Re: new ACLU Legislative Guidance

We've been here before with government-issued social security numbers.
Scope creep from government use to the private sector is what the ACLU
should really be talking about.

We have a real-world example with Aadhaar in India. A digital ID is
designed for government use (welfare payments). It then gets linked to
private payment in the banking system as UPI. Then, the system is used to
spawn a Universal Health Identifier which runs as a government-operated
patient-relationship index.

As ACLU says, modern tech can contribute to systems that are decentralized
and protect the human right of free association and assembly. But unless
the architects explicitly design for anonymity and contextual reputation in
the private sector, the unintended consequences of political manipulation
are more or less guaranteed.

Adrian

On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 7:01 AM Robin Wilton <wilton@isoc.org> wrote:

> It’s also worth bearing in mind that if the idea of a “nightmarish
> national identity system” scares legislators into backing off, they are
> very likely to repackage the policy as one whose goal is age assurance/age
> verification, and bring it back again. When that happens, the most relevant
> part of the ACLU analysis is this one:
>
>    - *User control over the release of data*. If you have to prove that
>    you’re over 21, you shouldn’t have to share your age, date of birth, name,
>    or any other data. That privacy-preserving capability is possible with
>    digital IDs, and state legislatures should require that IDs allow holders
>    to share the minimum data necessary for a transaction.
>
>
> Although, if it’s done well, this “granular disclosure” could amount to
> pseudonymity or anonymity, I personally would add those as explicit
> requirements.
> Plus, as the ACLU rightly say, the requirement to design the system to
> prevent linkability.
>
> Age verification is a step towards mandatory authentication for online
> access, no matter how it is dressed up.
>
> Yrs.,
> Robin
>
> Robin Wilton, Director - Internet Trust
> wilton@isoc.org
> [image: image001.png]
> internetsociety.org | @internetsociety
>
>
>
> On 10 Oct 2024, at 21:00, Kaliya Identity Woman <kaliya@identitywoman.net>
> wrote:
>
> There is also a blog post about it.
>
> https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/state-legislatures-need-to-block-creation-of-nightmarish-national-identity-system
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2024 at 12:59 PM Kaliya Identity Woman <
> kaliya@identitywoman.net> wrote:
>
>> The ACLU has just published Legislative Guidance around Digital IDs
>>
>> https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-digital-id-state-legislative-recommendations
>>
>>
>>
>