Re: Should WebIDs denote people or accounts?

On 05/18/2014 12:26 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> On 5/18/14 11:13 AM, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>> On May 18, 2014 11:01:38 AM EDT, Kingsley Idehen 
>> <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:
>>> On 5/17/14 8:05 PM, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>>>> Oh, very interesting.   I haven't found an opportunity to talk to
>>> TimBL about this specifically, but it sounds like he's thinking in the
>>> same direction.   In that email he's very clearly showing a WebID
>>> denoting a persona, not a person.
>>> Sandro,
>>>
>>> A WebID denoting an Agent isn't disjoint with the notion of personae.
>> I'm fairly sure it is, Kingsley.
>>
>> If my WebIDs all denote me, then you can't grant access to one 
>> without granting it to all, by RDF semantics.
>
> Why are you assuming that any of my profile documents have an 
> owl:sameAs relation, connection the identities denoted by the HTTP URI 
> based Identifiers? Likewise, if there's no relation facilitated by an 
> IFP how do you arrive at such, via semantics expressed in RDF based 
> relations?
>

That assumption is not required.

By the RDF Semantics, if two RDF IRIs denote the same thing, then all 
RDF triples that are true using one are also true using the other.

What you're talking about is whether a machine might be able to figure 
out that truth.

If I have two different WebIDs that denote me, and you grant access to 
one of them, it's true a machine might not immediately figure out that 
that other one also denotes me and should be granted equal access.  But 
if it ever did, it would be correct in doing so.  And I'm betting, with 
machines getting access to more and more data all the time, and doing 
more and more reasoning with it, it would figure that out pretty soon.

It sounds like you're proposing building an authorization infrastructure 
that relies on machines not doing exactly what we're trying to get them 
to do everywhere else.  Sounds a bit like trying to hold back a river 
with your hands.

>>
>> To avoid that undesired fate, I think you need WebIDs to denote 
>> personas.
>
> No, a persona is derived from the claims that coalesce around an 
> identifier. A persona is a form of identification. A collection of RDF 
> claims give you a persona.
>
>>    As I mentioned, those personas might be software agents, but they 
>> are clearly not people.
>
> WebIDs denote Agents. An Agent could be a Person, Organization, or 
> Machine (soft or hard). You can make identification oriented claims in 
> a Profile Document using RDF based on a WebID.
>

The question is, what kind of triples are being written with WebIDs, and 
what happens when machines figure out all my WebIDs denote me? Are you 
really being careful with every triple you write using WebIDs to make 
sure it will still be exactly what you want to say when a reasoner adds 
more triples just like it using my other WebIDs?

It sounds to me like you are not.   It sounds to me like you're just 
assuming that certain valid inferences will never be made.


> We don't have a problem have a problem here at all.
>

I'm suggesting that perhaps you haven't yet noticed the oncoming train, 
Inference.

      -- Sandro

>
> Kingsley
>>
>>      - Sandro
>>
>>> When I demonstrate WebIDs across Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter, G+, and
>>> many other social media spaces [2][3], I actually refer to the whole
>>> things as being about a given persona.  None of that negates the fact
>>> that a WebID denotes an Agent.
>>>
>>> We have to loosely couple:
>>>
>>> 1. identity
>>> 2. identifiers
>>> 3. identification
>>> 4. identity verification (e.g., when authenticating identification)
>>> 5. trust.
>>>
>>> Claims represented as RDF statements handle 1-5, naturally. We don't
>>> have a problem here, really.
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/persona
>>> [2] https://twitter.com/kidehen/status/419578364551499776
>>> [3] https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/posts/1pmt4gWWae2
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Received on Sunday, 18 May 2014 17:16:52 UTC