Re: When Technical Standards Meet Geopolitical Reality

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 6:40 PM Daniel Hardman <daniel.hardman@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to share an experience so that my strong words have some softening context.

I wanted to come back to this email, as it's been echo'ing in my head
for the past several weeks and I wanted to acknowledge the sharing of
a personal experience, thank Daniel for sharing it, and recognize
where Daniel is coming from... which is from one of many acutely human
experiences, which I hope is what we're all trying to improve with our
work.

For those of you that might have visited countries where you show
your, or your child's, only form of international identification, only
to have (without warning) security personnel walk away with it or
suggest that they will keep it, is terrifying. The flush of
adrenaline; the heat on your face, hits you before you can process
what's going on. I'm sorry you had that experience, and I'm glad it
worked out in the end... and both you and I know it does not always
work out in the end.

> How does this relate to personhood credentials? I think it is dangerous to build an ecosystem where proof of personhood is largely assumed to come from governments.

Yes, agreed; that should not be the only source, but I expect it will
be a primary source for some time to come.

> If we raise the stakes further -- governments now decide who the rest of the world can/should believe is human (and thus worthy of human rights), I think we are truly in scary territory.

I agree.

> Doctors or nurses who sign birth certificates should be able to attest humanness. Tribal elders should be able to attest humanness. Government vetting processes that prove humanness should be signed by a human employee, not by the government itself, because it is the human rather than the bureaucracy that is safely definitive on this question. We should NEVER forget this.

Yes, also agree.

I would hope that most in this community would agree with all of the
above. What concrete set of things to do about it is the question...

My hope is that focusing on a few things help:

* Ensure that one can prove things about your or others in a way that
is so broadly disseminated that "confiscating the original documents"
becomes something that cannot happen. That is, ensure broad
dissemination, true ownership, and consent over transmission of
digital credentials.

* Ensure that one can prove things about yourself at the proper level
of pseudonymity for the transaction. That is, no phone home, prove
things in zero knowledge, etc.

* Ensure that fundamental human rights are not centralized purely with
government bureaucracies. That is, enable a broad base of issuers and
many equivalent roots of trust.

I think the folks in this community endeavoring to standardize stuff
are actively working on at least the three items above, but at levels
that are frustratingly slow. We're putting a lot of effort into the
first bullet item, trying as hard as we can to move the second one
forward (but have been slowed by the painfully slow IETF CFRG review
process and a disinterest by a number of governments and private
industry in funding the work), and are missing a truly compelling
solution for the last item (though birth certificates and notaries do
provide for alternate, positive paths forward... alongside local
government agencies).

I don't expect any of this will reduce the feeling of concern about
proof of personhood and government intervention in that regard. I just
wanted to note that we are working on technologies that I hope align
more with addressing your concerns than ceding all authority on
human-ness to large and indifferent bureaucracies of any kind.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Saturday, 9 August 2025 17:40:32 UTC