Identosphere Weekly #18 • Call for Proposals • DID:DOGE to the Moon! • Vaccine Passport News
Identosphere Weekly #18 • Call for Proposals • DID:DOGE to the Moon! • Vaccine Passport News
A curated selection of Upcoming Webinars, Videos, Podcasts, News and Announcements in the Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identity and Personal Data Ecosystems
Thanks for checking out Identosphere’s weekly summary.
This sector is growing at an incredible rate. If we are to succeed in enabling the use of verifiable credentials in a globally interoperable fashion, the pace of development must inevitably grow beyond our ability to keep pace.
As more companies join the effort, open source code-bases, announcements, integrations, and developers tool-kits are coming out at a relentless pace.
We’ve got a leg up, with several aggregators that enable us to review much of what’s going on, wherever and however we can subscribe to new feeds.
These tools, and our ongoing efforts in their development, reduce the energy required and enable us to keep up with many more developments than we could otherwise reasonably expect, and are rapidly expanding the breath of our coverage.
Every week we package up that savings and pass it on to you.
Hopefully you get as much value from reading as we do from creating it.
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Upcoming Webinars
The Evolving World of Decentralized Identity on Tezos
Feb 10, 8:00AM to Feb 10, 9:00AM PST
Wayne Chang, Founder and CEO of Spruce Systems, returns for this week’s TQuorum with an update on the work his team has been doing to provide products and tooling for creating decentralized identifiers (DIDs) on Tezos.
He’ll show some of the features of their recent preview release of DIDKit, a command line toolkit that enables users to work with DIDs and Verifiable Credentials, and offer a glimpse at Credible, an upcoming mobile wallet that lets users create a Tezos account that can be used as a DID.
ASC X9 - Digital Identity with LEIs
Tuesday, February 9, 2021 9:00 am EST
Stephan Wolf, CEO GLEIF; Karla McKenna, Head of Standards GLEIF and Managing Director GLEIF Americas
The LEI has a critical role to play in today’s digital world through its ability to provide organizations with unique, permanent identification globally. This especially is important in the context of identifying legal entities involved in digital transactions. The LEI delivers value to both a more mature product – Digital Certificates – and the more recent innovation of Verifiable Credentials.
Thoughtful Biometrics is March 8,10,12
creating a space to dialogue about critical emerging issues surrounding biometric and digital identity technologies.
Money!!! Call for Proposals
NGI eSSIF-Lab Infrastructure-oriented call
1 March 2020 - 30 June 2021
Solutions proposed must be in a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 3 to 5 and proposed applications should fall within the Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) concept (i.e. technologies which allow individuals to control their electronic identities and guard their privacy).
Open source SSI components developed as a result of this open call will be applied at a later stage in areas such as HealthTech, e-Government, Education or by proposals in the generic track of Open Disruptive Innovation.
News
Self-sovereign digital identity, vLEI as identification standard for InfoCert DIZME network
VLEIs are cryptographically verifiable credentials compliant with W3C standards, containing LEIs. The program launched by GLEIF to promote vLEIs aims to create an ecosystem, a credential governance framework, and a technical support infrastructure.
Through vLEIs, companies, government organizations, and other legal entities around the world will have the ability to identify themselves unambiguously, even outside of the financial markets, to conduct a growing number of activities digitally, such as:
the approval of transactions and contracts,
the acquisition of new customers,
transactions within logistics chain and import/export networks,
the submission of reports and prospectuses to regulatory bodies.
Also, vLEIs will allow for the extension of identity verification of legal entities to include individuals who fill roles of interest within those entities.
DogeCoin DID Method by Spruce Systems
Why a Dogecoin DID Method?
Such Decentralization: Dogecoin is a public, permissionless blockchain favored by Shiba Inus worldwide, making it suitable for this purpose.
Much Identity: Since shibes are unique in different and special ways, this specification provides the means to assign each one their very own ShibeID.
Wow Blockchains: Dogecoin has proven again and again its resiliency in the face of adversity, proving that it is the ultimate host to such a primitive.
Forbes “Blockchain 50” Shows Enterprise Blockchain’s Footprint and Impact, with Hyperledger Tech Leading The Pack
Declaring that blockchain has “gone mainstream,” Forbes today released its 2021 “Blockchain 50,” featuring companies that have at least $1 billion in revenues or are valued at $1 billion or more and “lead in employing distributed ledger technology.” And, once again, half of the companies on the list are using Hyperledger technology.
