Hello all.

I think the reason I am writing this message is to give my take on what identity is, and how such a concept might be represented by technology. The idea that I have held for more than 5.5 years revolves around the notion of individuals who assert claims over a collection of devices as to identity, and with which other individuals one may be interacting.

Now, before I tell you my beliefs in regard to identity, in regard to the teleconference I joined several hours ago, the subject of the differences between identity and privacy were raised. Indeed, I believe one's privacy is an important issue, but intuitively to me at least, privacy definitely should be considered only as a component of one's identity.

Identity to me is not something that can be escrowed by any organisation, and trusted by individuals as being the sine qua non to every individual. I back away from such attempts to produce a universal identifier. An individual may indeed choose not to be identified by a "universal identifier", and indeed, the fact that an individual might choose this could in fact be, a claim that could be used to distinguish individuals.

Hence, identity cannot be captured by the use of any individual claim; a set of claims might be better. A system, or perhaps more accurately, a conceptual framework which yet may lend itself to some degree of systematisation that captures a set of arbitrary claims representing behavioural modes might work for asserting individual identity.

Governments may provide an identifier for those citizens who choose to interact with their government. This identifier may be taken as a claim by any other individuals, citizen or alien, as to the identity of the individual with whom one is interacting. Personally, I would only accept a "citizenship identification" indicates a degree to which I was interacting with another one or more individuals over some medium.

So, summarily, I think individuals are identified by their behaviour, and one's behaviour might be ascribable to a collection of claims and assertions concerning the ownership and use by one individual to a collection of identifiers, devices, physical and conceptual territory. A wise government might also realise this; while they may provide an identifier to categorise and audit service requests within its systems, they should not automatically assume that one particular individual's activity can be ascribed to what activity logs might say in regard to one particular identifier.

Hence, a system that might be able to aggregate variable claims together may provide a practical way for anyone to assert their own individual set of claims to others. Of course, a system as I envisage should be capable of 1: allowing individuals who choose to use it to interact unimpeded with individuals who do not and 2: accepting that individuals may choose to identify themselves with some persona in some modes, with another persona in other modes, and may choose not to interact with this system at all (hence to remain anonymous) in yet other modes.

Although I had joined the earlier NSTIC teleconference, I was not sure that my contribution was going to be appropriate, and hence, I didn't speak up. However, the teleconference was informative, and I endeavour to be present and possibly contribute in the future.

I hope most other individuals find these claims and assertions of mine valuably indicative of my beliefs and behaviour.

  Owen.

On 13 January 2011 08:37, Charles Andres <andres.charles@gmail.com> wrote:
My point was the road to public acceptance of any Govt-approved identity plan/policy
will be steep.  Plans to create positive momentum requires dealing with this reality.

Re: your question: Specific policies regulating commerce/ownership of dangerous substances/activities is context dependent.
Can we first agree on what the colored lights mean, and what side of the road we all should drive on? (Right on Red except sometimes in Boston ;-).


On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Tony Rutkowski <trutkowski@netmagic.com> wrote:
On 1/12/2011 11:29 AM, Charles Andres wrote:
However, John Poindexter, the NSA, the CIA, the Patriot Act, RealID,
etc. (to name a few) have "poisoned the well" of trust with previous
attempts to build centralized digital information systems to allow the
government to know more about citizens than citizens know about the
government.

The dialogue seems to have answered the
question posed - the propensity to vilify
public officials and institutions with
different views on this subject as apostates
has not changed.  Perhaps no surprise.

Would you oppose identity checks or tracking
of those who purchase extended clips for Glocks
or does this also abridge perceived rights?

--tony


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Clique Space(TM). Practical, Ubiquitous, and Individual Security and Identity in Cyberspace.
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