[MINUTES] CCG Atlantic 2026-05-05

This meeting focused on an update and discussion of the revised
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) principles, presented by Christopher Allen.
The core of the discussion revolved around the evolution of SSI principles
from their 2016 inception to address new economic, political, and technical
challenges, including the rise of AI agents, surveillance capitalism, and
the commodification of behavioral data. Attendees engaged in a robust
debate about the practical application and enforceability of these
principles in real-world systems, particularly in the context of
government-backed digital identity initiatives and the potential for
coercion and manipulation. The meeting concluded with a call for community
input and a forward-looking perspective on how to ensure SSI principles
remain relevant and effective for the next decade.

*Topics Covered:*

   - *Post-Quantum Crypto Suites in VCWG:* Manu Sporny noted a request for
   the adoption of post-quantum crypto suites into the Verifiable Credential
   Working Group and a call for objections to publish them as a final
   community group specification.
   - *Highlights from IIW:* Christopher Allen shared observations from the
   Internet Identity Workshop (IIW), noting a significant interest in agentic
   AI and identity for AI, with numerous distinct approaches to agent-based
   identity management. Dmitri Zagidulin echoed this, highlighting discussions
   on delegated authorization for agents and proposing a unified task force
   for capability-based storage.
   - *CCG Policy on AI and LLM Generated Content:* Mahmoud Alkhraishi
   announced an upcoming written policy banning bots and agents, and a pending
   ban on LLM-generated content to ensure human authorship for easier
   consumption.
   - *Revised Self-Sovereign Identity Principles:* Christopher Allen
   presented a project to revise the 2016 SSI principles, expanding them to
   16, with new sections on alienability, cognitive liberty, relational
   autonomy, stewardship, equity, and coercion resistance. The revised
   principles aim to address new challenges like surveillance capitalism, AI
   agents, and the complexities of data ownership and consent in the digital
   age.
   - *Challenges in Applying SSI Principles:* Manu Sporny expressed concern
   that while the principles are well-intentioned, it is increasingly
   difficult to apply them to existing systems, as vendors and governments may
   game the system or ignore violations due to a lack of understanding or
   vested interests.
   - *Arguments for SSI and Government Adoption:* Will Abramson questioned
   the clarity and articulation of arguments for why governments should care
   about SSI, suggesting a need for better-defined benefits for targeted
   audiences.
   - *State and Regional Efforts in SSI:* Christopher Allen highlighted
   efforts in Utah and Lugano as examples of states and cities developing
   alternatives to national IDs and exploring hybrid or self-sovereign
   approaches to digital identity.

*Action Items:*

   - Christopher Allen will send an updated deck to the mailing list.
   - Attendees are encouraged to review the red-lined Google Doc of the
   revised SSI principles and provide constructive feedback by the end of the
   month.
   - The revisiting SSI group will have additional meetings over the summer
   to discuss the community draft.
   - Christopher Allen proposes a session at GDC on September 3rd to
   present the updated SSI principles.
   - Christopher Allen is seeking additional sponsors to cover costs
   associated with his advocacy and travel for principle dissemination.
   - Christopher Allen will invite Christopher Bramwell, Chief Privacy
   Officer of Utah, to a GDC session on state and regional efforts around
   digital identity alternatives.

Text: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-atlantic-2026-05-05.md

Video: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-atlantic-2026-05-05.mp4
*CCG Atlantic - 2026/05/05 12:00 EDT - Transcript* *Attendees*

Alex Higuera, Christoph Dorn, Christopher Allen, Dave Lehn, Denken Chen,
Dmitri Zagidulin, Elaine Wooton, Erica Connell, Gerald Glickman, Harrison
Tang, Hiroyuki Sano, JeffO - HumanOS, Jennifer Meier, Jintek, Kayode Ezike,
Mahmoud Alkhraishi, Manu Sporny, Phillip Long, Rob Padula, Taylor Kendal,
Ted Thibodeau Jr, Will, Will Abramson
*Transcript*

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Hi We're just waiting for people to join up.

Christopher Allen: Just going to do a quick test.