Announcing Pico Engine 1.0
In addition to the work on the engine itself, one of the primary workstreams at present is to complete Bruce Conrad's excellent work to use DIDs and DIDComm as the basis for inter-pico communication, called ACA-Pico (Aries Cloud Agent - Pico). [...] This work is important because it will replace the current subscriptions method of connecting heterarchies of picos with DIDComm. [...] because DIDComm is protocological, this will support protocol-based interactions between picos, including credential exchange.
ACA-Pico working group
Picolab/ries-cloudagent-pico
Twitter thread\rant of the week.
Steve Willson from Lockstep and Constellation Research takes on Trust over IP’s Framing.
The Lissi Wallet is now available in 12 languages!
Lanugauges supported: Arabic • English • French • German • Italian • Korean • Polish • Portuguese • Russian • Romanian • Spanish • Turkish
the language is only a small part of the whole user experience. The task is to design a universal cockpit, which people can navigate regardless of their social background. Similar to a dashboard in a car, which doesn’t look too different wherever you go. In order to achieve this, we have to standardize the icons, colours and user-flows to a certain degree. However, on the other hand, they need to be adjusted to the target audience.
Identity, Authentication and the Road Ahead: Virtual Policy Forum
The FIDO Alliance joined together with Better Identity Coalition and the ID Theft Resource Center (ITRC) to host this two day event from Feb. 4-5, to discuss the current and future state of identity and authentication.
Day 1: outlined the clear and present need for the government and industry to make identity and strong authentication systems more pervasive, to help protect and serve individuals and businesses alike. (Video)
Day 2: had a strong focus on the need for strong authentication and was highlighted by an expert panel that explained how FIDO authentication was able to help secure the 2020 U.S. election.
EFF says: Incoming Biden Administration Officials Should Change Course on Encryption
We’ve already sent our transition memo to the Biden team, recommending that the new president adopt a formal policy in favor of encryption and disavowing any attempts to weaken digital security, including introducing encryption backdoors. These key officials must repudiate their misguided statements that weakening encryption and computer security is needed for public safety.
Vaccine Passport News
Coming Soon: The ‘Vaccine Passport’
“The global passport system took 50 years to develop,” said Drummond Reed, chief trust officer for Evernym. “Even when they wanted to add biometrics to that to make it stronger, that took over a decade to agree on just how you’re going to add a fingerprint or a facial biometric to be verified on a passport. Now, in a very short period of time, we need to produce a digital credential that can be as universally recognized as a passport and it needs an even greater level of privacy because it’s going to be digital.”
British Airways to trial Verifly digital health passport
The trial begins on February 4 on all of the carrier’s transatlantic routes between London and the US (currently New York JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Washington, Houston and Seattle).
It will be run in conjunction with joint business and Oneworld partner American Airlines, which is already using the technology on international routes to the US.
Digital vaccine certificate looms as HR's next problem
It's going to take a while for the efforts to sort themselves out, Beck said, but he believes it will happen by the fall or year-end. Government funding may be forthcoming.
Based on what Biden has said generally about public health, Beck believes the new administration plans to make "a big commitment to health equity and improving public health systems broadly," he said.
Great Series on Anonymous or ZKP Credentials by Finema
This is excellent work, with lots of references, by Dr. Nuttawut Kongsuwan (Finema & QTFT), and Rachata Tosirisuk (Thailand Internet Exchange, Finema & QTFT).
An anonymous credential (Anoncred), which is also known as an attribute-based credential (ABC), is a concept for a digital credential that provides a credential holder maximal privacy and an ability to selectively disclose their personal information.
selective disclosure and an anonymous credential (Anoncred) relies on an efficient signature scheme that supports multiple messages with a single signature. One such signature scheme is known as CL signature that is named after its Jan Camenisch and Anna Lysyanskaya […] CL signature popularized Anoncreds, and it also served as a cryptographic building block in Identity Mixer (Idemix) and Hyperledger Indy projects.
Compared to the CL signature, the BBS+ signature has much shorter keys and signatures for a comparable level of security. As a result, the BBS+ signature enables fast implementation for anonymous credentials. It can be used in combination with signature proof of knowledge to hide some of credential attributes/messages in a zero-knowledge fashion.
