Great. So we'll come back. Thanks for joining us, Karen and me, Catalina. We have the pleasure to introduce the second round table on identity management for refuges and beyond. We have a wonderful panel here. I'm very pleased to have y'all. May I ask you to introduce yourself shortly, please?
Sure. My name is Pamela Dingle. I work for a company called ping identity and we do like other people in the panel. Architecture work for identity architectures for large industry.
Hi, my name is BJ and I'm the founder of a bank that, that aims to solve banking for refugees and, and also identification for them.
Good afternoon. My name is Mia Harz. I'm an advisor to the world bank on identity management issues.
Hello, I'm Kim Cameron. I'm the architect of identity at Microsoft.
Good afternoon, SDA. I am the chief architect for identity and access management within IBM.
Good afternoon. My name is Vesh. I actually have two parts of professional background. The first half of my life, I worked as a diplomat also in crisis situations all around the world. And the second half, since around 10 years, I've been working for on call.
So in the last couple of months, it's, it's very, very current issue actually. So Germany welcomes many, many refugees. And before we start this round table, I would like to state the problem. So Mia, probably you are the most suitable person to answer to this. What actually are the real problems of identity management in this case?
So when I talk about identity management, it's not the virtual management of identity, it's real life management, and these are the people who are the disenfranchised, the unregistered. And for those of you who attended my presentation yesterday, you would know that conservative estimate by the world bank is that there are 1.5 billion individuals who are not able to prove who they are, who do not have a legal identity. Additionally, another number from the UN high commissioner for refugees mentioned that there, or they estimate that there are about 60 million refugees or forcibly displaced individuals who also are totally disenfranchised in that they cannot prove who they are to get access, be it, to enter a country, cross a border, or get access to services, or be placed somewhere. I've been working on this for about 20 years and in some of the most complex and complicated countries around the world. And while there are no easy solutions to establish identity, what we have tried to do is to use common sense combined with technology 21st century technology, as well as barefoot technology to really include or have people feel included and be able to access services and benefits. Thank you. I can go
On. I trust you can please later on, perhaps we should switch then to you C could you explain to us if your company is doing something which we could reuse in this situation of refugees, please?
Well, I've done one of, one of the things that happened to me was that because I worked at Microsoft, I was fair pickings for bill gates to pull me into the bill gates foundation. Now the bill gates foundation, not that I worked there just in order to participate in think tanks and sessions and so on. And it was extremely, yeah, as a lot of people in the, in the room will know I've been very involved in the privacy work and making sure that, you know, we combined security with privacy and the, and, and the privacy in the advanced capitalist countries. And the first thing that I discovered when I started working with the gates foundation was for most of the world's population, you know, for, for us, the problem is over identification for most of the world's population. The problem is under identification. Yeah. And so somebody like myself really had to stand on. I won't say stand on my head because that's too preposterous at my age, but it required a lot of re re rethinking.
We, we have, we have been dealing with this problem of how we help empower the disenfranchised. And one of the clear things is there is no silver bullet. All there are, are a whole bunch of little mechanisms that can be used together. I like the idea of combining advanced technology with barefoot technology. The foundation was replete with examples of taking high technology, deploying it in the field and it being a complete waste of resources and time. Okay. On the other hand, there, there were other examples that went in the opposite direction. I'm very interested in, in the idea of how things like, I won't say blockchain because I don't want to have to drink another glass of scotch in the same day, but how the whole idea of distributed ledgers that are, that are provably unalterable over time can be used in order to help and franchise people. But once again, I see the problem there being, not the ledger, not the technology of the distributed ledger, nothing like that. It's all of the social systems that tie into the information that goes into the ledger in the first place. And I have, I don't believe there are any simple answers to those, especially in countries that are in crisis and where the social fabric is, is ripped
A totally greet him. Thank you so much. Perhaps you give the mic to voles because I would like to ask you later on before I'm coming to you, RDA asking you if IBM is doing something, which we could, for example, take as a part of a solution later on to
You. I mean, IBM has, has been helping number of states, right? Number of countries in terms of establishing some sort of an identity system. Sorry. So we have a little bit of experience in trying to deal with a large mass of population where we don't necessarily have a consistent mechanisms. As, as Kim said, there's not a silver bullet for somebody like a refugee where, you know, beyond the mother who testified for the person, everything beyond that is a paper trail that may have been lost. Right. But I think a combination of certain things, things like, you know, distributed trust systems, decentralized trust systems could potentially help with, again, not a silver per se, but be able to provide a mechanism of trust that can be associated with a certain level of risk. Right. I wouldn't sign my blood or, or first born with it, but I would probably do certain things with that level of risk.
Wonderful. Thank you so much. B would you like to let us know what's your project, perhaps a little bit for the audience and then ask ourselves, could your solution help those new refugees too? Is there anything which could help from your solution then?
