Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? A Review of Subjective Approaches for Sybil-resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

Great  find, Wayne!

The whole paper is a good read. Here's the

Conclusions
>
> Identity is one of our most fundamental human attributes. However, in the
> age of surveillance capitalism, identity itself has become a part of a new,
> digital political frontier40 (Zuboff 2019). As Edward Snowden, one of the
> most prominent activists for the end of surveillance practices in the
> world, recently warned during a videoconference at the 2019 Web3 Summit in
> Berlin: *“The one vulnerability being exploited across all systems is
> Identity.”*
>
> If the “State is the monopoly on violence” as Max Weber once defined it,
> then the Surveillance State (or Surveillance Capital) is the monopoly on
> identity. Consolidated credential mechanisms today all verify humans by
> implementing practices that require the disclosure of personal and private
> information to an identifier. Eventually, this wealth of information
> accrues into credential monopolies, which are a prominent force in the
> perilous drift toward democratic deconsolidation now threatening Western
> democracies. While there is significant space for action in advancing
> effective public policies that contemplate those threats, approving and
> enforcing them is often extremely challenging in the face of the powerful
> market forces they stand against. In that sense, the alternative
> technological paradigms that may arise from Proof of Personhood systems
> could provide a relevant path towards guaranteeing privacy and
> participation rights.
>
> Further, surveillance capitalism bears a worldview that downgrades human
> value and dignity in favor of machine learning systems. Proof of Personhood
> systems counter that logic by creating the building blocks of a
> human-centered economy, where individuals directly control and have
> governance rights over the networks, communities, and organizations they
> belong to. These systems invert the current logic of capitalism, creating
> the base for solidarity economies that can safeguard and elevate the role
> of human consciousness, choice, and agency.
>
> Yes, the approaches explored in this review fall short of this goal in
> several ways, some still relying on existing sources of centralized
> information, others on small networks or high-friction synchronous tasks.
> Nonetheless, Proof of Personhood projects present one of the few viable
> alternatives capable of addressing these problems at their root. In doing
> so, they illustrate that the best technologies do not abstract away
> subjectivity. Instead, they embrace it, seeing subjectivity for what it is:
> not just a necessity, but a strength.
>

On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 9:21 PM Wayne Chang <wyc@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.05300
>
> discussion from strangers on the internet:
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411076
>
>