Wendy Seltzer, Tucows
User-centric or self-sovereign identity envisions a world in which individuals are at the center of their data and its uses. The challenge is getting all the other users of this data to agree!
The challenge is more than the technical hurdles of incomplete or incompatible standards, but also the steeplechase of social, economic, and governance: closing the gaps in trust and managing conflicting motivations. How do we do all this while ensuring that respect for the individual stays centered?
Multistakeholder governance brings the interests of individuals into dialog with other ecosystem participants. It doesn't guarantee that they will always prevail, but gives them the chance to be part of the consensus. We seek Institutional designs that elucidate participant interests and promote benefits from cooperation, respecting individual agency to make choices both at design-time and use-time.
We'll discuss lessons from previous "identity" efforts and multistakeholder institutions, efforts to build a new governance framework for user-centered identity, and what privacy assurances result. An identity system that embraces individual stakeholders in its governance offers the best measure of respect and privacy assurance.
Wendy Seltzer, Tucows
Wendy Seltzer is Principal Identity Architect at Tucows. She previously served as Strategy Lead and Counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), improving the Web's security, availability, and interoperability through standards. As a Fellow with Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Wendy founded the Lumen Project (formerly Chilling Effects Clearinghouse), the web's pioneering transparency report to measure the impact of legal takedown demands online. She seeks to improve technology policy in support of user-driven innovation and secure communication. She co-authored the second edition of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion.
author = {Wendy Seltzer},
title = {Governing Identity, Respectfully},
year = {2024},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}