Yes. So shortly it's a regulatory nightmare because we are trying to create a bank for people who are not eligible to, for the current KYC policy in state. Wow. Okay. And, and so we are focusing out on solving the regulation, but, and our main focus currently is on the refugees within EU borders because within the EU, there is a financial agreement that if one country agrees on one financial solution that have to be accepted by the other parties. So we only need to convince one country that our KYC solution that's going to be placed in blockchain system is eligible and unpenetrable by others so that it can be accepted as, as a core level of identification and extra levels of verification can Beed by governments or by different parties or peers by verifying that person, is that really that person. And we are going to create a joint bank account for the verification. So we are creating a sort of instinct for updating information into the solution because the, the more information we can know about the person, the more we can trust them and the more we can trust them, the higher limit we can provide by our banking solution. So it's basically a limited debit card solution.
Okay. So please have the mic for Pamela too.
See if the speakers can handle it.
Yeah. So if I have like to have your, sorry, I'd like to have your opinion on this too, actually.
Absolutely. Well, for, for us, you know, my exposure to this has come through the standards world. And the question becomes when you, when you cross so many borders, how do you communicate this information in a secure fashion? And I, I think everyone here would agree that good intentions are wonderful, but this matters this, the consequences of this matter. So
All good. Okay. Perhaps I take then your fresh also into the discussion, ask him, knowing that you talked to many of those building startups in the scene for, for identity management. Are there some good examples we could take for refugee as a, as a solution or part of a solution?
Well, obviously, and that's the reason why actually sitting here, I find it very nice, what he's doing, kind of a, a responsible innovation he's doing in trying to serve those who are unbanked because unbanked, because they don't have a resident or they cannot prove their identity where we learn from me, it's one, 1.5 billion, which is a real lot. And there are a few more examples, but I think he's re presenting the whole group of, of these kinds of startup. And most of them tend to work currently with a technology, which is called distributed lectures. Is that right? Kim think? Is it political? Correct? Yes. Good. Thank you. Okay. And we have to see, and this is very nice how you pointed at this many of those people who are the target group of such a bank, or who have, who come from Syria to Germany, for example, applying for asylum, they have a strong need for non privacy.
That's incredible. I used to work in my former profession. I used to do a, a, I, I collected some practical experience as a decider for our cinema applications. And it was always that three step thing. Number one, identify, and it's not easy at all. Most of the time, it's extremely complicated. Many countries don't even, don't even have a registry where the date of birth is somehow, you know, they all have, their birthday is first January. And some in some countries, you don't have that one. You only have that one birthday. Number two is residents. Where do you come from? You know, those people all come from failing states. There is no more infrastructure which can, which can issue analog passports. You could trust in. So that's number two, you have to check and number three, then if the first two ones you get somehow a probability of who that person could be, you might never get the actual a hundred percent proof.
Number three then would be, is that person politically, you know, is that person a situation that he or she actually needs the asylum over here, but most of the time it needs one year or even more to get the first two things done. You don't even get to the real asylum application thing. And over here in Germany, we have currently 800,000 of such applications where many civil servants are trying to find out. Identities are trying to find out former residences. Does that person really come from from Libya? So those are the complex things and my wish would be, and this is why I put together this panel. My greatest wish would be that the technology, like, for example, distributed ledger, whatever it could be else would give a worldwide available layer where somebody could contribute to that kind of layer, which is run by some type of com community, not one single organization, not by a country, because it might be a failing country where he or she could add something which helps that person. They not the other side of the world, for example, you're in Germany to prove identity within an hour or even less that's
I may jump in
Here. Sorry,
Working. I may jump in here because I think this is very interesting. So like, you talked about how distributed logic can help in a concrete way. And this is a question I want to ask you two guys, how do you use actually distributed ledger in very concrete way on, on your daily work basis?
I would jump back one for, for the refugees, because currently, mostly in this topic, we are talking about refugees in Europe and that's a very big difference than refugees in, in this area of Libya and absolutely Lebanon. So the very big difference that I did myself today, research, and I went down to ER, Germany's largest refugee camp, and I interviewed 10 people and nine of them had a smartphone. Yeah. And that's something that very distinguish them from those who don't have a smart one and don't have internet connection and not living in a first word country because the accessibility to infrastructure here in Europe is not comparable to the one where they are coming from. Absolutely. So the opportunities to solve their solution, their problem is let's say much easier with just technology because they have access to technology. So technology can solve their problem while there, what is Mia more standing for? They don't, they don't have any kind of infrastructure, not just technological. So our main focus currently is people with mobile phones that has internet access, or can has a limited version of internet access. And then maybe to the question, you can answer.
