On 27-Feb-06, at 3:07 PM, John Schnizlein wrote:
I believe that a useful working definition is something on the
lines of:
An identity is a set of assertions concerning a particular subject
identifier.
This definition seems to apply to the concept in Dick's ID-2 talk,
but we should be careful. Do we want to say that any set of
assertions concerning an identifier is an identity. This looks
like a semantic trap to me. I suggest that a definition more
clearly associated with what the purpose or use of an identity is
might avoid that trap. This is a trap-rich environment.
Do you have a suggestion Dave? I hope you are not one of those
people that just poo-poos what other people do! :-)
This is certainly consistent with Dick's Id2 talk.
The presentation was entertaining. It contained at least one
statement of equivalence that I find unpersuasive from just its
assertion. The equivalence of identity = reputation is a strong
and provocative claim. If the sort of definition of identity on
which the WG's effort (implicitly) rests includes this equivalence,
it deserves to be justified better.
Glad you found it entertaining. The key point was that identity is
much more then a username and password. The "reputation=identity"
point is for people to get that there are things you say about
yourself, and things others say about you, and that the latter is
pretty valuable, and we have no way of communicating those in the
digital world.
The goal of the talk was to make digital identity issues accessible
to a broad audience.
And so on.
One of the real-world details that is illustrated by this example
is that assertions can be limited. For example, the Star Alliance
Gold might be valid only until January of next year unless Dick
flies enough this year (or has flown way too much already). Since
XML is a proposed format for assertions, it is easy enough to add
syntactic elements to reflect the limitations, but the careful
designer will notice the slippery slope of embedding real-world
semantics into the format of identity assertions.
No reason a digital claim cannot expire the same way that a physical
one expires.
Careful bounds on the definitions of what we are dealing with are
important here. Relying on the rich set of associations that
people have with an abstract noun like identity will not do.
Not sure what is wrong with the definition proposed. Per above, do
you have a better suggestion so we can move forward?
-- Dick
_______________________________________________
dix mailing list
[email protected]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dix
