Re: Web Identity specification and Social Web

On 02/24/2014 04:27 AM, Andreas Kuckartz wrote:
> The Web Identity specification which is being developed by the W3C 
> Web Payments CG seems to be interesting for the Social Web 
> communities as well:
> 
> Web Identity 1.0 Draft Community Group Specification 21 February 2014
> https://web-payments.org/specs/source/web-identity

Keep in mind that the spec name is a pretty terrible one, we're trying
to come up with a better one like "Identity Assertions" (bad) "Entity
Assertions" (bad) or "Web Assertions" (meh).

The spec focuses on asserting statements about a particular entity like:

This is my name.

This is my government issued identification information.

This is an assertion by my local government of my home address.

It's also aligned with the Activity Streams 2.0 work (one of your input
documents for the Social Web WG) since they're using JSON-LD as well.

The identity assertions spec adds simple digital signatures to the
information above as well as a read/write capability to identity URLs.

> The draft charter does not mention "identity": 
> http://www.w3.org/2013/socialweb/social-wg-charter.html

Probably because everyone is staying away from identity since it's
either perceived to be a "difficult problem with too many conflicting
interests" to solve, or folks tend to think that OpenID Connect solves
the problem (it does, but the solution is too complex). I don't think
either argument is very compelling. :)

> Would Web Identity potentially be in scope for the Social Web WG ? 
> Should identity explicitly be added to the charter?

The argument I've heard about identity being put into any charter at W3C
that is not an Identity WG is that it would be too much of a distraction
for the group.

That said, this is something that's going to be a requirement for a good
Web Payments solution and is the reason the Web Identity spec exists and
is being developed in that group. We'd be happy for this group to pick
it up if it's integrated into the charter.

Also keep in mind that Web Payments are not the only thing that needs
it, the open badging/education initiatives also need it and I could
probably get a coalition of educators together to support the Web
Identity spec being developed /somewhere/.

Seems like the spec fits in w/ the Social Web WG charter. I'd be happy
to coordinate or help answer any questions as the Chair of the group
that's currently working on the spec.

> Recently Mozilla stopped active development of Persona (fka 
> BrowserID): https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/Persona_AAR

We're also working on folding the good bits of Persona into the Web
Identity spec to make it capable of doing Persona-like logins. The way
that you would assert information about a government ID is the exact
same way that you'd assert information about a valid email address
(which is what Persona does).

In our mind, providing a government ID assertion to a website is the
same as providing an email address assertion. While the front-end flow
may look different to the person browsing, the back-end flow is exactly
the same.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Worlds First Web Payments Workshop
http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/

Received on Monday, 24 February 2014 12:23:52 UTC