Sure. I, I think the big technical advantage of something like a distributed ledger is that once something is in there, it's in there that it, that tampering after the fact is a, is difficult. If not impossible, I think there are other technologies that can do most of, of all the other things that are distributed
Ledge. Well, my next question, what is the advantage of distributed ledger in this case?
Yeah, well, in this case, I mean, if, if you want to talk specifically about blockchain, which you may or may not, I mean, it, it is a chain of hashed blocks where every, every, every new block includes a hash of the block before. And so the, and then because it, it gets distributed across the globe. It means that it would be very, very difficult for someone to claim that something had been in that chain early on when in fact the rest of the world can prove it, it had not. So that, that would be, I think the most simplistic answer to that may I,
I had a quick comment from it and I did drink the, the Kool-Aid right. So I'm, I'm converted, but I think we had a bunch of technologists and enough beer and pizza will probably figure out most of the technical problems. Right. I, I think the key thing over here is to understand, you know, how do we want to change the business problem? You know, most of the business problems and business processes are a little bit archaic, right? 10 years old, 20 years old. Even if you take a simple problem of, you know, in the us, it takes five days to clear a check, right? If I write you a check, it'll take five days, right? That's a 20 year old process while the technology has changed many times over, we never went and fixed the business process. So we keep putting layer after layer after layer.
Right? So while I'm, I did, you know, we do do a lot of blockchain based solutions with the automobile and financial industries. I believe that fundamentally, we have to figure out how do you do the proofing, right? How do you, do you know, where you may not have everything but enough to get started, but then build the reputation over a period of time and then grow the strength of that proof, right? That's where I believe the business model has to change. And the technology will, whether it's distributed blockchain or something else will, will definitely help.
Could I just, of course, I'd like to just take that a little in the same direction, a little, a little further, which is, I think we can, can make progress if we clearly distinguish two problems. One is the problem of, for example, the refugee, who, who, who is, who arrives in a new situation, identity list, and must then be given tools to function going forward. And there's another problem which is integrating one's view of that person with where they come from. In other words, the proofing and all of those ancillary problems in terms of, you know, what, where, what was their origin and, you know, a lot of the, perhaps I'm naive, but I believe that many of the most important issues for being able to make it from today till tomorrow, till next week, till next month are those of how you give somebody enough of an identity now that they can function. Okay. And so I think you can say, we can just give, we can just say if, if, if I give somebody say ABL, a distribution almost said
BBC
B-word I didn't or a B-word if we, if we, yeah. If, if we can give someone enough of a, of a, of an identity that they can begin to function, and at least they have a key, at least they have a way to be referred to at least they have a digital name. We can at the very minimum, just connect that to their picture, to potentially to their fingerprint in a way that doesn't make it a publicly available thing. But something that in the case of dispute can be used to demonstrate that they are the rightful owner of that identity. So, okay. Now I can see I've, I've opened a can of worms, but the main, the main point here is to have this, this usable identity where you can, you can link it to something provable. All right. And one thing we know when, when, when you were sitting here in front of me, you have a certain image, you look a certain way, you, you have certain biometric characteristics. We don't have to publish those to the world and destroy your privacy, but those can be used for you to prove that you are the entity that is described in that identity.
So I would like to ask you Pamela again, please give the mic. I dunno where to go. No worries. Worries. How does a refugee join ping? Is there a possibility and how
I have no idea? I can say that honestly. And absolutely. And I mean that technically, I mean that in use case fashion, I, I actually would love to hear your opinion on that subject. You know, we obviously have lots of technology that can be strung together, but I don't know. And I, I think many companies don't know whether they're actually viable for, you know, in the Sub-Saharan, you know, desert for example, is, is that okay if I
Redirect? Yeah, of course.
Yeah. To me, the technology is the easy part to me. The challenge is the legal framework that establishes the legal identity, but also the institutional. And interinstitutional arrangement of recognizing who is who. And I also want to draw your attention to the fact that last September do UN approve the sustainable development goals. And I can't remember off the top of my head or how many of those goals and how many of the indicators hinge on a legal identity and universal birth registration for all by 2030. And this is where the international community has to come together one way or the other, the institutions like the world bank or the regional development banks have ways of interacting with governments. Because another thing, if you're gonna measure this, you have to have a baseline and the governments need the demographic information, the vital statistics also to be able to deal with under registration upstream. And if something is going to go into, to distributed ledger, it has to have an origin. And what does the origin can I, you know, today, claim being somebody else like instead of Mia, HARs, Mia, ham, or, you know, Pharaoh, but having this legal identity from the start is also something that I think technology should put a little bit of effort into helping out in the countries where, you know, mobile finds phones do not work outside of the urban centers, where there is very low internet penetration.
