Why we should have agency over our digital identity data & how to get it | Roop Singh | TEDxAtlanta

[Music] you have every right to control something that's completely organic to you your identity so let's say you wake up one beautiful morning get your coffee or tea and drive your nice car to work and you park your car in the parking lot the parking lot owner decides to rent your car out to someone unknown who then takes your car on a joyride you come back in the evening just to find your car and what you find it stains the fice cream trash and smell of sweat inside your car how does that make you feel

that is what is happening with your data today so now let's say the next day the parking lot owner decides to rent your car out again but this time the stranger manages to lose your car it's gone and they come back to kindly inform you that they have lost your nice car and leave you to deal with this lovely mess that is what happened when target Equifax Facebook and Marriott lost your data now let's say next day your colleague at work who heard your story said this is way too dangerous I will not drive my

car anymore fair enough reasonable response except that we now live in a convenience economy it's like saying I will not participate in this digital economy in any way everything from your groceries delivered to your door to your online purchasing history to something as simple as your free email account these are all windows to our identity behavior and even ideological preferences that these companies mile and then sell so how good a fiduciaries are these companies as keepers of such data check this out if you participated in the recent 10-year aging challenge hmm you have then given

them vital facial recognition data about you easily that they can easily sell see that is how this data economy works and it works for companies you could think of our data is sold without our knowledge or now they have so much data harvested about us that they have built these walls Gardens of data with moats around them that other companies cannot compete with those assets from the benign noble origins of the Internet in the 90s we have now created a few hungry beasts and these beasts must be kept fed well it wasn't like this always

remember the time when we humans used to live in tribes back in the day everyone knew everyone everyone knew everybody's business by the way it's still like that when I go back to some small towns in India you know if I want to buy a pair of jeans my grandmother would tell me about an aunt who had a nephew who had a shop in the town square has that happened to you she would tell me to go there and nowhere else so we had this inherent implicit mechanism of trust based on people-to-people connection we tried

to replicate that trust in the digitally connected world and then these governments companies and organizations became brokers to such trust yet that model is under threat today some companies have figured out how to exploit the data economy by offering a services that we seemingly enjoy without respecting an individual's right to data privacy see I argue that an individual's right to digital identity data is the fundamental human right all technology that we create in this day and age must reflect that right in fact organizations like ID 2020 w3c people-centered internet rebooting web of trust that all

working towards that goal already so if you think about it our identity is central to our existence our digital identity shapes our non digital real life experiences and the other way around imagine this god forbid if you ever became a refugee fleeing a country torn by war or political or economic strife your identity is all you have to claim all that you have so how did we respond to this issue well the European Union passed the general data protection regulation gdpr in 2016 similar regulations were enacted in South Africa South Korea Japan Brazil Canada and

here in the United States in California that is a regulatory mandated response most companies that are required to be compliant with gdpr are still not compliant and have asked for extensions to do so consider this some of us here are entrepreneurs and leaders in companies where the goal is to create successful products and profits so what we observe here interestingly is this natural tension between an individual's right to data privacy and a society's warranted need for business and commerce it's been a way for us to bring all these actors together is there a way for

us to balance everyone's needs I believe that is all right so what we are about to explore next is a technology that you've heard about ad nauseam Bitcoin theorem cryptocurrencies yeah yes I am talking about blockchain blockchain is the underlying technology for all these cryptocurrencies that you hear about blockchain is also much more hyped and much less understood turns out in all of this noise it has some use for us over here so let's play with some bricks shall we this is a brick or a block so think of your identity data like your name

email address phone number etc as part of this one smiley face now this block holds this identity data for four people okay now let's connect this block to the next block and as we do let's add something interesting let's add a timestamp every time a block is connected to the next block we add a timestamp that gives us a historical record now let's take the mathematical representation of the contents of this top block and create a fingerprint out of it and then let's store that fingerprint onto the next block in the way that these two

blocks are now connected okay now that adds something even more fun let's add an address this address is like a pure box you can send stuff to but the contents of this pure box are encrypted you couldn't read what's inside of it unless you had a key so if Jimmy wanted her friend Erika to have access to identity data he could just send her the address and a key okay moving on now let's keep connecting these blocks and to store them we don't store them in one central place as was the case with companies storing

your data centrally we distribute them like spreading your eggs in multiple baskets and we store them in multiple computers doing so removes the single point of failure and makes this chain of blocks more secure and tamper proof and none of these computers by the way are owned by any single entity or company okay now let's add another significant aspect let's say every time I identity is added to a block and a block then is added to the next block it's considered to be immutable it can be changed altered or removed so say hello to your

immutable self as you think about what could be included in identity let's raise the stakes here let's think about something that we all have but it's distinct in all of us something that makes us who we are it's the pattern of your iris the print of your fingers the tone of your voice essentially your biometric data and now let's raise the stakes here further think of something that is so central and cold to who we are yes your DNA your actual DNA data now picture the consequences when then with that data falls into the wrong

hands as Sir Tim berners-lee the founder of the World Wide Web said recently the internet must become more people centric so wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where we have agency over our own data something like this let's say you applied for a mortgage for a house across town now the mortgage company wants your identity data fair enough now that you have your digital identity data in one place you have access you are then able to share specific detail with the company you have consent for the purposes of receiving a mortgage for

a limited period of time let's say three months you have control and only revealing the details that need to be revealed for instance if your ages ask for your specific data but need not be revealed minimization and the mortgage company should tell you what they know about you already sounds good here's a twist let's say in a month time you find a sailboat you fall in love with a human not with a sailboat and you decide to live in Bahamas with your beloved and you don't want that house anymore at that moment in time you

should be able to revoke consent to the use of your data for any purpose regardless of how it was acquired and the mortgage companies should have consequences if that consent is ever breached see this is what Christopher Alan referred to as self sovereign identity and a blockchain enabled ecosystem could achieve that look these issues may seem complex and this technology is constantly evolving I invite you ladies and gentlemen to be agents of change as technologists venture capitalists entrepreneurs social leaders business leaders marketers storytellers lawyers we too can reboot this web of trust perhaps in the

same way like our ancestors did if we care about the ownership of our own digital identity we must solve for it collectively because it affects each one of us individually you have every right to control something that's completely organic to you your identity you do thank you [Applause]