Christopher Allen: Okay, that seems to be working. I'll stop. thanks

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you guys for joining us. Today is Tuesday, May
5th, 2026. We're going to be talking to Christopher Allen today. But before
we get there, I want to do a quick reminder of our code of ethics and
professional conduct. Please make sure you adhere to it. as always, anybody
is welcome to participate in these calls. However, all substantive
contributors to the CCG must have signed full IPR rights agreements. there
are a number of things we should talk about today, but before we get there,
any announcements anybody would like to make? Please

Manu Sporny: There was a request out to the CCG mailing list around the
adoption of the postquantum crypto suites into the verifiable credential
working group. Greg Bernstein has prepared all the documents and kind of
sent out a call for objections to see if there would to publish it as a
final community group specification. this is just a kind of a nudge to the
chairs to kind of move that process along as we're waiting for that
document in the VCWG. That's it.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I think Will sent out something today, unless I'm
mistaken, but we're on it. Thanks for the reminder, …

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: there was IW last week. was Anyone want to bring us any
highlights from what they saw there?

Christopher Allen: I was there quite a few others.

Christopher Allen: Although I will say it was interesting. So I did a
little bit of this presentation on self-s sovereign identity and it was
fascinating how many people showed up to the session who'd only heard about
it in the last 3 four years. there was a lot of discussion about now that
might have been because there was a session on Friday not a session but a
separate group organized by clea and doc and whatever on aentic AI.
00:05:00

Christopher Allen: So it felt like a good third of the sessions had agentic
AI and identity for AI and about a dozen different approaches. we even
tried to do a little interop thing and everybody has a completely different
approach to doing didish type things with agents. Dimmitri you were there
also.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Please.

Dmitri Zagidulin: Yeah. wanted to say plus one to what Christopher just
said. One of the things that struck me, and of course I'm biased in this,
but there were a lot of sessions, three or four if not more different
sessions about delegated authorization for agents specifically. either one
hop or several hop delegation which just reminds me again of the urgency of
us sort of restarting the work on ZCAPS here at the CCG towards which I
would love to propose that since there's interest in both authorization
capabilities of various sorts as well as

Dmitri Zagidulin: wall encrypted wallet attached storage and encrypted data
vaults. one of the suggestions that I heard was hey we could unify these
into a single task force something like capability based storage. So I very
much would sort of petition the chairs to set up such a task force and I'm
happy to find other assemblers and find a call set out a doodle poll for a
call slot probably monthly or weekly. Thanks.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Anyone else have any updates from that? Does anyone
else have any announcements they'd like to make? on the chair's side, I
wanted to say thank you to everybody who's been contributing on the AI
discussions conversation. We've been having a lot of conversations on the
mailing list. we will be coming out with a written policy soon hopefully.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: But where we're leading right now is that so as a
reminder all bots and agents were already banned prior to this entire
conversation and they will stay banned that way. And right now what we're
leading to is a ban on LLM generated content in general where we're
hopefully aiming to have humans be the people who are actually writing so
that it's easier for everybody to consume. we will get you actual text for
people to review and hopefully provide any critique to it and we can have a
coherent policy as a group that should be out reasonably soon. I think
that's all the action items we had today.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Christopher, do you want to take us away?

Christopher Allen: Thank you.

Christopher Allen: Okay, looks like we're running. my name is Christopher
Allen. many of my work in the last I don't know 13 years in the credential
community group. I am one of the co-authors of the DID standard and have
been involved as an invited expert on a number of W3C projects. but I'm
probably best known in this community for 10 years ago.

Christopher Allen: Last week on April 26th of 2016, I introduced the
principles of self-s sovereign identity and that's what we're going to be
talking about. I do want to thank sponsors to be able to participate in
these kinds of events and also travel to places like Geneva to present
them. I need financial support. So I wanted to thank stream 44 and of
course blockchain commons who's been supporting my advocacy work for a long
time. so what happened in 2016 is I came out with 10 principles. they
became a conceptual foundation for this industry.
00:10:00

Christopher Allen: And at my last count, depending on how you do the
counting, I've seen numbers from 1,800, to Google Scholar saying, 800,
academic citations either of my, principles or of the article where I
introduced it in 2016. But I really want to push that back then I was
heading out to ID 2020 which was the first UN conference on digital
identity and also a joint rebooting web of trust number two also in New
York City.