You made me remember the photo I showed of the archive. You know, getting a copy to prove your identity from a pile of rotting paper, full of termites and rats, very difficult. So you know how again, to combine the legal and institutional needs with technology in a way that is sustainable in environments where you do not necessarily have electricity 24 7 is a big challenge.
Thank you, Mia. May I extend your statement a little bit and question back, because yesterday in the keynote you already addressed world bank is not the right institution to solve the problem of this central identity, but if it's not who's then who should we address this? Is there anyone in place from a governmental institution here to, to address who could, who could take over?
Well, I'm not saying that the world bank cannot be part of the solution. Okay. No, quite contrary, because we have a long way to regional development banks. We have the privilege of having the governments as our main clients. Okay. So it's also about our role of being able to give the best advice to governments. That's one of the reasons why I'm very happy to be at this conference because, you know, I get updated, get new ideas and how to use, you know, expressing that's being used in, in Latin America very often how first world solutions can be tropicalized to fit into the reality of, of countries who are trying also to conform to the sustainable development goals, because 198 countries signed up to it and you know, it's gonna cost to comply with all the 17 goals. And I think it's, it's at least from the world bank, we are trying to get together private sector with development partners, with academia to find out what can we collectively do to support developing nations.
So you are on the way at the world bank then would you say this?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is one identification for development is one of five priority areas. That's crosscutting across all the governance practices in the world bank. It was launched two years ago. And in the process we have been looking at we've developed tools to assess the identity management systems in countries. I think we've done it in between 25 and 30 countries today, but this is again by request of the government. It's not, you know, that I'd like to go to Indonesia or I wanna go to lay or, you know, no, it's actually the government asking us to do this. We're also putting forward. This was also part of the annual meeting or the spring meeting of all the finance ministers of the world. There was a special session on Africa, and we're also trying to come up with some common standards.
Wonderful. That sounds like steps, you know, perhaps not the full solution, but 100 solution will be quite difficult to reach, but Ballash would, would like to say something and then Kim, you afterwards, please.
So I feel that I am the most millennial in the panel. So my thinking might be a little different and I will go a, a step further. So like what Bitcoin became is like this, a transaction system where there is no governments, there is no one says what we can do or can do transactions can cross borders without the, the overviewing eyes of the government as millennials. Many of them just don't go vote before they don't believe in politics because, well, it can cause problems. I agree. I do go, but many of them just don't vote because why we need politics? What, what do they do for us? Even though they might do a lot. This is a thinking that's getting very big support around the globe, at least in the part where I'm living and why a solution have to come from the governments.
That's why I wanted to go for that. Why, why not a solution just spread faster than a government? Bureaucratic decision can happen, can go and take over many of the word and then governments can validate it rather than it's a top down solution. Something can, can happen as a bottom up and then governments can join into the solution by validating the data that's put into the solution rather than they put in that the owner of the, that data set can obtain as, as ownership. So, well, it's just a very theoretical question, but I'm a bit on the, the second part. Yeah.
Maybe if you allow me to, to get into that, just for a moment, I support this and this is one thing I find kind of magic. When I look at things, we nowadays call distributed lectures. That things keep on appearing from somewhere. You know, some inventor, we don't even know exactly who it has been. And now six, seven years later, there is a Bitcoin. I can change it to euros. I get 400 euros for a Bitcoin. So it's real. It is real. Even if you know, no government, no governing body, nobody asked what it just appeared. And this is the opportunity we have. And this is also, I must say, now that governments, many governments started learning to regulate things after they appeared, which is most of the time, much cleverer than the other way around, because politicians should never be considered to be experts in any field.
Okay. Might be some different opinions about this, but you were in line.
The, the conversation has so many facets. It's which door do you go through? 17. I, I was thinking, you know, for example, working on this, on the problems in India, as, as one is trying to develop this registry of people and so on it, it immediately gets tied into the fact that there are systems of compensation systems to help people, for example, with their farm subsidies and they're this and they're that. And of course you have to have identity in order to be eligible to those, for those subs subsidies, some kind of identity, but in the, the way the systems had been operating, there would be powerful people within those regions who would arrange, shall we say for themselves to be receiving a significant contribution yes. From the government subsidies and so on that we're going to others. And, and so in fact, the hard part was knowing not, you know, even just in terms of getting registered, the fact that the I'll call it a chief, the, the important person from that zone was making assertions about who was there and what they did and what they owned didn't mean that any of it was true.
And, and so this just leads me to think once again, there are two issues. One is the issue of having an identity I can function with. In other words, just something ultra pragmatic. And the other is the proofing of who that really is in terms of, you know, giving them a name and, and tying it into the official natural identity as opposed the, to the defacto natural identity. Does that make sense that there can be two and, and I've often, you know, I worry about making the official natural identity, the gate for being able to solve the concrete problems that the people have of saying, this is my house.