The BBS+ signature will also soon be available in Finema’s Identity Wallet! We are excited to see how this technology will make an impact to the society in the coming years.
MyData
Applying for, and being, a MyData Operator
Ian Henderson talks about leading the application process for two MyData Operators Tru.net and DataYogi .
The core of the awards process is an online questionnaire that each photo-operator completes which provides background on the applying organisation, and then allows them to describe their business in terms of the shared MyData Operator Reference model shown below. This reference model, described in detail in the MyData Operators white paper, is not prescriptive; it is more a useful way to ensure each applying operator frames their responses so that they become easier to understand and assess.
Cozy Cloud (MyData Operator) 2020 Highlights
Two new applications have been integrated in your Cozy to offer you more uses and control: Pass, a French and open source password manager and Notes, a collaborative text editor
Nearly 70,000 data-conscious individuals have already adopted a personal cloud
A partnership that we are really proud of was created with CEMEA and the support of Secours Populaire Français, the Afnic Foundation, the Samu Social de Paris and Framasoft to fight against digital exclusion
A partnership with Gandi allows their customers to create a Cozy space on their own domain. You will stay because you can leave.
Cozy Cloud has been rewarded by the NGO MyData as MyDataOperator
Cozy was chosen as the data platform for its energy savings service offered at the Data Challenge thanks to Métropole Grand Lyon
Videos
Radical Exchange Talk: Data Agency. Individual or Shared?
Founded by Glen Weyl, RadicalxChange (RxC) is a global movement for next-generation political economies.
Digital networks have centralized power over identities and information, creating problems for both markets and democracy. Does the solution require more shared agency over data? What might that look like? This panel discussion is structured around thought experiments to find solutions to this issue.
Featuring: Matt Prewitt, president of RadicalxChange Foundation; Nick Vincent, Ph.D. student in Northwestern University's Technology and Social Behavior program and is part of the People, Space, and Algorithms Research Group, our very own, Kaliya Young; moderated by Jennifer Morone is the CEO of RadicalxChange Foundation.
Disposable Self-sovereign Identity Request for Information Webinar
The Object Management Group is exploring potential issues and opportunities for standardization across the world of distributed ledger (DLT) and Blockchain ecosystems.
Podcasts
State of Identity with IDRamp (Enterprise SSI company)
As someone who has uniquely spent their full career immersed in identity, Mike Vesey (CEO of IdRamp) shares an insider perspective of how the industry has evolved during his tenure. This episode dives into the impacts of rapid digitalization worldwide, where identity is heading due to digital transformation, and the benefits that come with it.
Lisa LeVasseur on the ethical behaviour of technology and the Me2B Alliance LTADI
the Me2B Alliance and how it aims to make technology better for humans, plus the businesses (B-s) which are shining a light on privacy issues and giving the Me-s more control.
“We used to call ourselves something like the ‘organic food label’. But that’s actually not right. We’re more like independent automobile crash testing.”
Self-Sovereign Identity and IoT – insights from the Sovrin Foundation
Michael Shea is the Managing Director of the Dingle Group and the Chair of Sovrin Foundation’sSSI in IoT Working Group. In this podcast we discussed the white paper he authored on Self Sovereign Identity and IoT. To explain the opportunities SSI can provide to IoT, Michael introduces us to three profiles: Jamie (machine to person), Bob (machine to machine) and Bessie the cow (digital twin).
ShareRing Partnerships
Blockchain platform enables users to pay for Viator experiences with crypto
The ShareRing platform, built on Tendermint, will allow users to book, register, and pay for Viator’s 395,000 global activities and experiences, using local fiat currencies or major crypto assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and its native SharePay token (SHRP).
The platform uses the ShareRing ID system to ensure that sensitive personal and financial information is securely handled, and has contact tracing features to help with tourism safety during the pandemic.
ShareRing Unites with China’s International Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN)
BSN aggregates their technology partners’ services into their cloud-based ecosystem to make them all accessible to any company or developer that wishes to use them, with very low monthly access fees starting at just $20. Their “plug and play” approach eliminates the need for hiring or outsourcing highly specialized developers, who are in short supply due to high demand in this industry.
One of the most exciting benefits of ShareRing’s integration with BSN’s global ecosystem is how effortless it will be for companies to incorporate our products and services without requiring ShareRing’s assistance with development and integration.