federal health systems will reduce necessary investment and increase access to Digital Health Passes. In the near future we envision a user from any state being able to use their Health Pass in New York or any other state of their choice.
Technical SSI
Are we WACI yet? <- The Killer Whale Jello Salad (click to see image)
WACI is an initiative to create a common stack for wallet and credential interactions using best-of-class standards and open source implementations.
What's up with the Jello and Orcas? This initiative began at IIW, where it was lovingly described as making a 'Killer Whale Jello Salad' of technical and standards components that are so delicious, all participants in the Verifiable Credentials ecosystem will serve themselves a heaping helping to maximize interoperability.
Present and and Verify Verifiable Credentials in ASP.NET Core Using Decentralized Identities and Mattr
This article shows how use verifiable credentials stored on a digital wallet to verify a digital identity and use in an application. For this to work, a trust needs to exist between the verifiable credential issuer and the application which requires the verifiable credentials to verify. A blockchain decentralized database is used and MATTR is used as a access layer to this ledger and blockchain. The applications are implemented in ASP.NET Core.
MyData
Did You Know School Apps Often Share Student Data with Third Parties?
Here are five key takeaways – described in detail in the State of MyData 2021
1. MyData is highly relevant to the “big conversations” of our time.
2. Cities are becoming pioneers of MyData.
3. Design is fundamental to the success of the MyData paradigm.
4. The journey of interoperability is all about the dialogue between governance and standards.
5. What’s missing is as important as what’s there.
MyData Digital ethics Antti 'Jogi' Poikola, Board Chair, MyData Global
Why storytelling is key to advancing the ethical use of personal data
Johannes Ernst, CEO of Indie Computing and co-founder of MyData Silicon Valley, explains why in order to increase consumer trust in technology, we need more transparency on key issues such as privacy, and why a common narrative for the innovators in the space is crucial to advancing individual control over personal data.
Getting rewarded for your data becomes reality with new digi.me and Yorz collaboration
Yorz has partnerships with leading European payment processors and uses patented technology to automatically capture and make available till receipt data for users to share and monetise. They can also gather other valuable data from across their lives, including finance, health and social media, using digi.me’s personal data exchange platform. The Yorz marketplace enables consumers to choose to receive cash, discounts or tailored offers based on the data access they offer brands, leaving them firmly in control.
Our New White Paper: Achieving Transformation At Scale
Link to White paper “It’s not enough to identify what’s wrong with how things work today.“
Data Standards
Announcing Schema Markup Validator: validator.schema.org (beta)
SDTT is a tool from Google which began life as the Rich Snippets Testing Tool back in 2010. Last year Google announced plans to migrate from SDTT to successor tooling, the Rich Results Test, alongside plans to "deprecate the Structured Data Testing Tool". The newer Google tooling is focused on helping publishers who are targeting specific schema.org-powered search features offered by Google, and for these purposes is a huge improvement as it contextualizes many warnings and errors to a specific target application.
JSON-LD Playground
Play around with JSON-LD markup by typing out some JSON below and seeing what gets generated from it at the bottom of the page. Pick any of the examples below to get started.
NOTE: The playground uses jsonld.js which conforms to JSON-LD 1.1 syntax (errata), API (errata), and framing (errata). Also see the classic JSON-LD 1.0 playground and the RDF Distiller.
Policy
The Policymaker’s Guide to Respectful Technology in Legislation
What most people want but don’t have the terms to describe is respectful digital relationships. In the same way there is an unspoken code for respectful behavior in physical-realm relationships, this same type of behavior is just as essential when engaging with an online service or website.
FIDO Alliance Supports Biden Administration EO on Cybersecurity
There have been a number of high profile attacks against critical American infrastructure in recent months, including the Solarwinds supply chain attack that exposed much of the government to potential risk. Top of mind in recent days is the ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, which significantly impacted the flow of refined oil across America. These attacks expose the vulnerability of critical infrastructure in the United States, and the Biden Administration is issuing federal directives that will minimize or eliminate risk.
Why CBDCs will likely be ID-based
Central banks are realising CBDCs will have to be intimately linked to identity to deal with illicit finance and bank disintermediation risk
IDB and DIDI seek Latino projects that integrate self-sovereign digital identity
the need for Internet citizens to have a verified digital identity is growing. Aware of this, a call has been launched to identify technological projects that wish to integrate self-sovereign digital identity for the inclusion of vulnerable populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The objective is to promote these projects with financing between USD 10,000 and 50,000.
Research / Papers
Providing Assurance and Scrutability on Shared Data and Machine Learning Models with Verifiable Credentials
Data contributions to ML models are recorded in a bill of materials (BOM), which is stored with the model as a verifiable credential. The BOM provides a traceable record of the supply chain for an AI system, which facilitates on-going scrutiny of the qualities of the contributing components. The verified BOM, and its linkage to certified data qualities, is used in the AI Scrutineer, a web-based tool designed to offer practitioners insight into ML model constituents and highlight any problems with adopted datasets, should they be found to have biased data or be otherwise discredited.
Identity not SSI
FIDO: Everything You Need to Know About Fast Identity Online
FIDO protocols were designed to stop the password chaos and improve the user experience. Read on to discover what FIDO is, how the FIDO Alliance works, and why FIDO-enabling your products can help you better serve your end users.
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