They don't actually have to be able to prove that their last name is Cameron or that Kim Cameron, to, to have this house. They, they have to prove that they, if in, in something like a block, like a distributed ledger, you could have a way to say this, this physical person has this house. And that would be something that was irrefutable unchangeable would last through time. We wouldn't be very sure of what their name was. Maybe their name was what they said. It was maybe that was a false name, but over time, that then gives you the way to get around problems. Like who's the chief at one particular point in time, or who's where, where the power influences are. And so on in order to add the semantics around the deeper identity or the, the more legalistic identity issues over time. And so, anyway, that's kind of what I find interesting about the, the distributed ledger approach in this, that you could have something unalterable that some politician couldn't change because he wanted it to, that still was pragmatic because you could prove that, okay, this, the person who at least looked like this or had these relatives or whatever, it would be owns this thing, and, and that would belong to, to them.
And so you actually achieved something concrete for someone.
Do
You want to, I think, I think I was, I was gonna make a comment about greater trust, I think, which Kim captured as well. Right. I think for situations like banks, you may be okay to give an identity to start transacting, but specifically with the, with the refugee, there's also a responsibility of making sure that we don't repeat things like Paris and, and Belgium. Right. Which is, which is an important thing, right? Where, you know, one country let the men based on a certain trust that, that propagated further on how do you, how do you then put some level of checks and bounds to make sure that you limit the liability or limit the risk on, on how much one can use that identity? So call the graded trust as a Pamela
Would like to, to have a comment on this.
Yes. I think the tough part is that there, there is an in essence when this starts a vacuum, right? So there's a bootstrapping period. That's extremely dangerous. You know, once in theory, once there is a fingerprint to go with every home in a, in a market, then in, in theory, that's sort of set and changing that state is difficult, but there's nothing to keep a crooked member. Anyone who has gained trust from, you know, walking 10 of their neighbors through the process and associating their fingerprints with any house they want. And, you know, so to me, those use cases of, of what does it mean, for example, to be a, a nurse in a hospital who is the person who takes the baby's fingers and rubs them on the, the sensor, you know, what keeps her from creating 10 identities that she controls or cells for every one identity that's true and, and real, and is actually someone we should be protecting, you know, so that, that horrible change state of getting started and, and making it right and not introducing a million freeloading fictional people just seems like a
Big problem. I'd have a question here. When it comes down to this fraud issue is distributed later in any way more helpful than other technologies. Because for me, it's like a
General problem, this and Catarina a I ed, do you know some of those cases where it really was misused, perhaps not in block blockchain, because it's so fresh, but similar situations, because I think sometimes especially as older ones tend to see the risk. Yes. And of course, as Al already mentioned, they just use it and then that it get used and it get used more. And then in one place it's accepted and then those regulators look at it, cope with how to use this. Now, make it more official, more formal. Things might happen to this. I just wanted to state this because I know it for myself.
Yes. Well, I mean, the fraud that's going on right now, tax refund fraud is a perfect example of this that's happening today, where, you know, you only need four pieces of information. And the next thing you know, somebody has, you know, another human being is living your life and incurring debt on your behalf. So I think there's lots of examples. Okay.
And I mean to that from my experience, not the current refugee numbers, but around 20 years ago, it's it was about every fifth identity was just invented.
Okay.
And the legal situation over here. And I think it's in all Europe is that governments have to try and prove that your pretended identity is false. If the government is not able to prove within a certain period, it has to believe. And then you have the identity you talk about. But as part of the asylum application, of course, you have to deal with parts of your past, which means there has to be some identification, which is valid for the past as well, which makes the things then difficult. Yes.
Just an example, from, from Europe, an article in Lamont, I think it was in 2011 or 12 claimed that about 20% of the passport issued by France were issued on false identities, created identities
20, not 2 20, 22, 0.
And I just wanted to, it's not
So different in Germany, intentionally false, or
That Leman didn't specify. But, but I can imagine that, you know, people wanna create an identity. We see it a lot in the traffic, through central America, to the us IKO has indicated they are, you know, more worried about the breeder documents that support national ID cards and passports than the passports themselves. So it's not so much about document fraud any longer it's about identity fraud or theft. And when you see the conditions of some of the world's civil registries and how easy it is to get a copy of a birth certificate and proceed with that, or create
One
Yourself or create yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And in Mexico, anyone can ask for anyone else's birth certificate. So, you know, that is something that is being misused to a very great three.