Christopher Allen: And I said at the bottom of the article, hey, let's meet
at IIW or at rebooting because I seek your assistance in taking these
principles to the next level. however, 10 years later, This is what
everybody uses. is you can see the Google trends chart here where pretty
much on the day that I released it we got a lot of activity and it's rising
and rising and then you'll particularly notice in 2025 2026 that there's a
very large Google trends peaking so it's an important word that and phrase
and concept that has been moving forward however there are a number of
things that the 2016 principles

Christopher Allen: could not have anticipated. This is just a partial list.
on the economic side, one of them is the commodification of behavioral
data. Just all the different ways that ads and marketing be just the whole
behavioral exhaust of all of our lives is being captured and is valuable to
people. So, the whole concept of data ownership became kind of, an on-ramp.
When I did a little survey at IIW of what appealed to people about self-s
sovereign identity, a surprising number of people were going, I don't want
anybody else to make money on my identity. I want to make money off of it."
Which isn't quite what I had in mind, but I wanted to bring that up as an
economic factor.

Christopher Allen: on the political side, just the general normalization of
surveillance, capitalism, mandatory digital IDs, it really took off and
became acceptable with the vaccine era era identity mandates and we're
seeing more and more state level ID regimes. some claim that they're
voluntary, but in fact that's, probably not actually true in reality.

Christopher Allen: the 2020 2016 list of principles didn't really talk
about that and then there's a whole bunch of technical things we could fill
up several sessions on what worked and what didn't work with the original
concepts but even if we talk about what was happened at IIW increasingly
agents are running at a much faster pac cadence they're able to infer a lot
more about us but there also things like gazebased inference and neural
interfaces.

Christopher Allen: Right now you have a vision of my face and my eyes and
this is actually sensitive u material where secrets can be grabbed that
there in fact the Apple lens VR device puts the glance information, the
sackes that happen behind the trust zone because it is possible to
exfiltrate things like passwords and whatever just simply by your vision.
So none of this was dis discussed in the original principles.

Christopher Allen: So what ended up happening was we started a project to
revise the principles and this started late last fall and we've had a
number of meetings under the umbrella of revisiting SSI. and there's been
at least one major article published on patriarchical aspects of digital
identity. and from that I kind of excised down that we really needed to
have at least 16 principles which means we had to add six and then to
organize them I organized them in foundational ones things that really were
more ethical and foundational and couldn't be derived from anything else. a
number of things regarding how people interact with the systems but also
with each other.
00:15:00

Christopher Allen: I sent deck Ted to the mailing list. I'll send a newer
version. I've already got a couple of minor edits and this is evolving at a
day-to-day basis. It feels like there's been a lot of call around what are
the testable properties of identity systems. there's been some excellent
work on that in Japan CSSPS and I wanted to incorporate some of that but
also I felt like there was just more some operational aspects of things
that I wanted to separate out into their own set of categories and finally
the political side of it this is the reg both the regulatory and the
centralization pressures so I added a separate section for that so
fundamentally the 10 principles

Christopher Allen: are all there. they've just moved to some of the other
sections except for existence which is the very first principle. but the
new principles includes alienability inalienability which is that we need
to protect existence from being converted into property. So it has all the
different things regarding that and a section on cognitive liberty which
has gotten a lot of discussion. And a lot of people are going, "Yes, we
need to add that. but I think there may be some improvements we can still
do with that relational autonomy.

Christopher Allen: I think probably some of the first questions that were
brought up in 2016 had to do with gosh identity really comes from others
and that whole argument or how do we deal with relations and some of that I
think was a confusion in regards to where the origins of self-s sovereign
identity principles might have a whole article on that which includes
living systems theory the commons even a quote from Sama Hayak saying that
women needed to claim their sovereignty but I decided to make a lot of the
discussions about this and surface them a lot more in a section called
relational autonomy increasingly as we're actually deploying these systems
there are issues of stewardship and what is

Christopher Allen: that mean when we have children or aged parents that we
have to act as their stewards is a little bit different than guardianship
which is assigned. It's a little bit different than having a fiduciary
agent. maybe I separated it a little bit too much but it is a new section
that I think we definitely should get some input on. there's a lot of
structural inequality in the world at a variety of different layers. I made
a first pass at the equity. I probably actually need a better name for
this. But basically we just don't want to reproduce the bad old in the and
I don't think I've quite captured that but at least it's a start.

Christopher Allen: And then finally really what this is about is
anti-coercion or coercion resistance or what Vitalic calls a sanctuary
technologies. how do we deal with the fact that the interface and other
infrastructures can be used in coercive ways and how do we stop that from
happening. So those are the six additions. so again existence is the same
but now resists operationalization. I also made a call for refusing
personhood claims for AI agents. That doesn't mean that the agents can't
have identifiers and some form of identity but it's a different thing.

