Identosphere Weekly #17
Upcoming Events
CPDP Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference
As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic and technological development in privacy and data protection. Within an atmosphere of independence and mutual respect, CPDP gathers academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels, offering them an arena to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends.
Evernym shares: “Be sure to check out Friday's Modern Digital Identity session (Jan 29, 4:15pm GMT), where @drummondreed and @EmLindley will dive into the commercial, policy, and sociological dimensions of #SelfSovereignIdentity.”
Virtual Policy Forum on February 4th and 5th
By the Better Identity Coalition, Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), and the FIDO Alliance:
What to expect on identity and authentication in a Biden Administration
How COVID-19 has transformed the identity landscape
Ways that government can help address pain points in our identity infrastructure
Updates on new products and standards like FIDO that can make authentication both more secure and easier to use for industry and government alike
Discussions on what can be done to drive better identity in America
NGI Forward Salon: Digital Sovereignty in eID-Solutions | Part 1
February 11, 2021 @ 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm CET
German administration is under time pressure due to the implementation requirement of the (Online Access Act) OZG by the end of 2022. Without authenticated citizen accounts that individuals can use to log in to the electronic administration, fully digitized communication between the administration and citizens or companies is impossible. The rollout of OZG services is therefore directly linked to the rollout of digital identities. In a European electronic government network (Single Digital Gateway), interoperable solutions not only make economic sense, but are also a legal requirement.
Getting started with self-sovereign identity (SSI)
FEB 17 by Conditis
This monthly webinar series is an opportunity to hear from UK experts in distributed identity and learn the mechanics of decentralized identity systems.
Over the next few months, our experts in self-sovereign identity (SSI) will introduce self-sovereign patterns and protocols and will guide you on how to get SSI going in your business.
Thoughtful Biometrics is March 8, 10, 12
creating a space to dialogue about critical emerging issues surrounding biometric and digital identity technologies.
SSI News
Generative Identity - Phil Windley
The Generative Self-Sovereign Internet explored the generative properties of the self-sovereign internet, a secure overlay network created by DID connections. [...]
In this article, I explore the generativity of self-sovereign identity—specifically the exchange of verifiable credentials. One of the key features of the self-sovereign internet is that it is protocological—the messaging layer supports the implementation of protocol-mediated interchanges on top of it. This extensibility underpins its generativity.
7 Essential building blocks of decentralized digital ecosystems Nevermined
Adding DID + NFT + Access Control + Provenance + Integrity + Remote Computation to enable your Digital Ecosystem use cases
The original goal of Nevermined was to allow data sharing and privacy-preserving computation. During the development journey, the above building blocks emerged as design principles, but after speaking with various organizations, we realized these components are actually the foundations that allow us to solve more complex problems, not only based on classical data center problems.
Microsoft Talking about SSI in their Identity Priorities for 2021
5 identity priorities for 2021—strengthening security for the hybrid work era and beyond
In this paradigm, individuals can verify a credential with an ID verification partner once, then add it to Microsoft Authenticator (and other compatible wallets) and use it everywhere in a trustworthy manner.
Oldie but Goodie
A Universal Resolver for self-sovereign identifiers
On any blockchain or other decentralized system (Markus Sabadello)
This is a first step in fulfilling DIF’s mission to help individuals and organizations to control their digital identity, without being dependent on any intermediary party.
This tool fulfills a similar purpose as Bind does in the DNS system: resolution of identifiers. However, instead of working with domain names, we work with self-sovereign identifiers that can be created and registered directly by the entities they refer to.
DIF Face to Face Jan 2021 Highlights
The architecture of the Confidential Storage draft specification
You can find infographics, like the one above, along with lots of information and videos, on topics listed below, in DIF’s Jan 2021 highlights.
1# Opening remarks, and an update on DIF-OIDF Collaboration
2# Interoperability and DIDComm working group
3# Claims and Credentials, Presentation Exchange, and Sidetree
4# Secure Data Storage WG, Identifiers and Discovery WG, and KERI
5# Special Interest Groups: Product Managers, Banking and Finance, and Healthcare
Trinsic donates did-key.rs to I&D WG
DID:Key, originally specified in the W3C Credentials Community Group (CCG), is a DID “pseudo-method” that allows static, pre-existing, and/or pre-published public keys to function like traditional DIDs — they can be queried, stored, issued against, and resolved to return valid DID documents.
Spruce is rocking it with the open source tools.
DIDKit v0.1 is Live.
Most other options are subtly locked to a specific blockchain and its particularities, which a self-sovereign identity (SSI) novice is unlikely to notice until months into a project based on it. A few open-source libraries exist to sidestep this infrastructural lock-in, but these are more like primitives for assembling an SSI toolkit than ready-to-go, developer-friendly libraries. DIDKit, on the other hand, is ready to start processing real-world VCs with non-repudiable signatures right out the box.
Read the White Paper: Making Sense of Digital Wallets (DIACC)
Recent advances in the state of the art of digital identity systems are putting the user back in control of their information and their privacy. An important building block of this advancement is the digital wallet that users require to interact with that data.
