Sophists and Cynics
I did intend to stay away from philosophical debate and concentrate on more practical aspects of IdM, but consistency has never been one of my strong points.
As anyone who has visited the UK will know, what our radio waves lack in diversity, they can occasionally make up for in terms of quality of content. BBC Radio 4, in particular, often has some highbrow programming that, if you can stand Melvin Bragg or Andrew Marr, can temporarily provide you with some enough borrowed intellectual ammunition to convince others that you are both intelligent and erudite. So here we go...
Radio 4 today had a programme about The Cynics, that wacky bunch of ancient Greek philosophers who lived in barrels and fornicated in public in an effort to convince other ancient Greeks that the good life was the natural life. Chief amongst them was Diogenes, who, it is reputed, first coined the phrase "cosmopolitan". For an ancient Greek, the most important aspect of their identity (can you feel the tenuous link to IdM already?) was where they came from: which city they were a citizen of. When two Greeks met, the first question they asked of the other was "where are you from?". Diogenes, when challenged in this way, would respond "I am a cosmopolitan" - in other words, "I am a citizen of the cosmos, and the importance you place on an individual's city of origin is trivial and irrelevant." And that's a bit like the challenges faced by today's IdM systems, isn't it? (Or if it isn't then my analogy and credibility, if I ever had any, die here - so stick with it for a moment longer.) Whilst in the private sphere of work-related identity transactions we might be content to allow our original location to derive our entitlements in other locations - as in a simple trust between two identity providers - in the public sphere such concepts are insufficient. We, the users, need to be considered as cosmopolitans - citizens of the virtual cosmos, carrying our identity with us, and being given entitlements based on who we are, not where we have come from. If I understand Kim Cameron's Laws of Identity correctly, this may even accord in some way with Law 4: A universal identity system must support both "omni-directional" identifiers for use by public entities and "unidirectional" identifiers for use by private entities. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that I'm cynically seeking to align myself with an Identity Giant such as Kim in order to gain authority I don't have. In doing so I'm following a long established tradition - the original cynics themselves were happy to feed off the scraps from the tables of the great and good. In fact, they were often referred to as "dogs" and fed on bones. Diogenes himself took this a step further by allegedly peeing on the legs of those who laughed at him. So be warned.
Sticking with philosophical analogies, I picked up an interesting piece of sophisty (in the modern sense of the word, suggesting an invalid argument composed of specious reasoning, not having anything to do with Platonic discourse) from the UK's Home Secretary, Mr Charles Clarke - the man tasked with pushing the contentious ID card bill through Parliament. As reported by Silicon.com, Mr Clarke stated that the advent of the ID Card will "provide an effective mechanism to tackle crime, to reduce identity fraud and to improve legitimate access to services. I believe that it will not remove civil liberties but will give an individual greater control over his identity." Whilst the first three points he makes are arguably valid, it's the last one that makes my hair stand on end. Having your ultimate digital ID contained within the bowels of a Guvmint database will "give an individual greater control over his identity". Eh? Say what? Only a Minister could make such a statement and expect us to swallow it. What's next? Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia?
As anyone who has visited the UK will know, what our radio waves lack in diversity, they can occasionally make up for in terms of quality of content. BBC Radio 4, in particular, often has some highbrow programming that, if you can stand Melvin Bragg or Andrew Marr, can temporarily provide you with some enough borrowed intellectual ammunition to convince others that you are both intelligent and erudite. So here we go...
Radio 4 today had a programme about The Cynics, that wacky bunch of ancient Greek philosophers who lived in barrels and fornicated in public in an effort to convince other ancient Greeks that the good life was the natural life. Chief amongst them was Diogenes, who, it is reputed, first coined the phrase "cosmopolitan". For an ancient Greek, the most important aspect of their identity (can you feel the tenuous link to IdM already?) was where they came from: which city they were a citizen of. When two Greeks met, the first question they asked of the other was "where are you from?". Diogenes, when challenged in this way, would respond "I am a cosmopolitan" - in other words, "I am a citizen of the cosmos, and the importance you place on an individual's city of origin is trivial and irrelevant." And that's a bit like the challenges faced by today's IdM systems, isn't it? (Or if it isn't then my analogy and credibility, if I ever had any, die here - so stick with it for a moment longer.) Whilst in the private sphere of work-related identity transactions we might be content to allow our original location to derive our entitlements in other locations - as in a simple trust between two identity providers - in the public sphere such concepts are insufficient. We, the users, need to be considered as cosmopolitans - citizens of the virtual cosmos, carrying our identity with us, and being given entitlements based on who we are, not where we have come from. If I understand Kim Cameron's Laws of Identity correctly, this may even accord in some way with Law 4: A universal identity system must support both "omni-directional" identifiers for use by public entities and "unidirectional" identifiers for use by private entities. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that I'm cynically seeking to align myself with an Identity Giant such as Kim in order to gain authority I don't have. In doing so I'm following a long established tradition - the original cynics themselves were happy to feed off the scraps from the tables of the great and good. In fact, they were often referred to as "dogs" and fed on bones. Diogenes himself took this a step further by allegedly peeing on the legs of those who laughed at him. So be warned.
Sticking with philosophical analogies, I picked up an interesting piece of sophisty (in the modern sense of the word, suggesting an invalid argument composed of specious reasoning, not having anything to do with Platonic discourse) from the UK's Home Secretary, Mr Charles Clarke - the man tasked with pushing the contentious ID card bill through Parliament. As reported by Silicon.com, Mr Clarke stated that the advent of the ID Card will "provide an effective mechanism to tackle crime, to reduce identity fraud and to improve legitimate access to services. I believe that it will not remove civil liberties but will give an individual greater control over his identity." Whilst the first three points he makes are arguably valid, it's the last one that makes my hair stand on end. Having your ultimate digital ID contained within the bowels of a Guvmint database will "give an individual greater control over his identity". Eh? Say what? Only a Minister could make such a statement and expect us to swallow it. What's next? Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia?
posted by Dave Nesbitt at 3:04 AM
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