Christopher Allen: really want existence to focus on the person that's
outside of the system that the digital systems witness but do not u change
whether or not you do or don't exist the iniability in not convert to
property prohibit credential marketplaces and identity token trading
cognitive liberty again for the right to self-determination privacy,
integrity and continuity. the skull does need to be a literary boundary for
privacy. with how persons interact with systems in each other, control has
a lot of language about making it meaningful rather than nominal that
technical mechanisms are required.
00:20:00

Christopher Allen: And then I do have a little bit in there around usage of
agents and where does that apply under the principles of control. consent
is probably the heaviestly revised version of the old principles. needs to
be meaningful ongoing revocable needs to have calibrated revocability. It
has to deal with attention awareness and the issues of that access. I've
extended that to inferred data. shadow identities also need to be legible
and contestable, not just declared attributes that are out there. Again,
new sections on relational autonomy and stewardship. but there's some
breadth here that you may not have thought about.

Christopher Allen: how do you bind yourself and yet be able to have some
fashion of exit when things go bad. So some good work on there new things
in the persistence narrative continuity across trauma and migrations and
life transitions. so persistence isn't just about key rotation, which is
what the old one kind of centered on, but also paradigm rotation. open
standards, narrative portability, ability to survive jurisdictional
disappearance. We've seen a few of those. And we have to be more clear
about statelessness is not equal to digital statelessness. I think there's
more that needs to be added here.

Christopher Allen: And I've been talking with a couple of groups that have
learned from some of the challenges in Europe for portability. So I expect
that before we finalize the next draft. Interoperability one of my concerns
is monocultures of digital identity are a problem. and we have an emerging
monoculture in MDL emer happening and we need to address that. but we also
need to be able to have community issuers have equal standing to government
issuers government authorized issuers. minimalization added to extend it to
inferred data not just the explicit data.

Christopher Allen: we need to have contextual integrity and just in general
some anti-agregation constraints across contexts needs to be captured and
transparency including governance and initiatives open code etc. my hope is
that this list plus some of the work that the CSSPS will make it a lot more
easy for us to say check check yes that is a self- sovereign decentralized
identity system. now we come with the last section around the real world
how does self- sovereign identity fit within law governments regulations
etc.

Christopher Allen: The existing protection principle has been expanded
around the structural economic and all the different things that are
important around protecting people because governments want to protect
people too and we're just trying to make it easier. again, I talked a
little bit about equity and a course of design previously as being new
principles. So we could spend a couple of sessions on each of the major
changes. I just wanted to highlight three for this conversation today.

Christopher Allen: So in 2016 it said users must agree to give meaningful
ongoing and revocable consent. but since that time we have dark patterns
just clicking through something we should not consider that to be sent. we
need the calibrated revocability exit needs to not be prohibitive but maybe
it isn't precisely free so we have to puzzle out what does that mean and
there's a whole bunch of issues regarding m machine cadence the constant
pressure for your attention to move forward and to move forward faster than
you can review it thus a new paragraph was added meaningful consent is
delivered

Christopher Allen: deliberate, not produced by fatigue or manufactured
urgency or choice overload. it is reflective, durable against manipulation
manipulation and revocable on proportionate terms. consent that is and then
to be clear just because I really want this to be sure consent that is
merely clicked through is not consent because attention is the only
non-renewable input to consent. So we have to be a lot more careful with
that. There's more on this, but this was one of the heaviest revised of the
old principles on protection trying to deal with some of the coercion
issues marginalized users facing nominal choices the economic incentives
that privilege digital issuers u over the subjects I've been saying for a
while I want to be a peer
00:25:00

Christopher Allen: not and our language uses the word subject. And I'm
sorry, I'm not a surf. how do we do so in normative ways? so we can have,
the non-standard part of ourselves be, legible. and, there is also again
kind of connections back to the cognitive.

Kayode Ezike: I need to

Christopher Allen: a lot of these tools end up producing self censorship
before we actually have consent or prohibition so that you ended up with
this we kept the original paragraph and added that protection extends
beyond network versus user conflicts to the full spectrum of coercion that
can arise even within a decentralized system.

Christopher Allen: structural marginalized users face only nominal choices
economic normative and cognitive. finally I want to go back to the first
principle. This is the one that I think has had the most discussion in ways
that I've been uncomfortable with in the last 10 years. So the original
principle said any self-s sovereign identity is ultimately based on the
ineffable eye. that is at the heart of identity. It can never exist in
whole wholly digital form. However, if you look at a number of the
interpretations and re various people talking about what ended up happening
was a lot of them ended up going that digital existence was a task for a
person to be established.

Christopher Allen: So for instance in life ID their SSI bill of rights from
2018 it says individuals must be able to establish their existence as a
unified identity online and in the physical world. I'm uncomfortable with
that. I think it's not estab it may belong somewhere else but it doesn't
belong in the first principle. and then there's this whole area of
existence as a capability of the digital ecosystem to be granted. so
sovereign principles version three an SSI ecosystem shall provide the means
for any natural physical digital to be represented by any n number of
digital identities. I think that's maybe a good point but again it's
missing the problem which is that systems can witness existence they don't
grant it.

Christopher Allen: anybody who's dealt with the last decade of state ID
failures demonstrates why this is important a person should not be excluded
from a system because they're digital existence become problematic
existence precedes the system so a lot of the rewrites and a lot of the
discussion if you look at the comments on the rewrites on the first
principle are trying to really engage this and make this better. so if this
is something that you'd like to have some clarity on or whatever, I
definitely would take a look at some of the comments on the red lines for
this. Now, there are four places that I'm most uncertain. I have a little
bit on all 16 of my open questions, but I wanted to bring to this group.

Christopher Allen: In principle one, I really did try to separate AI agent
personhood from this, but it currently sounds like a declaration of war
against a category of entities, and that was not the intent. So, there may
be a better way to do that. the consent one where I talk about not always
free. I mean the challenge here is that too much friction traps people but
also too little kills a credible commitment. So we can invent emergency
exit definitions for consent. something you've consented to but now you're
saying no I didn't really mean but they're also notoriously gameable.
00:30:00

Christopher Allen: So, I kind of left some stuff out there, because I just
didn't have, clear ideas. interoperability versus monoulture. there's been
some discussion in the, chats about, regulatory standards capture, etc.
that isn't in there. And of course there is the fact that to a certain
extent self-s sovereign identity and decentralized identity is not winning
in either the the Northern hemisphere MDL and southern hemisphere with
spacing on the name but they're becoming dominated by another centralized
identity platform. And then finally there's a lot of stuff I would love to
incorporate in an course of design.

Christopher Allen: it is extended and to cover ranking and recommendations
but is this actually both an interface principle and an algorithmic state
principle is it the whole point they can't be separated if you go to the
revisiting lenses they're like three lenses just on coercion resistance
related topics and I wasn't able to capture it all so what I'm hoping this
community will do is read

Christopher Allen: the red line in particular the full document is in
Google Docs and then an historical copy in revisiting SSI as this is the
version of last a week ago Sunday the is a tagged release in a sense and
I'm hoping by the end of this month we'll have another red line with based
on the community draft discussions and

Christopher Allen: and additional meetings really help me make your
disscent where you disagree make it legible and clear be constructive
wherever you can I prefer the s suggestions over that's just wrong but it
is important we have that there's a lot of places where the new principles
overlap a little bit or maybe the new language is a little bit weaker and
where I maybe deferred something

Christopher Allen: should actually be in scope. there's a challenge here of
just really trying to I mean, I'm already, adding six principles, so 16.
Now, there was a lot of, editorial of I would love to have that in there,
but, is that really essential or is that implied by one of the other
existing principles? but maybe I was wrong. it was my judgment call. help
me bring the real hard cases.

Christopher Allen: you have a lot more real deployment context in
particular identity for refugees digital ID by default different kinds of
delegation let's bring the hard problems that you're going I have an SSI
system but we were challenged by X how do we deal with that and then we did
have a number of meetings at IIW the revisiting SSI group is going to be
having additional meetings over the summer which really is the first
community draft is up. s in Google. it's got a snapshot on revisiting this
meeting I hope will kick off some more discussions on the mailing list. I
appreciate the discussions that are already there although I am hoping that
the best of those can move to the Google doc.

Christopher Allen: And then really what I want to do is I proposed a
session which I believe will be accepted. DIFF and others at GDC have given
their blessing to have a 10 draft of all the different changes over the
summer in time for the GDC event on September 3rd. again, the goal here is
not necessarily to settle all the questions of self-s sovereign identity.
It's instead to make the principles worthy of the next 10 years. so, I'm
back to my statement that I had at the end of the principles in 2016. I
seek your assistance in taking these principles to the next level.

Christopher Allen: So, please I'm looking forward to your help.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much. do we have any questions? This has
been wonderful so far. Manner please.

Manu Sporny: Yeah, I mean plus these are, wonderful principles,
Christopher, especially the rework. have certainly read through all of it.
think and there's been some good feedback on the mailing list. I don't know
if you've seen and some of it kind of, doubtful if the principles can
impact some of the ways, they're being gamed. So I think most of my concern
is it has become increasingly difficult to point out how the current
systems being deployed in the world violate these principles in the way
that they're written.
00:35:00

Manu Sporny: So, for example, as you know, it took an enormous amount of
work to just say phone home's a bad thing and MDL's doing it and it's not
this, thing that exists in the spec. It's actually implemented and deployed
and does, flat out, I think, violate a number of the principles that you
wrote about. but every time there's kind of push back on some stuff, the
counterarguments are like, "Yeah, but we don't think that's a good idea. we
don't implement it." and in parallel, there's, a new initiative that is
basically saying, all these technologies, they're more or less the same
thing.

Manu Sporny: there's really not that much difference between, IETF SD JOD
VC and W3C verifiable credentials and MDL and carry AC/DC. They're all
effectively the same thing. and that's the direction we're going with. So,
there's this kind of latching on to the good parts of SSI while very
clearly violating a number of the principles that's going on. So I think
I'm more concerned not about the principles which I think there were a very
good start and the revision I think will be good but how people that are
trying to build this future utilize the principles to point out how
technologies and systems and protocols are violating those things in ways
that

Manu Sporny: will be widely be resonate that sort of thing. so the question
is around the application of the principles to real world systems that we
are currently engaged in in trying to convince some of these state
governments and…

Manu Sporny: federal governments the path that they're on is a concerning
path.

Christopher Allen: Yeah. …

Christopher Allen: one of my favorite, so I read through a hundred of the
800 plus that many of which I can't seem to download because, they're
behind various, pay walls. but this was one of my favorites. so it was by
two Japanese researchers kind of on their own. basically looked through my
self- sovereign principles originally and then also I think the sovereign
version two principles and I think one third one I don't remember what the
third one was that was another derivative and they basically said this and
it's not objective so they slid those aside and then they basically did a
deep dive into what are the kinds of things that were operational and I
really like it and really for

Christopher Allen: me the most important part of this paper is not It's in
this zip file at the end of this paper that has a bunch of I mean they've
kind of they call them principles but they kind of turned the 10 principles
into 46 operational principles and that is really only expanding some of
the original 10 principles and a whole bunch of them are marked this is
subjective this is subjective but when I read through those subjective
aspects. I really feel like a number of them are not precisely subjective.
they're regulatory or in some fashion. I mean I think existence that's a
fundamental ethical principle and that one we may never be able to do the
check mark tests that we would like to have.

Christopher Allen: But another number of them are, no, this is where
something like some of the rules in the new state endorsed identity law in
Utah check off something in that list that can't be checked off techn
technologically but were ignored in the CSSPS. so, I'm hoping that we can
get, some movement toward let's revisit CSSPS, and, you know, how they're
doing things against the new principles. I think that's, some of the new
principles literally came from looking at this and going, they were basing
it on the original 10 and they missed something. So hopefully this will
Does that help you, man?
00:40:00

Manu Sporny: It does to a certain degree. I'll recue in case other people
have questions. I do have a followup.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I don't think there's anybody on right now. So, let's
go ahead.

Manu Sporny: In a way it kind of helps Christopher, but I think it's really
I am concerned as we were 10 years ago, right? that systems are being built
right now that are in clear violation of the principles. when as
contractors of these federal agencies bring these things up, we have other
vendors in the room. where if we speak up too much, the end result is we
get fired.

Manu Sporny: that is the kind of coercive nature that we are under as
contractors working for national governments and state governments right
basically if you don't have somebody on the state federal government side
that really understands these principles and is really trying to follow
them there's such a large volume of vendors that are not very interested in
sol, following these principles that will gang up on those of us that do
want to do right by the principles and will eject us from the room, that
happens in standards bodies especially ones that operate behind closed
doors where you can't see what's going on until the standard comes out. so
the short answer, Christopher, it doesn't help, right?

Manu Sporny: because it's the research community doing analyses and these
federal and state folks don't pay any attention to it. They've got a
election cycle that they care about. They have to deploy something in two
years and their level of success is did I get something out there and did
the vast majority of the people my constituencies use so the only thing
that I can think of that so there are a couple of things I am wondering if
you feel like there is a principle around the way these systems are built
meaning that they are built out in the open with full visibility into who
is participating what decisions are being made and that sort of thing like
that's one of the things that I think can

Manu Sporny: But even if you have that, we have seen, quote unquote fully
open systems gamed because the, collection of vendors that organizations
that show up have a very different outcome that they'd like to see.

Manu Sporny: So I'm wondering, the way these systems are built and put
together, seems problematic. and I don't know how to address that core
problem, Because that's where the principles get thrown out the window is
behind closed doors.

Christopher Allen: Yeah. …

Christopher Allen: I share a lot of your pessimism, unfortunately, and I've
been kind of talking about it for a few years. so that is part of my
motivation for doing these principles is to kind of put a intellectual
foundation on these, but it clearly is not enough.

Christopher Allen: There are two two so besides the self-s sovereign
identity principles session at GDC I'm also hoping to have a session on the
worst centralized identity systems. how can okay you decided to do a
government identity system what can you do to mitigate the harms and really
try to raise the harms up and I think there's a certain point there where
we can basically go you could really address all these harms if you were
just self- sovereign so that's one wedge I'm hoping to do there but also as
people are becoming more aware of

Christopher Allen: things. I think I've been hearing a number of the people
that went to the SETI workshop two weekends ago in Utah from other states.
They're basically going, "Wow, I didn't quite realize this is what I signed
up for when keep Google and others came to us and said, " just, add this
MDL support thing. my constituents don't want that." and it's been driven
by more the conservative states, but I think California and others are kind
of in the same boat. One of my hopes is the city of Lugano, I've also heard
Monterey, Mexico, and, there were some people in Buenes Aries, are also
kind of like going, " this isn't quite right, at the federal level. Let's
do, a regional or a city wallet or SETI did with Utah type stuff."
00:45:00

Christopher Allen: And I know specifically Lugano is going we want to do
this because we don't like the federal wallet and winning by 34% is really
not acceptable for Swiss consensus. So maybe we can get a wedge in there
that will allow the minorities in Northern Europe that have been trying to
stop MDL address its problems. but I don't know. I mean it is definitely a
crapshoot at this point. purely on the odds we're not winning. Yep. Exactly.

Christopher Allen: man who wrote in the chat, 34% is almost perfect
disagreement. and especially in Switzerland where they have a much bigger
concept culturally around consent being requiring much larger things. So,
they're very disturbed by this. And then there are different regions Lugano
being one of them that have a closer history to fascist regime regimes and
they're kind of like as a ure of the Swiss subculture are really not big
fans of giving a digital centralized ID to effectively the federal police
of Switzerland.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi:

Christopher Allen: I'm

Will Abramson: Just maybe is a little naive, but I wonder the flip side of
many of your issues is like do we have good enough arguments for why I
think these principles are great, but even in this document that I read
over the Google doc, there's not really a clear position statement for
self-s sovereignty is an important property in digital systems, because of
X, right? the principles are all about how to realize sovereignty in these
systems.

Will Abramson: But I just don't know if we have the right arguments for
particularly targeted at the right people in governments why do they care
about giving individuals sovereignty in digital systems that they're
represented in and how do we argue better create better reasons for
governments to want to realize these principles in the systems that they're
involved in. I mean, I wonder…

Will Abramson: if you have some good I'm sure you do, Christopher, but I
just think they don't articulate them Mhm.

Christopher Allen: Yeah, I mean this has been the classic problem.

Christopher Allen: Everybody wants this stuff compressed down to, some
minimum self- sovereign identity in 20 words. and then we have to connect
it to human rights and dignity and all of that. So, I would love to have a
better intro to all of this that just sort of when everybody goes, "Wow,
that just captures it." Please help me write one another

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Mor.

Manu Sporny: I think these things are the things that you need for real
democratic systems to exist. in their full form I think you end up having
to build on top of these principles to some nature. It's just the extension
into kind of the to ground that Christopher you mentioned the state
endorsed digital identity stuff they absolutely get it. They are the ones
that are the most I think educated about that are doing something in their
state and they're the goal there is not just to do something in the state.