Okay. Any other comment? I
Just had one brief comment, which is the, this problem of, for example, the French, you know, the, the, the terrorists who passed through and, and French. And I think part of the problem there is that they weren't properly proved in the beginning, but we had this concept that we have this binary proofing, like you're proofed, or you're not proofed. And so in order to let the person pass through, they have to be proved. Now they're proved it's hard to take the, what, you know, to reverse time, put the egg back in the shell or whatever, and say no, but they weren't really proved. They were just, it was just a partial proof. So, so what it says is that it's not just a question of the authentication, but of the, of having some kind of a statement about the quality of that authentication. So in these areas where you have refugees and people coming from other areas, being able to say, we've been through this much due diligence in terms of the, but don't treat this as a regular passport when you're passing through the next border points. Okay. So I think ties into what there
Is a question from the panel. We are appreciate this.
I, so a couple things. One is, I think we need to connect to like identity is socially constructed and contextual. And we invented all the civil registry stuff and these systems and processes we don't. And I think, you know, if we look at how we function in the real world, nobody ever asks people for their like birth certificate or their passport. We just introduce each other and we know each other. And if I start calling myself, Kim Cameron, people are like, that's not you or vice versa. Right. So, so Canada actually does social verification to get official documents like a passport. I have to tell them other people who know me and they literally call them up and go, do you know this person? So part of what we have to do is embed these kind of documents that adults get in a network of other adults and get away from obsessing about a piece of paper issued to infants.
Cuz it's just, it doesn't make any sense. Okay. Right. And particularly for bootstrapping identities, for people, who've come from places where you cannot get those documents, you have to give ways that people have persistent identity that they present again and again and again, and they build up a reputation around this persistence, whether it's a passport or a digital ID for that, what you like to. So anyways, I just, I just put that out there. And I think also like states are overrated in, in our, the way the world is moving. Why should I be treated any differently than my American, the folks I live with every day, because I was born an hour north of their border, right? Like how do we get out of this whole framework of like the state defining everything about you for the rest of your life, because of where you merged from your mother's womb.
So any, any, any comment on this from your side, more question from the panel, gorgeous. I, I take, you had done over there. It's sorry.
Speaker 10 00:46:36 So kind of continuing from that continuance to the previous question, I would think that bootstrapping identities turn, would present some kind of obstacles or dangers to the states who are providing services to the people who have bootstrapped identities. What do you think is, what do you think are those dangers? What are the states afraid of? Mostly
What you be
Speaker 10 00:47:06 Regarding their bootstrap identities? What's the danger in the process
Anybody would like to answer? Yes.
If, if I may, yeah. If I may respond to the first comment or question, so different countries have different constitutions and different legal frameworks in the us, if you are a legal resident, or if you as me are there as an international civil servant, you are required to carry identity documents at any given time. And you have to show them if asked by the police, a lot of countries require a copy of the birth certificate. If the child is to be vaccinated, a lot of countries requires a copy of the birth certificate. Also the us actually, when you start school and some countries actually to earn money, the state will require the parent to provide a birth certificate that has been issued no more than three months ago. So for a poor family, this becomes unattainable and children are excluded from education very often. And when it comes to boots, rabbit, I don't know if that was for me or for, for your, for, I think there are more good people and bad people, you know, needing identity.
And I can say that I started looking into this when the development banks in the nineties were accused of excluding the poorest of the poor. And yeah, we did because as a project manager, I was not able to sign off on disbursement to someone who couldn't produce a document. I would be accused of a corruption and the auditor would be on my, in my office very quickly if, if that happened. So what we did instead of, you know, continuing to exclude, try to find ways to include and put for instance, as a conditionality in social loans or loans to the social sectors, that if a person who otherwise qualified to receive a benefit didn't have documents that we would help, not only the individual, but the whole family to obtain documents. And while there may be a lot of bad people wanting to get an illegal identity in a way, I think there are more people who are in desperate need of this to be able to, you know, have the dignity of being able to prove who they are, be recognized as someone as people.
And if I may give a very short example, I've worked in one of the most, one of the poorest areas in Peru. Also one of the most dangerous for being now a primary producer of cocaine. People had destroyed all records, not to be found, but in collaboration with the Chi, sorry, with the Peruvian authorities, with financing from the bank, we used local millennials to go out into the communities and people were being encouraged to register. And there was an immediate financial benefit associated with this. And it was also about trust building. So we had hope to register 10,000 and it was more than a hundred thousand who actually, you know, walked up to eight hours. This was like at four or 5,000 meters above sea level and really extreme poor communities. But they did get
Gorgeous, gorgeous example perhaps, but there are three more questions from the panel. So I would like to hand over here in the front and then to Yvonne and then over there.
Speaker 11 00:51:36 So my fundamental question is, it sounds like the more we think here, this it's less specifically about, and this may make the problem worse. This is more about solving citizen identity, right? Because first of all, the refugee identities don't exist until a citizen identity destroyed that's cause it never existed or it got, it was non, you know, resilient, therefore destroyed the refugee. And secondly, all the, like to that question, the worries that people have with regards to why do I care about refugee? I is because they're worried about those refugee identities being used and misused, which goes back to the whole issue of identity fraud, et C, which are so it's more about the citizen identity problem. And the structures that rely on point came about why can't citizen identity, the minimum viable based on the use case that is trying to support as opposed to every single thing requires every single document that ever existed about you. Right? So it feels like that's really the problem that needs to be addressed. It doesn't necessarily solve it in the short term over time. Really what the issue is, citizen problem problem.
