BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Cade Diehm\, Benjamin Royer (New Design Congress) DTSTART:20240424T160000Z DTEND:20240424T170000Z DTSTAMP:20260417T111158Z UID:Metagov/198 DESCRIPTION:Title: Research notes on Digital identity\nby Cade Diehm\, Benjamin Royer ( New Design Congress) as part of Metagovernance Seminar\n\n\nAbstract\nDesp ite years of information security innovation\, the state of user safety co ntinues to decay and digital systems remain vulnerable. This is because th e majority of attacks rely on a flawed first principle of digital identity assembled from entrenched assumptions around presentation\, authenticatio n\, enforcement and trust. As societies continue to digitize with digital identity as the endpoint for all socio-technical contact between citizens\ , institutions and infrastructure\, the collective inability to imagine ne w designs for digital identity will shatter how we cultivate social trust. How else can this depressing state of affair\, where no single attribute of a person can escape the reach of bad actors\, be brought to an end?\n\n Since 2023\, New Design Congress has applied a combination digital anthrop ology cum- adversarial security research methodology to the question of th e flawed digital identity -- its definitions\, implementations\, and impli cations on the present and future. From FaceID to BankID\, from Facebook t o the fediverse\, from Worldcoin to the world's passports\, this is an exh austive study of the opportunities and risks that emerge from how we repre sent entities in the information age. At the centre of all this is a core hypothesis: today's digital identities are inherently vulnerable to attack \, and this leads to brittle digital societies.\n\nWith first findings due just weeks from this seminar\, NDC has since January been drip-releasing research notes -- abridged chapters from the forthcoming report. Parts one (Identifying & Defining the Digital Self) and two (Self-(De)termination: The Fatal Ambiguity of Digital Identity) having already been released (ini tiating discussion in the Metagov Slack). Part three Spheres of Identity" - coauthored by Roel Roscam Abbing - is forthcoming\, and will look at the properties of centralized/decentralized/federated identity systems.\n\nFr om their first research note:\n\n"Despite the popular concepts of digital identity being tied to user self-expression or data-politics\, the express ion or representation of self is not the intent of the digital identity fi rst principle. Instead\, the overarching goal shared by all implementation s of digital identity is that of the broader intent of cybernetics: to gov ern a population in aggregate. This is accomplished by standardising the p roperties of entities and actors as they are appear within the digital sys tem\, eliminating edge cases where possible\, and then designing socio-tec hnical touchpoints within the system that allow for the management of thes e subjects."\n\nCade and Benjamin will join our seminar to present the bro ad arc of their research\, draw connections between digital governance\, c ybernetics\, and the untenability of digital identity in its current incar nation\, opening a discussion around the future of online governance. Thei r presentation follows last week's seminar on the 17th of April looking at a similar topic in digital identity\, particularly proof of personhood (d etails for last week's seminar are here: https://researchseminars.org/talk /Metagov/196/).\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/Metagov/198/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR