W3C starting the charter work on Linked Data Signatures

Dear all,

the W3C has started to work on a Working Group charter for Linked Data Signatures:

    https://w3c.github.io/lds-wg-charter/index.html

The work proposed in this Working Group includes Linked Data Canonicalization, as well as algorithms and vocabularies for encoding digital proofs, such as digital signatures, and with that secure information expressed in serializations such as JSON-LD, TriG, and N-Quads.

The need for Linked Data canonicalization, digest, or signature has been known for a very long time, but it is only in recent years that research and development has resulted in mathematical algorithms and related implementations that are on the maturity level for a Web Standard. A separate explainer document:

   https://w3c.github.io/lds-wg-charter/explainer.html

provides some backgrounds, as well as a small set of use cases.

The Credentials Community Group has been instrumental in the work leading to this charter proposal, and the work envisaged in the Working Group plans to incorporate several of the documents that the CCG has incubated and published over years. In other words, the work planned in the Working Group is a direct continuation of the work done in the CCG in the area.

It must also be emphasized, however, that this work is not only relevant for Verifiable Credentials, nor is it bound to a particular serialization like JSON-LD. There are numerous use cases in Linked Data, like the publication of biological and pharmaceutical data, consumption of mission critical RDF vocabularies, and others, that depend on the ability to verify the authenticity and integrity of the data being consumed. This Working Group aims at covering all those, and we hope to involve the Linked Data Community at large in the elaboration of the final charter proposal.

We welcome your general expressions of interest and support. If you wish to make your comments public, please use GitHub issues:

   https://github.com/w3c/lds-wg-charter/issues

A formal W3C Advisory Committee Review for this charter is expected in about six weeks.

Cheers

Ivan

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Ivan Herman, W3C 
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +33 6 52 46 00 43
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704