This report proposes what a trusted digital wallet should aim to do.
The Second Power — A Technolibertarian Argument for your Decentralised Cybersoul
(Kaliya) I disagree with this post - but it gets at one of the perspectives that is surfacing about what the role of a DID is - those steeped in bitcoin land tend to think of it in a similar way to a ‘wallet address’ and talk about it as if people only have “one of them” and that “they are anchored in a blockchain” with it - where as much of the SSI world is focused on figuring out how to pass Verifiable Credentials around to people without linking them (The VCs) to a blockchain to prevent correlation
Linux Foundation Courses
Introduction to Hyperledger Sovereign Identity Blockchain Solutions: Indy, Aries & Ursa (LFS172)
Becoming a Hyperledger Aries Developer (LFS173)
MYDATA related
The community around SSI has several wonderful sister communities working along the same lines but in slightly different domains, including MyData.
Weekly Digest
MyData Weekly Digest for January 22nd, 2021
Welcome to the MyData Weekly Digest, a news site dedicated to producing the best coverage from within the human centred approach in personal data management. It provides information retrieved mainly from the MyData Global Slack Channel since June 2019.
Personal data servers will help take back digital ID from big tech (Wired OpEd)
In 2021, individuals will gain the ability to own servers where their data is stored – and with it control their online identities.
[...] because data from their healthcare provider acquired into the server can be used to authenticate and assert that fact without the need to give any identity information. By using PDAs, apps that rely on sensitive data will be able to access this and stay “identity blind”.
One effect of the Covid-19 pandemic will be the increased use of PDAs.
‘Personal Data Ecosystem’ key foundation for Scotland’s Digital Economy
Patient records won’t be held centrally in a monolith EHR, but will instead be distributed to and owned/controlled by the users themselves.
Apps like Healthy Me from digi.me are an example of this new paradigm and how the decentralized approach tackles issues common to IT, like data privacy, by distributing the workload and privacy control to the users themselves.
Initiatives like MyData, of which digi.me plays a key role, are setting out to develop the global movement that will establish the framework for adoption of this approach, defining the methods and governance for regulating this model of data exchange.
Digi.me enables rapid citizen-centric data exchange solutions for flexibile Gov COVID-19 uses (youtube)
DIACC International Pilots Special Interest Group “Un-panel”
an "un-panel" with guests from around the world who are committed to focusing on issues around data privacy, empowering people while ensuring they're protected, and advancing the international data governance landscape.
Data Sovereignty Now
New Coalition Launches Campaign for Data Sovereignty Now
a campaign that will press European policy makers at all levels to ensure that control of data remains in the hands of the people and organizations that generate it. The issue becomes ever more urgent as policies around Europe’s digital economy and data architecture start to solidify.
'When you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck'
Katryna Dow, founder and CEO of Meeco. (VIDEO)
Katryna believes that it is vital for the future of the internet that people and organisations obtain control of their data. This concept is called ‘data sovereignty’, but achieving that means rethinking the digital infrastructure the current internet is built upon. She calls for a soft infrastructure that consists of agreements between public and private-sector parties about the access to data.
Academic
its a bit heavy but if you want understand the history of self-sovereign intellectual ideas its a good read.
Self Sovereign Digital Identity on the Blockchain: A Discourse Analysis
A key aim of this paper then, is to bring a discussion that must be (but currently is not) taking place in an academic context, due to its inherent multidisciplinary nature and complexities, into that particular realm of debate. This ‘history of self-sovereignty’, thus can be read as an experimental discourse analysis that discerns the contemporary usage of the concept
Digital identity for development: The quest for justice and a research agenda
we first propose a framework to map the theoretical link between digital identity and human development, articulated in three dimensions linking digital identity to expected development outcomes. Secondly, we present the seven papers in this collection in terms of how they problematise such a link, observing how each of them uses empirical data to increase existing knowledge on this connection and question it.
Not SSI but Identity things worth reading:
Embedded Finance? We Need Embedded Health
Perhaps in the post-COVID world, embedded health will be more important than embedded finance. - David Birch in Forbes
What Is ISO 27018:2019? Everything Executives Need to Know
ISO 27018 is part of the ISO 27000 family of standards, which define best practices for information security management. ISO 27018 adds new guidelines, enhancements, and security controls to the ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27002 standards, which help cloud service providers better manage the data security risks unique to PII in cloud computing.
Differences between SAML, OAuth & OIDC (OpenID Connect)
SAML 2.0 - Security Assertion Markup Language
OAuth 2.0 - Web Authorization Protocol
OpenID Connect 1.0 (OIDC) - Simple identity layer on top of OAuth 2.0
OWI Digital Identity Landscape: 2021
is a tool and framework we’ve developed to help provide an in-depth look at how Digital Identity applications are evolving and how intersections across solution segments are shaping next-generation strategies. Below is an example of one of the many framework overlays we use to assess the Landscape – click through the honeycombs to learn more about each segment.