Well, it sometimes comes down to being a citizen problem, but I think it is more a problem or it is more the need of a consistent identity, whatever name you have, whether you change it or you don't change it, it is more that you want to be able to prove that you come from a certain neighborhood in Aleppo, whatever citizen you are. It doesn't matter. But of course, during the process of finding out your identity, which is a complex process, if you arrive here without a passport, then if you can prove at least a bit of it, like the citizenship, it is already good for you because then the probability that you have reason for a asylum is higher than coming from a different country. It's more where you used to, to have residents. It's not the citizenship.
Also wanted to add something to a question this over.
Yeah. So I think what you said is there was one sentence that struck my mind is that main problem is not misusing someone else's identity, but the exclusion is by not having an identity. And there are less people misusing identity than people excluded. I
Speaker 11 00:54:15 Think that that's the point. I think Kim was also making is that the reason people are getting excluded is cause the burden of being part of the equation. So high, unnecessary necessarily.
Okay.
Speaker 12 00:54:27 I was really struck by Kim Cameron's comment that there's 2 billion people or the like who are under identified. So in developing nations, our problem is over identification and we are concerned about privacy, whereas they have the opposite problem. And I wanted to make a comment that it's probably key not to compare basic human rights to the right to privacy, which is actually very historically contingent, right? If we are normal citizens, we usually shouldn't have much to hide. It's more about the control of our data. So I wonder what's thoughts on a, a post privacy world where if, if there's an op a question between delivering services to these people who suffer the most basic human necessities and in exchange for that, we have to lose some of our rights to privacy. I wonder what the answer, what the approach should be. Should we consider a post privacy scenario?
Okay. Interesting. Anyone who wants to art? Sure. Okay.
I don't think you have to, I think these are different problems that affect different parts of the world. And basically even if you wanted to, it isn't pragmatic or plausible that it would be accepted to sort of forklift the populations of the advanced capitalist countries into a post privacy era that isn't on in the cards. So we could, I think we can kind of put that aside and focus on this problem of solving the under, under, under identification problem where, where it exists. And what's interesting is that you kind of have this discontinuity because that under identification exists for the refugee who finds himself in the advanced capitalist country. But this is where the idea of moving away from saying you can't get services unless you are UN, unless you have that over identification to go with it and moving to, you have to be identified enough that you can get your services and not get them twice.
Not because that's really one of the things that people really, I loved your question. One of the things that I've heard people complain about all the time is how do we prevent, you know, so and so from getting the same benefit four times. Yeah. So you have all of those kinds of issues that have to be solved. And, and that's why you need something pragmatic that lets you just work pragmatically and then solve the hard, hard problems of giving, you know, the full history of historical identity over a period of time. You now have the luxury of time to do it.
So as your moderators, we have to have a look at the time first asking the panel. We would like to go on with the discussion and go a little bit in our, in our break. If you don't mind, we, we just go ahead with the discussion. That's what I wanted. Say just like 10 minutes more. Yeah, there was a question. Hold on, hold on. Pamela. Wanted to interview okay. On the question. Oh
Yeah. I, I guess I think the other thing is that we have the technology or at least we hopefully have the technology to limit what people see and how many people see them. So perhaps the same person, you know, perhaps somebody gets four rations of grain. I think that, you know, something I would worry about on the whole worries front is that every business or border control stop or, or, you know, entity that's going to check someone's identity is a possible point of abuse. And so I, I just think that there are tactical security measures that can be deployed to keep that privacy leakage from happening. And, and that, we're just gonna assume that that's gonna get better and better over time.
Okay. So thank you. Take over please.
Speaker 13 00:58:38 Yes. Hello. And thank you very much for all, for sharing the real life problems and identification of refugees and other folks from broken down countries. But I would like to know from the more tactical oriented part of the audience, what approach do you see how we can use blockchain mechanisms for improving the situation for really approaching, helping in the identification of refugees and third world countries, I'd say, I'm sorry for using that term. What, how can we really use it and what approaches do we see and how can we get it done quickly?
Would your be so kind, and please, there you go.
Thank you.
I think, I think what blockchain will give us is a mechanism to get started, right? Something you can get started as, as I think we were all saying in a minimum viable identity to get started and then grow over a period of time, it gives us a mechanism to replicate information. It gives us a mechanism to have a multi-party way of validating an individual, especially in situations where that, you know, lady from Canada was saying that if multiple people have to proof an identity, you know, that gives us that multi-party cooperation gives us that non-repudiation gives us mechanisms for privacy so that we can think about scope, right? Where can you use this? And then when you find out that beyond the minimum viable, you have a stronger level, then you can add to the ledger and then show that this is same Kim Cameron, but now there is a level of reputation on top of it to be able to conduct business with the government.
