- From: Moses Ma <moses.ma@futurelabconsulting.com>
- Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2021 15:09:35 -0700
- To: Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us>, George Artem <georgeartem@gmail.com>
- Cc: "W3C Credentials CG (Public List)" <public-credentials@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <765cb412-9fbd-a322-122c-0445fa637a64@futurelabconsulting.com>
About the digital press pass use case...
This is an incredibly complex issue, but an important one and a quiet
Sunday afternoon, so I'll jump in and wax philosophic here.
/I apologize for bloviating in advance.../
In certain war zones, having a realistic looking press pass could save
someone's life, so I am supportive of this functionality in general. But
the flip side is that it could inadvertently get more professional
journalists killed.
For example. the CIA used the cover of a UN/UNICEF hepatitis vaccine
program to gain access to the bin Laden compound in Abbotabad, to do DNA
tests of the children there. After the successful op, the Taliban
assassinated eight polio vaccination workers in retribution, even though
those people and UNICEF had nothing to do with the operation. This
resulted in the suspension of U.N. polio eradication efforts in
Pakistan, which subsequently led to outbreaks of polio in Pakistan and
Somalia. So like, lots of people died as a result of all of this, which
had credentials at the heart of the matter.
Under pressure from public health experts, Obama later promised never to
use UNICEF workers as a cover, just as the CIA promised not to use
journalists as cover, in a ban that was initiated in 1977. So we need to
be careful, because there may be unanticipated consequences to our
actions in this group, that could cost lives, especially around
decentralized press credentials and vaxpasses.
By the way, I know about this because I was part of the UNICEF team that
helped to contain those outbreaks. By the way, this was actually a
pretty dangerous mission, as there was a kidnapping of an extended team
member during our mission. And two team members died in an IED bombing
along the very road we took a few months earlier. Now, I could be
bullshitting, so as a way to demonstrate verifiable content, here's me
in a polio hotspot in Rawalpindi:
If you examine the EXIF for this photo:
* <exif:Lens>iPhone 5s front camera 2.15mm f/2.4</exif:Lens>
* <exif:GPSLatitude>33,37.6117N</exif:GPSLatitude>
* <exif:GPSLongitude>73,1.3092E</exif:GPSLongitude>
* <exif:GPSAltitudeRef>0</exif:GPSAltitudeRef>
* <exif:GPSAltitude>64637/123</exif:GPSAltitude>
* <exif:GPSTimeStamp>2014-12-09T07:00:40Z</exif:GPSTimeStamp>
The location maps to a suburb of Rawalpindi, and it was taken in 2014.
If the hardware were trusted, this could prove that I really was there
and that the image was not photoshopped. (Incidentally, I contacted a
senior exec/friend at Nikon, to see if they would be interested in
creating a trusted hardware based journalism camera, but it wasn't of
major interest there, as they were too busy fighting off Canon and Apple
for survival.)
Anyway, I was the guy who brought Ed Bice to the Boston RWOT meeting to
discuss starting up a Verifiable News subgroup - he started the
Credibility Coalition that got funding from Google, Facebook and Craig
Newmark to expand its work assessing trust in journalism, and was later
supported by 50 news agencies. Anyway, Sandro cut him off from the DID
pack pretty early, and I assessed the difficulty of the project to be at
the "tilting at windmills" level, so I was happy to stop thinking about
this problem for a while, to focus on easier problems.
The point of this little exercise is that there may never be a universal
arbiter of truth, but we can slowly build a web of trust for evidence
based credibility indicators. And this group of ours should focus more
on building trustable envelopes than trying to insure the veracity of
contents of those envelopes. That is a key distinction for our statement
of purpose.
Moses
PS, about the UNICEF thing... this is tangential, but the best thing we
did to address the outbreak in Pakistan was to create a comic book to
train the 200,000 polio workers who had to go door to door to inoculate
children. If you're interested, here's the comic book:
*https://www.dropbox.com/s/7s2ezchb7gyr02t/PolioComicBook.pdf?dl=0*
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/7s2ezchb7gyr02t/PolioComicBook.pdf?dl=0>
And here's my original script for the comic book, before editing by
UNICEF experts:
*https://www.dropbox.com/s/221vic4t9luypgt/PolioComicBook%20Script.pdf?dl=0*
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/221vic4t9luypgt/PolioComicBook%20Script.pdf?dl=0>
Again, if this sort of thing could be made verifiable, it leads to
greater veracity in web content.
--
On 8/8/21 12:18 PM, Bob Wyman wrote:
> George Artemwrote:
>
> would you be proposing some sort of “proof of truth” block-chain?
>
> There is not, never has been, and never will be either a universally
> accepted arbiter of truth or a process for establishing truth. To
> label anything as a mechanism for establishing "proof-of-truth" is
> misguided doomed to failure.
>
> The best we'll ever be able to do is create methods by which claims of
> truth, or its absence, can be made. Even something like a "Digital
> Press Pass" seems to me to be faulty in the basic assumption that
> there is some universally useful state of being a member of the
> "press." The best we'll be able to do is allow various entities to
> make claims about the "pressness" of other entities. For instance,
> some might claim that Fox News is a "press" organization, others would
> claim that Fox New" is an advocacy group more akin to a political
> organization or party. There is, of course, value in both sets of
> statements. The key thing is to allow these statements to be made.
> Trying to craft mechanisms for establishing or proving truth is a
> waste of effort.
>
> Adam Sobieski wrote:
>
> I am proposing that “digital press passes” could be created and
> could be a component of solutions for mitigating misinformation
> and disinformation.
>
> A Digital Press Pass could, at best, provide information that might
> influence one's evaluation of the credibility of a speaker, at some
> specific time, when making statements about some kind of information.
> But, even credible speakers (whatever that may mean) are neither
> always right nor wrong. Thus, it isn't qualities of the speaker that
> should be considered most important but rather statements about their
> statements. In the end, I will be much less impressed by a claim that
> someone is "press" than I will be if I discover that people whom I
> trust usually find that person's statements to be true. As a result,
> what I would like to see is agreement on how I, and those I trust, can
> issue discoverable credentials concerning the veracity or qualities of
> statements that we come across. From such statements about statements,
> we'd then be able to use a variety of methods to extrapolate the
> probable truthfulness of speakers, whether or not they hold press
> passes. This should, of course, then lead to methods for making
> statements about the qualities of those who present various press
> credentials. In any case, the credibility of one with a press pass
> should arise primarily from evaluation of their statements, not from
> their press credentials.
> bob wyman
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 8, 2021 at 2:45 AM George Artem <georgeartem@gmail.com
> <mailto:georgeartem@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Respectfully, this is at best a very naive idea. Here are some
> very basic questions:
>
> Exactly who would be the “revoking agency” or “revoking authority”
> that would verify the claimed “mis” or “dis” information? A
> “fact-checker” like the Ministry of Truth?
>
> Alternatively, would you be proposing some sort of “proof of
> truth” block-chain? If so, what would be the parameters of your
> “proof of truth” validation for journalistic bias? Emerging
> science? Etc.
>
> Looking forward to your thoughts.
>
>
> George
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jul 20, 2021, at 9:48 AM, steve.e.magennis@gmail.com
>> <mailto:steve.e.magennis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Two other projects in the VC space come to mind that might be
>> worth looking into:
>>
>> * GLEIF
>> <https://wiki.trustoverip.org/display/HOME/Ecosystem+Working+Group+Files?preview=%2F66630%2F67146%2FAccelerating-Digital-Identity-with-the+LEI_ToIP-Ecosystem-Foundry_WG_v1.0_final+.pdf>
>> – this is an ecosystem with a globally authenticated list of
>> orgs, think distinctly, and unequivocally known publishers
>> (sans reputation), they are potentially extending into named
>> individuals within those orgs, think writer(s). This could
>> help solve the problem of easily and confidently
>> distinguishing John Smith at Reuters from John Smith at Reuterzz.
>> * Internet of Research
>> <https://wiki.trustoverip.org/display/HOME/Internet+of+Research+Ecosystem+Task+Force>:
>> This group is tackling the issue of scholarly publications
>> which need to be very clear about authentic authorship,
>> recognizable publication and citations of published works.
>> Maybe more granular than you need in some ways, and maybe
>> less granular than you need in others, but worth a look.
>>
>> Happy to help with intros if interested in either.
>>
>> -Steve
>>
--
*Moses Ma | Managing Partner*
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Received on Sunday, 8 August 2021 22:10:08 UTC