This is the one thing I hoped for out of crypto/blockchain.
You, commenter, don’t need to know that I’m “Brian Brianson, a citizen living at 123 Abenue Avenue”. But, it’s good to know that the person commenting is a real person who has been seen and verified by someone, as a simple true/false flag. If there were good ways of verifying basic conditions of people you interact with online, without exposing personal details, then it could curb botnet opinionation as well as be useful for a lot of things.
If there were good ways of verifying basic conditions of people you interact with online, without exposing personal details
The problem there is: seen and verified by who? What’s your “chain of trust” behind that blue checkmark or whatever signifies a “verified person”?
Even an “anonymous identity” if it runs long enough eventually gives away the person doing the writing under the pseudonym. They may refer to experiences indirectly, unconsciously even, and those narrow down the subset of who they could be, until eventually there can be only one person on the whole planet who fits all the available clues.
To an extent, the world needs to grow up and realize that anyone determined enough can hunt you down through your online footprint unless you’re being super careful with your identity creation, what you say, and how long you use that identity. They also need to realize that among the 8 billion+ of us, they just aren’t very interesting unless they seem gullible enough to authorize a transfer of funds…
I’m imagining something like being able to go to a lawyer, or journalist’s office - somewhere they’d have established notaries, and show them a driver’s license or other notable documentation. They wouldn’t be granted rights to record that information permanently, but would grant a cryptographic signature sourced from their office to express that their office has seen them.
This would rely on professional trust - that the people you show your info to will not record it; and, that if they for some reason have to, they won’t turn it over to warrants. By the same token, they’d be trusted that they’re not inventing people from thin air.
You’re right that someone engaging online long enough could be exposed. That would then rely on any effective “Right to be forgotten” laws to erase unnecessary data.
That would then rely on any effective “Right to be forgotten” laws to erase unnecessary data.
Laws != effective, in my experience.
If you are attempting to deal anonymously, you need to go “burner phone” on a regular basis - throw the identity away and get a new one, or three. How often you do that depends on how valuable your anonymity is to you.
I think the main thing we need to teach the youth of today is: how to maintain a long term undeniable identity that they can live with their whole lives. Meaning: silly pictures with school friends -> anonymous. Master’s Thesis -> certified identity. In-between? That’s where the judgement calls come in.
People doing serious stuff are going to need to start depending on certified identity sources, and openly disclosing when they don’t really know the credibility or even identity of their sources.
As for “credible fake names” - like shell corporations? I think those are a bad idea altogether.
We had some land on a river. Somebody bought the neighboring piece of land through a shell corporation, county public records didn’t give any real names in connection with the sale and transfer of the deed. In 5 minutes on the internet I looked up the owner of that corporation in Nevada and found that it was beneficially owned by a has-been rock star. 5 more minutes and I found a newspaper article from the nearby town with has-been rock star quoted as saying “we bought 11 acres out on the river…” It’s really that easy, and for the people who “do it better” there are forensic accountants who “untangle it better” and the whole game is mostly a waste of time for everybody except the lawyers and accountants charging billable hours, unless you’re covering up something that most people probably don’t want hidden anyway - like money laundering or worse.
they’d be trusted that they’re not inventing people from thin air.
And that trust would be verified how?
a lawyer, or journalist’s office - somewhere they’d have established notaries, and show them a driver’s license or other notable documentation … would grant a cryptographic signature sourced from their office to express that their office has seen them.
So, Russian Troll goes on vacation in Amerika, visit 1000 notaries and obtain 1000 different cryptographic signatures sourced from their offices expressing that they have seen Russian Troll who borrowed U.S. identity card and swapped photo. Very nice.
A “cryptographic identity” is only as valuable as the material signed by it, and then only as long as the secret portion of the identity (you know, those bitcoin keys that guy is buying a landfill to try to find…) is known only to the person(s) controlling the identity.
They can work very well in blockchain form which makes it impossible to alter past records, again only so long as long as the true owner of the identity has control of the secret that signed the last block in the chain. “Right to be Forgotten” is actually somewhat compatible with blockchain, you don’t have to show all the photographs that were placed in the chain throughout history in order to validate the chain, only the cryptographic hashes of those photos. But… if anyone ever finds the bit for bit exact photograph that was in the chain, it becomes irrefutable that the photograph was signed by the chain owner as part of the chain…
This kind of logic should be being made interesting to fourth graders, implemented in practice by 8th graders, and practiced as easily as phone numbers and e-mail addresses by 12th graders. Maybe after kids educated with that kind of knowledge and awareness grow up, they can get a handle on this mess where: “people just trust me, dumb fucks.”
