4 annoyances to get you hooked on Identity Management
What do you expect of a week’s study on electronic identities?
Summary
- e-Identity spans identification, authentication and authorisation where there is a constant battle between privacy, efficiency, security and ease of use.
- Prejudices about the field of e-Identity: boring, geeky, complex and hard to grasp.
- However, there are 4 annoyances that’ll get you hooked on e-Identity matters: your 500+passwords, the endless stream of forms you have to fill out with personal data (who owns it?), the free running introduction of mobile biometrics collecting personal unique physical data and last but not least: the growing inequalities in the world.
Why e-Identity matters
“What is it?”, you’ll ask yourself in the first place. Electronic identity, or e-Identity is a way for people to electronically proof that they are who they say they are.
Some cite Dave Birch by saying “Identity is the new money”. Many people tend to go along with that. Me too. What happened that e-ID became so important to me and that I am willing (for the second time in a few months, by the way) to lock myself up for a week in my office to “get to know everything?”
I write it down (again) because in a week, I might have become a real insider in the field, not being able to communicate in a low profile way about the subject.
The content of the subject is not unfamiliar to me. On the contrary: through detailed study and the combination with blockchain technology, I have become wiser and wiser. Ahem!… How different could I perceive my knowledge in about a week from now!
Identity and Access Management (IAM) a very broad area. It spans identification, authentication and authorisation where there is a constant battle between privacy, efficiency, security and ease of use. In combination with the range of possible blockchain applications in the future, it is a complete jungle. Luckily, I have a lot of experience in the fields of open-source application, the web and ICT. So I might get it relatively fast and I might get a bird’s eye view sooner than others.
Regularly, I share my enthusiasm about progress in the field of e-Identity management with outsiders. In these occasions, I notice that there are grey spots in my overview picture. Or that I am not able to explain in normal human lingo what the connections to the real world are. And find myself ambushed in overlapping terminology, things like that.
There is another issue: Too often I can not place questions of people in a bigger picture. Well, I might point in the right direction, but somehow I am not yet able to be spot-on all the time. Many definitions and terms seem to overlap and the market/the world of e-Identity is opaque. I would like to change that, so we can engineer the right flexible teams of independent experts and then connect them with clients for real projects. No rush, this is just something I need to take care of in the near future.
Prejudices
After I have been studying e-Identity part-time for a year now, backed by what I learned during IAM meeings, I found these are the prejudices about e-Identity:
eID looks boring, aimed at civil servants. A lot of talking with nothing much really going on. And when there finally is some result, it is mostly intangible: standards, agreements, future visions.
e-ID is complex and hard to grasp, just like the blockchain technology.
- It is difficult to understand; you will soon find yourself in cryptography and mathematics.
- It is complex; the complexity is high, because there are as many parties involved as there are in the real world. Identity always needs to be seen in a certain context.
IAM speakers from the flanks
If you look at the speakers at an average meeting in the IAM field, you’ll see engineers and passionate scientists being flanked by experienced entrepreneurs. Such meetings approximately cost 100 to 200 euros for an afternoon, serious money for a newbie.
“But erm, excuse me, what was your question again?”
In the current small world, speakers get respect. A newcomer might not directly understand why. But VVIPs can even be in the third row in the room. Sometimes anyone in the audience can be handed over the microphone by the moderator. “Must be a leading scientist”, I think in those cases. During interruptions and rounds of questions, people knock each other over the head with difficult abbreviations and jargon. One question from the audience is even smarter than the other. Often accompanied by an extensive introduction and layout of their expertise. The moderator needs to intervene sometimes: “But erm, excuse me, what was your question again?”
How did I end up in this world? No other reason to live? Sure, here’s why!
THE 4 ANNOYANCES TO GET HOOKED ON IDENTITY MANAGEMENT QUICKLY
1. 500+ passwords
I hate to have hundreds of user names and password combinations. It is sucb a hassle, even with a tool that can store all the passwords under a single master password. This has to change quickly.
And now I know: it is called SELF-SOVEREIGN IDENTITY!
2. Endless forms
I get sick having to fill out my profile on all sites. Names, address, phone, date of birth. Buy something at another store on the web? Here we go again: name, username, password, phone etc. That should change too!
And now I know: the way to go is ATTRIBUTION of your identity.
3. Very personal data
I could not believe my eyes when I found out that banks and other benevolent middlemen use people’s fingerprints to validate payments, among other applications. WtF?! …. Why is my fingerprint being transferred over the web? Have they gone completely mad? How safe is this, who owns those (digital) fingerprints? Who is liable to abuse? This should be changed immediately!
And now I know: this is called BIOMETRICS and consists of quickly evolving techniques and expertise connected to e-Identity. We should treat my prejudice as a real prejudice. There is still a lot to be learned. But newcomers should be cautious.
4. Inequalities and refugees
I pulled the last hairs out of my head by watching the medieval process of migration to Europe. Is it really that hard to give people a digital identity, especially when they are poor or not recognized by any country? Quite a few migrants become stateless, displaced children and refugees in migrant camps in transit zones? That should quickly change.
And now I think I know: the way to go is BLOCKCHAIN-IFICATION of your identity, your possessions, your chances, your economic power, and your money (the latter being the least important) to become a SELF SOVEREIGN LOCAL ECOCOMIC INDIVIDUAL POWER.
Now I know that there are important nuances hidden with respect to the “annoyances” above which you could indulge unbridledly without any true knowledge.
But once you know something … you want to know more!
Therefore, I am looking forward to jumping in a second do-it-yourself training of a whole week. You can follow me here: http://wiki.2value.nl/index.php?title=IAM/en and here: http://wiki.2value.nl/index.php?title=Blockchain/en. I will tweet and write too. (@henkvancann)
Colophon
