Identity, Privacy, and the Magic of Being You!

This is all about your ability to express the ever evoling shape and form of who you are while also possessing full control over access to this temporal state of affairs.

For what's outlined above to remain a concrete reality, in realms such as the Internet and World Wide Web (Web), Identity and Privacy need to be fully under your control.

The Problem

Today, we all make use of social media services that provide us with new and powerful ways to socialize. All of these platorms are supported by high-performance and scalable infrastructure that isn't really visible to end-users. This reality creates a business model connundurum for service providers -- becuase they need to ramp up memebership to be useful, while also understanding that the shortest route to the aforementioned goal is a $0.00 entry level price point en route to profitable up-selling.

End-users are also faced with a connundrum. This takes the form of privacy concerns that arise from the what actually constitutes the social media service providers up-selling strategy. As we all know too well, demographic data (with varying degrees of personally identifiable granularity) is the typical product peddled to marketing and advertising oriented syndicates serving the needs of various product and services vendors.

A solution to the problem (outlined above) boils down to creating a relationship between end-users and service providers that's mutually beneficial.

_Solution Breakdown_

Every application or service that's usable by more than a single end-user requires appreciation and comprehension of identity. Every end-user is an individual, and this reality needs to be reflected in the core architecture of any multi-user solution. Failure to understand Identity ultimately leads to privacy compromises that cannot be addressed by lenghty and incomprehensible data access policy documents. Even worse, If understood, most end-users would never agree to the terms in the aforementioned documents, even at the universally attractive price of $0.00.

__Identity & Identification__

There's a reality to identity that's often lost in world-wiews created by a majority of existing applications and services, especially in regards social media services and networks. The aforementioned reality boils down to NOT being able to taking full control of the following:

[1] Identifiers that denote (signify) You
[2] Identity Cards that describe You
[3] Location of Identity Cards that describe You
[4] Signature(s) used to verify claims made by You .

Items 1-4 above collectively provide identity i.e., the combination of denotation (signification) and connotation (description). In the context of the Web's architecture (AWWW), this boils down to:

[1] Using HTTP URIs (hyperlinks) as entity names
[2] Using RDF Language to describe entities
[3] Using a preferred notation (HTML, HTML+Microdata, HTML+RDFa, HTML+TURTLE, HTML+JSON-LD, TURTLE, JSON-LD, RDF/JSON, CSV, OData etc.. ) to inscribe RDF Language statements (that describe entities) to Web-accessible documents.

Following the guidelines above, you end up with entity names that resolve to entity description documents whenever the aforementioned name is looked up via an HTTP GET request.

__Privacy__

As is the case with Identity, there's also a reality to privacy, devoid of complexity. Basically, privacy is about "self calibration" of one's vulnerability, in any medium. For instance, who makes the decision to lock your front-door? You or a machine? That's a very simple example of what privacy is about i.e., "You" not "Them" makes the final call about vulnerability and risk.

In the digital realm, privacy control boils down to you being in full-control of the following:

[1] How You are Identified
[2] How You are Verified
[2] How Data is delivered to You (encrypted or unencrypted)
[3] How ACL (Access Control Lists) and Policies are used to control access to docuemnts created by You.

Anything less than the above simply places you in a hopeful Web of questionable trust.

The following screencast (no voice over yet) links guide you through the process of creating and verifing your Identity, on the World Wide Web, courtesy of YouID:

[1] http://bit.ly/youid-identity-creation-and-verification-linkedin -- verifiable Identity derived from LinkedIn Profile Data and deployed to using a combination of your local Identity Claims Store (keychain or keystore) and Dropbox
[2] http://bit.ly/youid-identity-creation-and-verification-facebook -- ditto using Facebook profile data
[3] http://bit.ly/youid-identity-creation-and-verification-google-plus -- ditto using Google+ profile data
[4] http://bit.ly/youid-identity-creation-and-verification-twitter -- ditto using Twitter profile data.

In conclusion, there is a magic to individuality that we MUST all hold dear. Nobody knows you better than yourself. You don't need to outsource your power of cognition to a buggy robot. Simply use these robots to be more productive (in your professional and private life). Nobody, but you, understands why you like something today and dislike it tomorrow, that's simply the magic of being you!