Summary: Until we value freedom and independence in the digital world, we will yield up control of our digital lives to others who will act in their own interests, not ours.

In response to a post on X about China's social credit system, Paul Conlon said:

Digital ID is ultimately about access control where those who impose the system are the ones determining what you are required to be and do.

Provision of resources and liberties become conditional upon the whims of the affluent. Doesn't sound safe or convenient to me.

From X
Referenced 2024-08-28T08:10:31-0400

How Paul said this struck me because I've been thinking a lot about access control lately. I believe that we build identity systems to manage relationships, but, as Paul points out, in many cases the ultimately utility of identity systems is access control.

This isn't, by itself, a bad thing. I'm glad that Google controls access to my GMail account so that only I can use it. But it doesn't stop there. If I use my Google account to log into other things, then Google ultimately controls my access to everything I've used it for. This is federation's original sin¹.

Paul's comment points out the primary problem with how we build identity systems today: when access control is centralized, it inherently shifts power towards those who manage the system. This dynamic can lead to a situation where individuals must conform to the expectations or demands of those in control, just to maintain their access to essential services or resources. While we often accept this trade-off for convenience—like using Google to manage multiple logins—the broader implications are troubling.

The more we rely on federated identity systems, with their tendency to centralization, the more we risk ceding control over our digital lives, reducing our autonomy, and increasing our dependence on entities whose goals may not align with our own. This is why the principles of self-sovereign identity (SSI) are so compelling. SSI proposes a model where individuals maintain control over their own identity, reducing the risks associated with centralized access control and enhancing personal freedom in the digital realm.

Critics of SSI will claim that giving people control over their identity means we have to accept their self assertions. Nothing could be further from the truth. When someone wants me to prove I'm over 18, I use a driver's license. The state is asserting my age, not me. But I'm in control of who I show that to and where. Sovereignty is about borders and imposes a system of relationships.

Now, China could use decentralized identity technology to build their social credit system. One credential, controlled by the state, that is used to access everything. Technology alone can't solve this problem. As a society, we have to want a digital world, modeled on the physical one, where individuals are the locus of control and use information and assertions from a variety of credentials to build and interact in authentic peer-to-peer relationships. Until we value freedom and independence in the digital world, we will yield up control of our digital lives to others who will act in their own interests, not ours.

Notes

1. For similar reasons, I think federated social media systems are a bad idea too, but that's another blog post.

Photo Credit: Papers Please from DALL-E (public domain). Prompt: Draw a rectangular picture of police checking identity papers of people on the street

Tags: identity access+control ssi

Kyra Wilson, Aylin Caliskan, Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, Nov 13, 2024

The topic of AI-based recruitment and hiring has been discussed here before and research continues apace. This item (13 page PDF), despite the characterization in GeekWire, is a fairly narrow study. It looks at three text-embedding models based on Mistral-7B-v0.1, and tests for gender and racial bias on applications containing name and position only, and name and position and some content (the paper discusses removing the name but does do it). The interesting bit is that intersectional bias (ie., combining gender and race) is not merely a combination of the separate biases; while separate biases exaggerated the discrimination, "intersectional results, on the other hand, do correspond more strongly to real-world discrimination in resume screening." Via Lisa Marie Blaschke, who in turn credits Audrey Watters.

Helen J. DeWaard, Canadian Journal of Learning Technology, Nov 13, 2024

I enjoyed the lavish illustrations in this article, a rarity in academic publications. After anm introductory section, the paper offers what is essentially a dialogue around the topic of sharing and openness in education. This bit from  the abstract resonated most with me: "It is becoming ever more important to share expertise as practitioners, researchers, and theorists in the field of education by making explicit what is often tacit and unspoken, and when sharing knowledge, reflections, and actions. By actively thinking-out-loud through blogs, social media, and open scholarly publications, educators can openly share details of what, how, and why they do what they do." This is the space where OLDaily operates - a somewhat middle ground between full academia on the one hand and the popular press on the other.