Okay,
Great. Give you one sentence to it. From my knowledge, I don't know any other way to create more probability that there will be a positive future regulation than using distributed lecturer.
Well, I think, I think we've had such systems, right. But you know, it's harder to maintain, you know, some of the advantages of blockchain are this mechanism to have a multi-party cooperation, but the point of, you know, having that contract negotiation set and et cetera, some of the things like non-repudiation and encryption and integrity become easier, but in, we have been doing certain things like this before, right. It's just not as straightforward.
Okay. So there's some other remark or question from the
Speaker 14 01:01:27 Audience when I go with, with something of a common here, I mean, first that might be necessary back to the scope of the panel and discussion, which has to do with the LTS and, and refugees basically. Right? So first off refugee is a repeat offense. If I may use the term, because that happens in time and you get to be a refugee across time and space until you settle into a certain condition that you can live with. So to Kim's point, you need to uncouple the, the operational identity bit, the, the, the identity handle of the entitlements and claims, because those tend to be problematic. You need to rely on something to be able to, to kind of use that while you're being a refugee. And now, as far as the beginning and the end of the problem, even if you had to have, and the integrity of, of, of those to be undisputed, the attributes of the original identity in, in, in the country of origin, they may or may not be relevant in the, in the, in the country of destination.
Speaker 14 01:02:37 There may be no infrastructure to, to interact with, to, to verify the, the claims they're in and so on and so forth. So the fact that you do or do not have that tends to be a matter of limited relevance in the context of what a refugee has to do not survive. On the other hand, at the end of, of the, of the journey is not so much the abuse of the would be refugee, trying to become accepted in a, in a, in, in a new country. It's not so much about the abuse of that. I mean, to the best of one's knowledge in, in, in neither Brussels or Paris case, no electronic or analog identities were used to purchase the damn guns and is not a refugee problem because the parties and questions were nationals born in those countries. The access to the guns was then tended to be a problem, but so let us stop being scared about what happens after we allow the refugees in, and let's try to understand why fundamentally the DLTs would help us.
Speaker 14 01:03:39 And I'll get to the point of Dr. Stein's presentation before that, that the nature of, of, of DLTs. If, if, if implemented correctly, they tend to be by their very nature illegal. And that provides something, which is interesting. The entities that interact with the refugees act from within jurisdiction, they cannot exceed nor bend the rules. Therefore they may not accept the status as identities concern of one, one refugee that cannot provide any verification acceptable within the, the rules. And if you get to bureau refugee across number of jurisdiction, that the problem tends to be complicated.
Speaker 14 01:04:18 The beauty of having emergent DLTs that tend to exist outside the scope of any particular jurisdiction provides one interesting business case, because this is a business problem was correct. I'll be very short on, on this. That's be important because we are missing an opportunity here. We need a common ground and DLTs and implementing identity spaces on top of DLTs tends to be it. We need for the refugees, a technology of sorts bridge technology and logo digital, or, or, or combination they're of, for them as individuals to jump on the bandwagon and be able to hook on this identity train. And one needs legal grounds for the entities, interacting with the refugees from within the jurisdictions, unless you have the train mid ground, though, you cannot hope for either. So we need to have this first and then allow the refugees to be able to hook onto this train and use some sort of identity, you know, handles later on building the cases, refugee and add attributes and to allow then respective jurisdictions to, to map on this. I mean, this is the most important thing that we need to understand about why doesn't work. We don't have a common ground.
Okay, Debra, this, this is why things happen. I have to be the bad girl to say, please, there is another, and I think this is the last question we accept or comment don't know, they are waiting for a couple of minutes. Now, now you are on the mic.
Speaker 16 01:05:59 So there was a,
Is it? Yeah.
Speaker 16 01:06:03 Yeah. There was a panel earlier today where they were talking about sovereign identity and the opportunity to have a sovereign identity ledger. I won't say blockchain. And I'm wondering to the extent that that enables identity that is independent of nation states of the sovereign nations. Is that gonna be threatening? Are, are there, are there some states that are gonna actively, you know, discriminated against or, or try to discourage that kind of evolutionary step?
So thank you. There, there was another question, to be honest, we are much over the time and we, we, we have to stay in time. So if you do not mind, I hope everyone from the panel will not rush away then better going for a break and continue all those interesting discussions in the break, please. So many, many things to, to this panel. Otherwise, I, I think we don't end until night. Thank you very much, many, thanks to all of you. Sorry. I'm so sorry.
