Re: Human rights perspective on W3C and IETF protocol interaction

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a meta-comment about the human rights issue...

First, I wanted to acknowledge Adrian for surfacing this matter, and 
allowing all of us to consider the meaning of our work - /to uplift 
every human being on the planet/. I believe that the entire story of our 
species is a slow march toward self sovereignty. If you consider 
marriage and reproductive rights, a thousand years ago, only the Pope 
could issue a divorce decree and it required a Reformation for the State 
to take this right away from the Church. Interracial marriage were 
outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South 
Africa and these miscegenation laws were not abolished until 1960. And 
it wasn't until 2015, with the Supreme Court's decision in the ACLU's 
case Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples in all 50 states were 
assured the right to have their marriages recognized in whichever state 
they live. This is a series of hard won victories that give power back 
to the people.

The right to control our identity is following a similar moral arc and 
it's great to see a desire in our community to align with this slow 
transition from vassals declaring that peasants belonged to them, to 
corporate vassals trying to "own" their users via their data. This is 
why I so liked Christopher's use of the term "self-sovereign" for this 
effort, this work is truly revolutionary.

However, the thing I am concerned about is whether doing this now might 
attract negative attention from the PTB... the "powers that be". For 
example, if I start writing about the use of blockchains to manage 
prisoner records in China, this will certainly be tracked by analysts in 
that country, potentially leading to formal objections down the 
downstream. Being too vocal upfront is not always the best idea.

Therefore, I'd like to relay the advice of a Ch'an Buddhist teacher I 
once studied meditation under, whom I asked about engaged Buddhism, "How 
do we reconcile Buddhist detachment with the need for social justice?" 
His reply was memorable, "All I can say is that Buddhism is actually 
about revolution in every aspect, but don't become a flag waving 
revolutionary who does not think strategically." Then he related this story:

    /The Mongols occupied China for 88 years, and during this time, the
    spirits of the Chinese people were at an all-time low. Every aspect
    of their lives was at the mercy of their Mongol rulers who were not
    merciful. Due to fears of uprisings, Chinese people couldn’t meet in
    groups. Possessing weapons was illegal, and even meat and vegetable
    cleavers were rationed—one for every ten families. Mongol guards
    were everywhere, and spies were stationed in each household. There
    were stories of daughters violently “deflowered” before their
    weddings. And a Mongol law demanded the thumbs of all Chinese boys
    to be mutilated at birth so they would be incapable of drawing a
    bow. ///China was ripe for an uprising.

    /Zhu Yuanzhang, the man who would one day be emperor of China’s Ming
    Dynasty, was then a young man born to a desperately poor peasant
    family. He had a brilliant friend, Liu Bowen, a poet and
    philosopher, who was a remarkable strategist. The two of them worked
    to end the occupation. The Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, the
    time when every family would traditionally exchange and eat pastries
    called mooncakes. Liu sent men to every corner of the three
    prefectures under Mongol rule, where each visited pastry shops and
    filed orders for millions and millions of mooncakes. In each one, it
    is said, they slipped a piece of paper that said: “Spiritual forces
    are hidden in the darkness, they are secretly helping people to end
    the icy cold. Take action on the midnight hour, let us kill the
    housekeeping masters all together!”  Since Mongols did not read
    Chinese, this looked simply like some fortune cookie, nothing to
    worry about.

    And so they did, on the night of the Moon Festival in 1368, in
    perfect coordination, the people of China retook their country from
    their oppressors in one fell swoop./

The point here is that "flag waving" and virtue signaling could actually 
rile up potential negative forces, who currently enjoy monopolistic 
control over user identities. I'm wondering if it may be best to discuss 
such matters in offshoot groups? Certainly, Manu and the leadership team 
have done a very good job of trying to bring those powers into the 
conversation and have them align with this moral arc we are proposing 
for identity standards, but it's led to formal objections. Perhaps we 
can be more strategic about this?

Finally, why hasn't anyone talked about https://id2020.org - wouldn't 
they make a good partner for this effort to ensure that human rights are 
respected in some way in our work together.

I hope this little tangent was at least entertaining to read. Returning 
now to lurker status...

Moses




On 1/5/22 11:04 AM, Ted Thibodeau Jr wrote:
> On Jan 5, 2022, at 10:11 AM, Adrian Gropper <agropper@healthurl.com> 
> wrote:
>> transferring responsibility from an issuer to a subject of a VC
>
> For the eleventeenth time, the SUBJECT of a VC has NO CONTROL
> over anything to do with that VC.  The only entities with control
> of any kind are the Issuer, the Holder(s), and the Verifier.
> In the wilderness of the World Wide Web, ANYONE CAN SAY ANYTHING
> ABOUT ANYTHING.  (This is not so different from the wilderness
> of paper-space.)
>
> I could Issue a VC today, with you, Adrian, as the Subject,
> which contains anything I care to say about you.  I could say
> that you, Adrian, are the 14th moon orbiting Sol III (a/k/a
> the third planet orbiting our sun, a/k/a Planet Earth).  This
> is not actually a fact, of course, but I may nonetheless Assert
> it, and I may do so in a VC, which simply allows anyone to
> Verify that I did in fact Issue that Assertion within that VC.
>
> I could Issue this VC with or without the knowledge of you,
> the Subject, to any Holder of my choosing, who may Present
> it to any Holder or Verifier of *their* choosing, without
> any alert to you, the Subject.
>
> There is *nothing* that the CCG nor the VCWG nor the IETF nor
> the UN nor the USGovt nor any other entity can do to prevent
> me from doing so.  The USGovt *may* pass laws that impose
> penalties upon me or others who make such untrue assertions
> in VCs, but, to date, they have not, and there would be some
> lengthy freedom of speech litigation if such were enacted and
> someone then attempted enforcement -- and this is the *most*
> possible path to such restrictions.
>
> Your various efforts will have much greater effect, perhaps
> even delivering the results you want, if you digest this,
> and work it into your various writings and excoriations of
> the various WGs and CGs and other audiences you address.
> Failure to integrate this reality into your output will
> only lead to frustration on all sides, and failure to
> reach any of your declared goals.
>
> I believe that some of your efforts have value.  (I don't
> know the totality of your efforts, so cannot say this about
> everything you will do or have done.)  I would like to see
> these benefit the world.  I do not believe that will happen
> if you continue to ignore the hard-won vocabulary developed
> by the CCG, VCWG, DIDWG, and related efforts.
>
> Be seeing you,
>
> Ted
>
-- 
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