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iiw12: Trust Frameworks

May 4th, 2011

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The IIW conference is again underway in Mountain View, CA. This is the 12th conference. I’m capturing some of the sessions in video and/or picture-enhanced audio streams. The later option is important as the Computer History Museum offers free wi-fi, but for over 200 attendees it’s spread pretty thin.

Lately I’ve been beta testing out a low-bandwidth record/broadcast app for my phone called Chachanga. It captures the audio and pairs it with a picture, captured periodically from my phone’s camera. I started the recording a bit late in our first session–here’s most of the Trust Frameworks session with Drummond Reed of Connect.me.

What’s a Trust Framework? From the Open Identity Exchange (OIX):

In digital identity systems, a trust framework is a certification program that enables a party who accepts a digital identity credential (called the relying party) to trust the identity, security, and privacy policies of the party who issues the credential (called the identity service provider) and vice versa.

Basically, it’s a system that helps establish trust between parties: including people (“users” in this picture), sites or services that can verify who you are, and sites or services that need to know who you are. The OIX offers several pdf whitepapers explaining more about Trust Frameworks.

Coaching moment: I care about trust frameworks because I want certain services to be available in a way that protects and assures me that what I want is accurately represented. For example, if I need to digitally prove I’m over 18, I might rely on the DMV to back up my claim. If I need to show that my eyes have 20:20 vision, my eye doctor or health care provider will vouch for me.

One interesting thing about this is that the parties in these scenarios don’t need to know or provide more information about me than necessary: Yes, over 18 years old, or Yes, 20:20 vision. There’s no extra or out of bounds sharing, like “18 years old and… (cue Facebook pictures).” This is about “just the facts” from parties who can be trusted (in a legal sense).

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Identity as Revealed

February 18th, 2011

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In his blog post Identity and The Independent Web, author John Battelle explored the notion of an independent web and a dependent web. He describes:

The Dependent Web is dominated by companies that deliver services, content and advertising based on who that service believes you to be: What you see on these sites “depends” on their proprietary model of your identity, including what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing right now, what “cohorts” you might fall into based on third- or first-party data and algorithms, and any number of other robust signals.

The Independent Web, for the most part, does not shift its content or services based on who you are. However, in the past few years, a large group of these sites have begun to use Dependent Web algorithms and services to deliver advertising based on who you are.

Note the key words “who the service believes you to be.” Battelle continues,

“In a Dependent Web model, the data and processes used to deliver results is opaque and out of the consumer’s control. What we see depends on how the site interprets pre-conceived models of identity it receives from a third party.”

This raises the significant question of who they think we are. They have a pretty distorted picture, given all of the many reasons and persons we sometimes represent. The problem is that increasingly there is no way to separate ourselves (as we wish to be seen) from “ourselves” (as they’ve’ defined us). Jumping to the end of Battelle’s intriguing post:

I think it’s worth defining a portion of the web as a place where one can visit and be part of a conversation without the data created by that conversation being presumptively sucked into a sophisticated response platform – whether that platform is Google, Blue Kai, Doubleclick, Twitter, or any other scaled web service. Now, I’m all for engaging with that platform, to be sure, but I’m also interested in the parts of society where one can wander about free of identity presumption, a place where one can chose to engage knowing that you are in control of how your identity is presented, and when it is revealed.

Coaching moment: Some people are very careful, and others are not at all, about what we search for and say on the net. In the end, it doesn’t matter as much as we might intend. We can’t track or make the same gross assumptions as the information industry is wont to do.

We don’t yet have the tools to shift this situation, but it won’t be long. Several companies are working on this–under names such as Personal Data Store and Personal Data Cloud. There will be a day in your future when, for example, you won’t have to change your home address on a lot of sites that deliver goods, services, or utilities to your home. You’ll change it once, in your personal data area, and the vendors you authorize will come to you for that update.

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11 Identity Trends

January 31st, 2011

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Salvatore D’Agostino at DigitalIDNews posted an article earlier in January, 11 identity trends to watch in 2011, in which he pointed out that despite the proposed National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace and the Federal Identity, Credentialing and Access Management Guidance (Draft, PDF), ”national ID programs, social networking, mobile and e-commerce are all moving out on their own.” The author’s list (with my emphasis) includes:

1. Mobile identity always has been and will continue to be the biggest game in town. Each year nearly 5 billion smart card technology subscriber identity modules are sold. And as smart phones grow in sophistication and as a result occupy an increasing percentage of user screen time they will become the most important area in the identity marketplace.

2. None of the Facebook, Google, OpenID, triad will actually manage to issue trusted identities in 2011 and consumers will continue to fail to realize they are the product and not the customer for these and many other identity providers.

7. The User Managed Access work of the Kantara Initiative will gain support as it addresses the overarching requirement of the need for user control of personal information in the era of shared infrastructure.

9. Consumers will demand the adoption and benefits of commercial off-the-shelf application software to provide privacy and identity protection of data at rest and in motion via encryption and secure channels in their day to day communications with banks, health care organizations, and other organizations even in those states where it is not mandated.

11. Identity theft and fraud will continue to grow and be subsidized by consumers via premiums, user fees and interest rates without the mandate for strong interoperable identities. And while the National Strategy for Trusted Identities will talk the talk it remains to be seen if it can walk the walk.

Coaching moment: As passive customers of digital services, we are prone to greater influence and manipulation by the system, for the benefits of the system and not for ourselves. If we wish to empower ourselves–and the commercial marketplace generally–with better and more trustworthy practices, we will need to be active and even vocal supporters of the alternatives that lead us in that preferred direction. This isn’t as scary as it might seem. It just means making certain choices more mindfully, more aware of the cost of “free.”

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Traitorware!

December 28th, 2010

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers a great commentary by Eva Galperin that describes traitorware: “devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy.” Basically, she’s describing nearly every digital tool that we use and carry, from printers to cell phones and CDs. Somebody is collecting all kinds of information about you in non-volunteered ways. This information includes your location and movements, device identity codes, all of the very intimate details of your life and activities. This term acts as a wake up call: the technology is only going to evolve to detect and discover more details about our selves and our environment.

Coaching moment: The alarming thing about this post, and why I’m happy that EFF is watching developments in this area, is that surreptitious tracking is non-voluntary. We do not know when we purchase our devices what kind of information is being collected and sent back to various hidden interests. The collection of details includes information that we may not wish to share with unknown sources, for unknown purposes about our location, our social network, or personal health, or any other details about our existence. Do we have a choice? More now than we will if we do nothing until later. Write a letter to your congressperson. Talk with your friends. Turn off Fox. Hey, if you’d like to thank EFF for their work in this area, here’s one way.

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