Paula MacDowell, Kristin Moskalyk, Katrina Korchinski, Dirk Morrison, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, Nov 13, 2024

This paper reports on a process where thirty-five teachers enrolled in an elective three-credit multimedia design course "engaged in experiential activities focussed on developing artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, alongside a collaborative assignment to co-author an open-access textbook, Teaching and Creating With Generative Artificial Intelligence." In the process, "the Student Artificial Intelligence Literacy (SAIL) framework was developed (illustrated)." The paper concludes with the usual recommendations ('do no harm', 'develop communication skills', etc.). Each participant wrote a chapter, though a common template was used. I very much like the idea of producing a useful open resource as part of class activities. Oddly, the article doesn't provide a link to the textbook, but I found it here. It's a nice selection of 'how-to' articles that readers, I think, will find useful. One chapter (chapter 20 1/2?) is missing.

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, The Scholarly Kitchen, Nov 13, 2024

We expect The Scholarly Kitchen to represent the publishers' point of view, since that is its intent, but in this case it ventures into the realm of pure propaganda. No open access charges subscription fees to readers. In 'Gold' open access, publishers charge authors 'article publication fees', while in 'Green' open access no such fees are charged. So how is there a "cost" to readers? According to this article, it's in the time and effort it takes to find the 'version of record' of an article as compared to what is found in typical 'green' venues such as preprint repositories. This argument, of course, assumes readers want to find the 'version of record', and the author is ready with a 'fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD)' argument. The author also argues that green versions are hard to find, compared to gold versions, ignoring such services as Unpaywall that index open access articles.

Steve Faulkner recently released a tool for Internet Explorer called the Accessibility Toolbar. It provides one-click access to accessibility validators and has features that go beyond simple accessibility checks.

Craig Neilson and Ray Matthews recently returned from North Carolina to learn about using DSpace, ePrints, and LOCKSS-Docs for providing permanent public access to state publications. OCLC has announced it is teaming with Google and MIT to harvest DSpace OAI-PMH metadata to turn it into a format which can be indexed and searched by Google. This will enable information about publications stored by governments and universities using this open source institutional archiving system to be readily retrievable.

Congress enacts open government legislation in three main areas: (1) laws that provide public access to federal records; (2) laws that allow the government to restrict public access to federal information; and (3) laws that provide for congressional access to federal records. A new 90-page Congressional Report by Rep. Henry A. Waxman provides a comprehensive, though arguably partisan, examination finding the Bush Administration has acted to restrict the amount of government information that is available.

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Innovators in the field of space solar power are outperforming expectations for commercial application, motivated by the potential for harvesting solar energy on a 24/7 basis, unimpeded by weather or climate.

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2024年10月24日、英国においてリテラシーの改善運動を実施している団体National Literacy Trust（NLT）が、2024年の英国の子ども及び若者の読書に関する報告書“Children and young people’s reading in 2024”を公開しました。

報告書は、NLTの2024年の年次識字調査（Annual Literacy Survey）に対する5歳から18歳までの子どもと若者からの7万6,131件の回答に基づき作成されました。

主な調査結果として、以下のようなものが挙げられています。

・ 余暇に読書を楽しんでいると答えたのは、8～18歳では3人に1人（34.6％）であった。2023年から8.8ポイント減少しており、2005年の調査開始以来の最低水準であった。
・ 毎日余暇に何かしらの読書をしていると答えたのは、8～18歳では5人に1人（20.5％）であった。2023年から7.5ポイント減少しており、2005年の調査開始以来の最低水準であった。
・ 8～14歳では、読書を楽しんでいる子どもや若者は、読書を楽しんでいない子どもや若者よりも、読解力が高かった。

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2024年10月2日、アクセシビリティ分野における欧州出版業界の能力向上に取り組むプロジェクトAPACE（Accelerating Publishing Accessibility through Collaboration in Europe）が、欧州の出版におけるアクセシビリティの現状に関する調査報告書を公開しました。

APACEは、イタリアの非営利団体Fondazione LIAの主導の下、欧州の出版関係団体等が参加しているプロジェクトです。2025年6月から適用が開始される欧州アクセシビリティ法（European Accessibility Act：EAA）を背景として2024年1月に立ち上げられ、アクセシビリティ分野における欧州の出版業界の能力向上に取り組んでいます。

発表によると、報告書では、欧州の出版におけるアクセシビリティの現状について、出版社等に対するオンライン調査と専門家に対するインタビュー調査を基に分析しています。主な結果として、調査対象となった出版社の70.5％は、EAAが自社の活動に影響を与えることを認識しているものの、アクセシブルな電子書籍を作成しているのは全体の37.4％にとどまること等が述べられています。

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