This is the one thing I hoped for out of crypto/blockchain.
You, commenter, don’t need to know that I’m “Brian Brianson, a citizen living at 123 Abenue Avenue”. But, it’s good to know that the person commenting is a real person who has been seen and verified by someone, as a simple true/false flag. If there were good ways of verifying basic conditions of people you interact with online, without exposing personal details, then it could curb botnet opinionation as well as be useful for a lot of things.
The problem there is: seen and verified by who? What’s your “chain of trust” behind that blue checkmark or whatever signifies a “verified person”?
Even an “anonymous identity” if it runs long enough eventually gives away the person doing the writing under the pseudonym. They may refer to experiences indirectly, unconsciously even, and those narrow down the subset of who they could be, until eventually there can be only one person on the whole planet who fits all the available clues.
To an extent, the world needs to grow up and realize that anyone determined enough can hunt you down through your online footprint unless you’re being super careful with your identity creation, what you say, and how long you use that identity. They also need to realize that among the 8 billion+ of us, they just aren’t very interesting unless they seem gullible enough to authorize a transfer of funds…
I’m imagining something like being able to go to a lawyer, or journalist’s office - somewhere they’d have established notaries, and show them a driver’s license or other notable documentation. They wouldn’t be granted rights to record that information permanently, but would grant a cryptographic signature sourced from their office to express that their office has seen them.
This would rely on professional trust - that the people you show your info to will not record it; and, that if they for some reason have to, they won’t turn it over to warrants. By the same token, they’d be trusted that they’re not inventing people from thin air.
You’re right that someone engaging online long enough could be exposed. That would then rely on any effective “Right to be forgotten” laws to erase unnecessary data.
Laws != effective, in my experience.
If you are attempting to deal anonymously, you need to go “burner phone” on a regular basis - throw the identity away and get a new one, or three. How often you do that depends on how valuable your anonymity is to you.
I think the main thing we need to teach the youth of today is: how to maintain a long term undeniable identity that they can live with their whole lives. Meaning: silly pictures with school friends -> anonymous. Master’s Thesis -> certified identity. In-between? That’s where the judgement calls come in.
People doing serious stuff are going to need to start depending on certified identity sources, and openly disclosing when they don’t really know the credibility or even identity of their sources.
As for “credible fake names” - like shell corporations? I think those are a bad idea altogether.
We had some land on a river. Somebody bought the neighboring piece of land through a shell corporation, county public records didn’t give any real names in connection with the sale and transfer of the deed. In 5 minutes on the internet I looked up the owner of that corporation in Nevada and found that it was beneficially owned by a has-been rock star. 5 more minutes and I found a newspaper article from the nearby town with has-been rock star quoted as saying “we bought 11 acres out on the river…” It’s really that easy, and for the people who “do it better” there are forensic accountants who “untangle it better” and the whole game is mostly a waste of time for everybody except the lawyers and accountants charging billable hours, unless you’re covering up something that most people probably don’t want hidden anyway - like money laundering or worse.
And that trust would be verified how?
So, Russian Troll goes on vacation in Amerika, visit 1000 notaries and obtain 1000 different cryptographic signatures sourced from their offices expressing that they have seen Russian Troll who borrowed U.S. identity card and swapped photo. Very nice.
A “cryptographic identity” is only as valuable as the material signed by it, and then only as long as the secret portion of the identity (you know, those bitcoin keys that guy is buying a landfill to try to find…) is known only to the person(s) controlling the identity.
They can work very well in blockchain form which makes it impossible to alter past records, again only so long as long as the true owner of the identity has control of the secret that signed the last block in the chain. “Right to be Forgotten” is actually somewhat compatible with blockchain, you don’t have to show all the photographs that were placed in the chain throughout history in order to validate the chain, only the cryptographic hashes of those photos. But… if anyone ever finds the bit for bit exact photograph that was in the chain, it becomes irrefutable that the photograph was signed by the chain owner as part of the chain…
This kind of logic should be being made interesting to fourth graders, implemented in practice by 8th graders, and practiced as easily as phone numbers and e-mail addresses by 12th graders. Maybe after kids educated with that kind of knowledge and awareness grow up, they can get a handle on this mess where: “people just trust me, dumb fucks.”