Re: Call for Focal DID Use Cases

On June 5, 2018 09:02:09 am PDT, "Samantha Mathews" 
<samantha@venn.agency> wrote:

> What could possibly be more pressing? I’m furious that terms like 
> Self Sovereign Identity have become your protocols and jargon. I’m 
> furious that in all my research the only use cases for PEOPLE 
> managing or partaking in their data life cycle that I’ve found was 
> 7 years ago in Kaliya’s paper.

I have similar concerns as I have outlined in a recent self sovereign 
identity discussion [1].

I think DIDs are great and a necessary step for the plumbing of a new 
node-based network. Using DIDs to represent personal identities is 
inevitable. Claiming that these identities can be self sovereign 
(whatever that means: there is no common understanding) is a huge 
stretch.

I have serious concerns that DIDs will be used to bring online, in a 
central/correlating fashion, what was in the past spread around many 
parties which by law or inconvenience could not correlate/share 
information.

I have serious concerns that self sovereign identity will turn into a 
mechanism that simply replaces physical filing folders that hold a 
person's documents issued by governments and corporations.

The use-case discussion thus far confirms my concerns as the focus is 
primarily on digitizing existing relationships between authorities and 
individuals.

I find that this group is skewed towards technology for government and 
big business (understandably so since it is a W3C group) and that seems 
to be counter to what DID based identity (especially self sovereign) is 
envisioned to achieve.

I have decided not to contribute individual-empowering use-cases as I 
think the problem does not lie with DIDs but how they are leveraged by 
authorities and corporations which is completely out of our hands. I 
feel like this group is the wrong venue to discuss the layers of 
abstraction that need to be built on top of DIDs to realize self 
sovereign identity as it is not purely a technical problem. I don't 
know if there is a venue for such discussions and if such a venue can 
actually effectively affect anything.

I'll leave it by saying that the DID use-cases presented are 
inevitable, reflect a technology centered way of thinking and it makes 
sense for this group to work on them. That being said I think it is 
completely inappropriate to claim that this technology-only approach 
will lead to what I understand self sovereign identity to be and would 
be much happier if such claims are dropped and picked up in a new venue 
with much wider representation from other professions.

The entire self sovereign identity discussion must be completely 
reframed for it to lead to what is envisioned.

An insightful past experience comes to mind. The CommonJS [2] group 
appeared with huge energy when JavaScript started making its way to the 
server in a real way. Much energy was expanded discussing a filesystem 
API that is consistent across many javascript engine implementations. 
Lots of ideals were strived for and ultimately the entire effort was 
thwarted by NodeJS skyrocketing in popularity making its filesystem API 
the defacto standard. This was perceived at the time as undesirable as 
the API was not as nice as envisioned by the group. NodeJS has led to 
an explosion of new thinking and a path forward for server side 
javascript only because it decided on something simple and stuck with 
it. Only now is the community starting to come around to some of the 
ideals originally envisioned by the CommonJS group and we still have a 
long way to go.

My point is that no matter how much you want DIDs to do something it 
will be driven by one or two leading implementations and everyone will 
have little choice but to follow these while chasing all the typical 
low hanging fruit opportunities of what can be done with DIDs. Only 
much later will there be the energy to transcend the DID layer to start 
addressing a truly sovereign model of identity.

I thus encourage this group to keep a minimal practical and technical 
focus and leave idealistic and sensational claims of what DIDs can do 
to other groups that leverage DIDs together with other concepts, 
professions and law to actually realize what I think we all envision in 
terms of self sovereign identity.

Christoph

[1] - 
https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/self-sovereign-identity/issues/6#issuecomment-384726106
[2] - http://www.commonjs.org/