Manu Sporny: It's to make it a states rights issue in the United States and
have a coalition, multiple states across the political spectrum. So, as
folks probably know, that legislation passed unanimously. It was completely
bipartisan, 100% of the vote to a number of the principles their, digital
identity bill of rights that sort of thing. So I think there's enormous
benefit to and Christopher I don't know if you've talked with them yet you
really should. I'm happy to do the introduction as can others in the group
here but they are acting on these principles.
00:50:00

Manu Sporny: I don't know if they quite know it but that is one example of
that is a place where I think we can get a very good foothold to help them
understand and these are lawmakers right I mean they're passing legislation
at the Utah level and they're wr writing model legislation for the entire
United States they're an example of a state that's thinking differently
from some of the other states that have just rolled without MDL,…

Manu Sporny: so that's one thought. I think you should engage there.

Christopher Allen: So we are going to have so specifically to that
Christopher Bramwell is the chief privacy officer and…

Christopher Allen: I've invited him and he's accepted to come to GDC where
we're going to have a session on state and regional efforts around the
world alternatives to national IDs and we've

Christopher Allen: talking about not just model legisl they've got somebody
who's kind of working on some model legislation for how you would do this
in the US but I have a under good authority that Lugano is wanting to do a
Lugano wallet I'm going to try to get them to kind of have a state endorsed
it's a canton which is kind of a state endorsed style thing under the Swiss
laws inherited from it's not common law. it's under the French style
system. which will give us another edge and we just have to keep on pushing
these and find things. I think Taiwan is an interesting case here. Denin
can probably say more but I think there's some opportunities maybe to move
them in some of these directions.

Christopher Allen: And besides, if you haven't seen it yet, the Utah SETI
bill of rights is really based on the self-s sovereign identity principles,
reframing it in terms of legal principles, but it also has something in
there which I talked about with my Wyoming work, which was taking under
common law the principles of agency law having to do with duties that you
have if you do certain types of things. So, when your doctor accepts you as
a patient, he now has a duty around your health that he can't, give you,
but I'm giving you a piece of paper, sign away the fact that I don't have
you, a real duty. No, they're real duties. And there's a bunch of
professions where this is true.

Christopher Allen: The Utah law basically is saying if you're going to
participate in some of these types of systems as a private enterprise or as
a government they didn't unlike some of these other laws that I've seen out
there who say businesses have to do this but government can do it anytime
they want they included themselves and they said no if we're going to be
doing be a part of certain parts of the ecosystem where we have power or
authority. we have duties.

Christopher Allen: And I think that's also an important theme that we need
to get not just here in the United States but can we get it in British
Columbia can we get it in Buenoseries Lugano Monteray and then maybe a
small nation Bhutan right now is doing self a centralized system in the
sense that it's a weird hybrid of self-s sovereign and centralized, have
them go the rest of the way. and then maybe get New Zealand to do etc. but
yeah, no, it's not going to be a smooth running. we're also approaching the
top of the hour.

Christopher Allen: I just want to make sure people did know that if you
want to participate in these discussions. The next one is May 20th in which
will be an extended Zoom call where we're probably going to pick one or two
of the principles and dive deeper maybe go ahead at least flag some of the
submitted changes. so please there if you think you want to come to the
Geneva event I think I have one or two more invites that I can offer but
DIFF and the various Linux Foundation groups Drummond and others also have
the ability to invite people. so I encourage you to be there.
00:55:00

Christopher Allen: And then finally, I will say, this is, once again a
volunteer effort, really on my time and I really want to thank Studio 44
and of course my own organization, Blockchain Commons, because to do this
it takes a lot of time. I need to be flying more. I need to be going to
Utah and Virginia who is maybe talking about doing this. and then
obviously, there's several events going on in Europe in the early fall,
where we need to, sell this. So, I'm really hoping to get more sponsors to,
cover our costs because I have limitations. so

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much, her. and thank you to everybody. I
believe you said you're going to be sending an updated deck out to the
mailing list.

Christopher Allen: Yeah. Good. That

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I know you already sent the previous one. and again,
thank you for showing up today and thank you everybody for helping out.
Have a great rest of your day.
Meeting ended after 00:56:51 👋

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