
Some Perspective on Self-Sovereign Identity - kawera
https://www.kuppingercole.com/blog/guest/some-perspective-on-self-sovereign-identity
======
lmkg
As part of some research into online anonymity, I took a detour into the legal
history of naming. In the common law (Anglosphere) tradition, the history of
"legal names" is much shorter than one would expect. It's a longstanding
principle that individuals have the right to be recognized under the name of
their choosing. (This right is given explicit lip service in many states' laws
and court rulings, but actually exercising it is in many cases a practical
impossibility.) The general conclusion I took away is that the regulation of
names is an overreach of government authority. An 'administrative identity'
(which is a great name for it) is the map, not the territory, and it should be
treated as such.

Another thing I found is that identities are not singular. Most people (and
especially under-privileged groups) maintain multiple identities for different
settings. Sometimes but not always, these identifies have different names. The
idea of a single "real name" isn't well-grounded in reality, and the
conflation of "real name" with "legal name" is even further afield--how you
present yourself to the government is unlikely to be how you truly think of
yourself.

I've spent some time wondering what a social network might look like if it was
explicitly built around the idea of people managing multiple public profiles,
and keeping the connection between them private. G+, for its sins, might have
gotten the closest back in the day with "circles," but that was still based
around how you viewed others, with a more singular view of how you let others
view you. It gets complicated, though... just trying to manage visibility
rules is complicated (if two of my identities are friends with two identities
owned by the same person, do I want to them know to be able to discover the
connection?). I guess that's what happen when you try to build formal rules
around a nuanced social system.

~~~
pc2g4d
I've been thinking about this recently as I've been running more or less a
private blog for my family. Sometimes I wish I could share parts of my
messages with friends, too. I'd like to mark one post as "for friends and
family" and another post as "family only" or "friends only".

I know this is technically possible and I could probably do something about
it, but my point is that the desire to present different parts of ourselves to
different groups is common and reasonable and it would be great to support it
in identity systems.

One approach might be that your "identity" is merely an opaque user-controlled
keypair and that the meaning of that "identity" is determined by others. At
work that identity might mean Employee 493293, and at home it might mean
"Bob".

Of course, better to give one pubkey to work and use one pubkey at home. But
regardless what the identity actually _means_ is determined in the context
where it is used, just as today I might be called by one name by one group of
people and another name by another, with my appearance being the identifier.

~~~
eximius
> Of course, better to give one pubkey to work and use one pubkey at home.

I'm working on something like this, actually.

------
dmckeon
Naming by others in one's social context is described for 5 people in TFA's
3rd paragraph, but the author treats that as self naming. If people call you
something, and you answer to it, are you a sovereign defining your own name,
or a subject of the people in a social context (family, sports club, poker
club, cow-orkers) who are offering you a name, which you may accept, or
attempt to reject?

I am familiar with a community of people who use names they have chosen within
the community. (SFW :-) ). Before Facebook, one might expect to know the
chosen names of perhaps half the people at a gathering, and the "real" (first,
nick, email, perhaps legal) names of perhaps half of those. Since Facebook,
and as community messaging has moved from mailing lists to Facebook, under its
early "real names" policy, people now know the Facebook names of many
attendees but have more difficulty remembering their chosen names. Social
context and naming affect each other.

------
insensible
I love the distinction between self-sovereign and administrative identity.
Administrative identity is a leaky abstraction of a type that is too precise
and binding.

------
ggm
self-sovereign down here, is synonymous with libertarian nut jobs who believe
tax is evil, and they own their land absolutely to the core of the earth, and
satellites in orbit.

Get off my lawn.

Also, for the deliberAEte mis-spelling of names, to try and assert some legal
mumbo-jumbo around contract law, identity, and compliance with the state.
Sorry Staet. I can't keep up with the jargon.

Its the chemtrails.

