Re: When Technical Standards Meet Geopolitical Reality

Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that we require a protocol where
the core primitive is ‘issuance’ (signing) such that there is no privileged
role of ‘issuer’ and/or ‘verifier’. Anyone using this so-called protocol,
no matter how disadvantaged they might be, must be on equal footing with
the strongest of users, namely government.

As things stand now, the current protocols simply reinforce the status quo,
and for the majority that’s ok, or don’t know anything differently. That’s
also ok, for the current generation of solutions, but we need to start
looking past that horizon.

Tim


On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 5:50 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
>
> Thank you for the kind and thoughtful response, Manu.
>
> >> 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.
>
> I'd like to clarify my mental model, because there seems to be both
> important alignment and important divergence between mine and yours, Manu.
>
> Speaking of government, you used the phrase "be the only source". My
> language was similarly general "proof of personhood comes from". In a
> sense, it might seem that we're saying almost the same thing. But Let me
> get more granular.
>
> I have no problem at all with the idea that a government-governed process
> should be the common/default "source" or where "proof of personhood comes
> from" -- in the near term or into the infinite future. My beef is with the
> easy conflation of "source" and "issuer". A government process can produce
> personhood evidence, but I don't want the identifier of the government to
> be used as the *issuer* of that evidence. EVER. Hard stop, exclamation
> point, non-negotiable human rights core principle that we don't stray from
> even in version 0.1 of a system. And I believe we can actually achieve and
> enforce this by being very careful with our definitions, which is why I'm
> trying to be so picky about language.
>
> On what basis could we maintain the distinction between "source" and
> "issuer"? In my mind, an acceptable process for issuing personhood evidence
> would be whatever the government designs, and could use whatever
> infrastructure the government provides -- but would result in issuance by a
> named human being who has a publicly known legal identity endorsed by that
> government for issuance of personhood credentials. This would make proof of
> personhood just like an adoption decree -- signed by an individual human
> judge who has delegated legal authority from the government -- NOT signed
> by "the government" as an impersonal bureaucracy.
>
> I also don't want any fields in a personhood credential to attest to any
> characteristics of legal identity, because legal identity characteristics
> are changeable, whereas humanity is not. Conflating the two is dangerous.
> The only fields that should exist in a personhood credential are various
> biometrics and metadata about the issuance/level of assurance. A government
> credential that attests to legal identity for a person is derivative of,
> not equivalent to, proof of personhood, and modeling it any other way is
> both a concept error and a human rights violation. It elevates government
> opinion about legal identity facts to a place those facts do not belong,
> which is on the level of human dignity.
>
> If we do it the way I'm recommending, then tribal elders or doulas in
> remote highlands somewhere naturally function as peers of judges, which is
> factually accurate, reasonable, just, and inclusive. The only difference
> between their evidence output is whether you like the governance -- again,
> factually accurate, reasonable, just, and inclusive. If, on the other hand,
> "the government" is the issuer of proof of personhood -- or if we have
> fields in the schema of such a credential that only governments can attest
> to -- we permanently prevent humans from becoming peers of institutions on
> the question of humanness.
>
> --Daniel
>
> On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 11:40 AM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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/
>>
>