> I understand That technical and granular discussions are a must when 
> discussing something like this. But we’ve had seven years to teach 
> people that their personal data does not refer to their cell phone 
> plan and yet still when I Google personal data cell phone plans are 
> the first thing I see. Over seven years since third parties have been 
> accessing our data and we’re discussing the details of a estate 
> planning? This is not good enough right now.
>
> Can someone please point me towards anyone working on solving this 
> problem? Can we also discuss the importance of including a more 
> diverse background?
>
> Is there a larger more collaborative  group besides the W3C that 
> deals with these overarching human crisis or are the silos created by 
> these very specific groups all there is?
>
>> On Jun 4, 2018, at 11:21 PM, Moses Ma 
>> <moses.ma@futurelabconsulting.com> wrote:
>>
>> Adrian, I wanted to say that you shared a terrific use case. I'm 
>> going to submit three, but thought I'd send them as a PDF first, as 
>> I included a simple persona image       to bring the story to life. 
>> See attached. Maybe we can add a field in the form to upload a 
>> persona image.
>>
>> FYI, I use this template for user stories, based on a persona: "As a 
>> <persona>, I want <what?> so that <why?>."
>>
>> Maybe this can help some of you write yours in a new way.
>>
>> Moses
>>
>>
>>
>>> On 6/3/18 8:58 PM, Adrian Gropper wrote:
>>> Joe, thanks for reminding me that a good use-case should be about 
>>> value creation and human experience rather than DID or some other 
>>> tech. Here is my attempt:
>>>
>>> Name -- A pithy name that captures the relevance of the use case
>>> A Prescription for Alice
>>>
>>> Background -- A sentence or three capturing current state of 
>>> practice, the motivation, and the value it creates
>>> Alice wants help with her urinary tract infection (UTI) and is a 
>>> bit touchy about her privacy. In the old days, she would have to 
>>> make an appointment in-person and get a paper prescription to take 
>>> to a pharmacy. She wants to save money and have peace of mind. 
>>> Description -- A paragraph capturing the core action of the use 
>>> case: what people do
>>> Because she lives in Seattle, Alice is in a state that allows 
>>> Planned Parenthood to diagnose and prescribe online 
>>> https://www.plannedparenthood.org/get-care/get-care-online . Alice 
>>> uses the identity wallet on her iPhone to register with the online 
>>> medical practice. She tells the online practice her name is Althea 
>>> with password-less authentication and a verified driver's license 
>>> credential to prove that she's a WA resident. The remote physician, 
>>> Bob, is licensed by the WA Board of Medicine and credentialed by 
>>> Planned Parenthood of WA, Inc. He's securely signed in using the 
>>> identity wallet on his smartphone. Bob issues Alice a digital 
>>> prescription in the form of a verifiable credential and allows 
>>> Alice to download it however she pleases. Alice is a librarian and 
>>> trusts her local public library to erase their logs as allowed by 
>>> law. She uses one of their computers to sign-in and do all of this. 
>>> She snaps a picture of the QR code that is the prescription to take 
>>> to the pharmacy. Charlie, the licensed pharmacist, scans the 
>>> prescription QR code and fills the prescription. Alice pays cash.
>>>
>>>
>>> Sticky Wicket -- A sentence or three capturing the awkward 
>>> challenge in this particular situation
>>> The challenge of this particular use-case is that only Bob and 
>>> Charlie are verified identities and accountable for their 
>>> interaction with Alice. Alice can be anonymous or 
>>> pairwise-pseudonymous with both Bob and Charlie and everything just 
>>> works. Alice, Bob, and Charlie all keep separate and legally 
>>> authentic copies of the records of their interaction in case of 
>>> dispute.
>>>
>>> Distinction -- A brief phrase explaining what makes this use case distinct
>>> The Prescription use-case is a common and high-value example of 
>>> privacy engineering as we shift to convenient and cost-effective 
>>> online commerce among licensed and unlicensed individuals as peers. 
>>> Bob and Charlie benefit by reducing or even eliminating the 
>>> influence of their respective             institutions or employers 
>>> and therefore make more money. They pass some savings to Alice who 
>>> also gets increased peace of mind. What makes a good use case?
>>>
>>> A good use case is one that is:
>>> A. Unique -- minimal overlap with other use cases
>>> B. Relevant -- highlights the particular value of DIDs
>>> C. Value Creating -- there is demonstrable value to the people at 
>>> the heart of the use case
>>> D. Simple yet Sticky -- simple enough to be accessible, but also 
>>> captures a potentially complicated edge case. E. Specific -- Uses 
>>> real names and real situations to help readers empathize with the 
>>> human requirements
>>>
>>> Adrian
>>
>> -- <FLClogo.png>
>> Moses Ma | Partner
>>
>> moses.ma@futurelabconsulting.com | moses.ma@sparkchaincapital.com | 
>> moses@ngenven.com
>>
>> v+1.415.568.1068 | skype mosesma
>>
>>
>> FutureLab provides strategy, ideation and technology for 
>> breakthrough innovation.
>>
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>>
>>
>> Or whet your appetite by reading Agile Innovation and Blockchain 
>> Design Sprint.
>>
>> <FutureLab DID use cases.pdf>

Received on Tuesday, 5 June 2018 17:58:31 UTC