Field Guide For Identity Id
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Field Guide for Identity
Kaliya Young (aka Identity Woman)
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Contents
Preface 5
1 What is Identity? 7
1.1 SenseofSelf.............................................. 7
1.2 Self as a Part of Something Greater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 ProjectionofSelf........................................... 7
1.4 ContextofObservation ....................................... 8
1.5 SelfinSmallSociety ......................................... 8
1.6 SelfinMassSociety ......................................... 8
1.7 SelfinCommunities ......................................... 9
1.8 Self in relationship to Employers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.9 PowerandContext.......................................... 9
1.10Abstraction .............................................. 9
1.11 Digital Representation (Bits) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.12 Power in Space & Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Names 13
3 Identifiers 15
4 Name Spaces 19
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4CONTENTS
Preface
This is a work-in-progress.
“The Field Guide to Identity: Identifiers, Attributes, Names and More” was originally submitted to the 2014
ID360 Conference hosted by the Center for Identity at the University of Texas at Austin, yet illness delayed
the presentation.
The draft paper was published in 2014 on identitywoman.net as four part series:
•Part 1: Intro + what is Identity?
•Part 2: Names
•Part 3: Identifiers
•Part 4: Name Space, Attributes and Conclusion
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6CONTENTS
Chapter 1
What is Identity?
Identity is socially constructed and contextual.
Our sense of self arises first from our social interactions with our family of origin. Humans are unique animals
in that 80% of our brain growth happens outside of the womb in the first three years of life. Our family of
origin is within the context of a community and in this age broader society that ultimately reaches to be
global in scope.
The names we have, identifier systems, attributes that are articulated all depend on our context and from
there the social constructions that define these.
1.1 Sense of Self
We are told who we are by our family – they give us a name and share with us who we are.
When does it begin? When people recognize you?
When are we recognized as a person? Different cultures have different traditions.
I have had a connection with the 3HO Sikh community. When a woman is 120 days pregnant there is a
celebration to welcome the spirit of the child into the community. Women who give birth in that tradition
stay at home and don’t go out for 40 days after the child is born.
1.2 Self as a Part of Something Greater
We are defined by who we are connected to: our identities as part of something greater. Children seek to
understand their environment to understand where they fit in. An example from my childhood is one my
first memories. I remember a Canada Day Celebration we attended in Hastings Park. Being Canadian is
to be mutli-cultural. The day had different ethnic communities performing on a stage different folk dances
while dressed in traditional dress. At some point they handed out Canadian flags on 30 centimeter (12 inch)
flag poles with a stand made out of shiny gold colored plastic in a box. It symbolizes this point in time
where I understood myself to be part of something bigger, to be part of the nation I was born in along with
understanding some key values.
1.3 Projection of Self
We begin to understand who we are by projecting ourselves into the contexts within which we find ourselves
and learning from the response – shaping ourselves. There is an African saying/word – Ubuntu – I am
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8CHAPTER 1. WHAT IS IDENTITY?
because you are. We are the authors of each other.
1.4 Context of Observation
The context of observation matters for shaping our identities. It defines the scope of our freedom expression
our ability to make choices about context. There are three different types of observation that are quite
different.
Being Seen – a mutual act. I see you, You see me. We see each other.
Being Watched – this is where one is observed but it is not known by the observee. However it is known to
the observee that they might be watched. For example walking down one’s street, one knows that one could
be seen by any of one’s neighbors looking out their window. One also knows that being inside of one’s own
home prevents one from being watched. When walking into a store one knows that the storekeeper will see
us, watch us in the store and we know that when we leave the store they will not be able to watch us. When
we return to the same store they will likely recognize us (because we are returning in the same body) and
know something about us based on prior interactions. In time a relationship of knowing might develop. It
should be noted that our bodies in physical space give away attributes about us that we can not proactively
hide.
Because we live in a society that is full of implicit bias, the experiences of different types of people is different
in the world. Banaji’s work on implicit bias is a starting point. Following the Trayvon Martin verdict the
president gave a speech where he said that before he was president he regularly was shadowed while shopping
in stores because he was stereotyped. My partner had this happen to him this fall while shopping at Old
Navy and it was not the first time.
Being Stalked – This is what happens when the watching shifts from an appropriate happenstance window
of time. To watching over time and space – to following and monitoring our behavior without our knowledge.
1.5 Self in Small Society
I have often heard it said that with the advent of what appears to be ubiquitous digital identity and the fact
that we can be “seen” is just like it was when we lived in small societies.
In small societies it is said that there is no privacy – everyone knows everyone’s business. There is another
layer. There is a relational human connection that weaves the people in this context together.
They know each other. They can understand when they are seen and know they are being watched as the
move about town.
In a a small society you also know when you are not being watched when you are in your own home with
your blinds drawn.
A mesh-network of relationships that form over life and inter-generationally that inform identity and role in
the society.
1.6 Self in Mass Society
The self of is shaped by living in a mass society.
We developed systems using the technology of paper and bureaucratic record keeping of the state as way to
give abstract identity to citizens to provide services. This began first with the pensions given to civil war
veterans. In the 1930’s a system was developed to support people paying for and getting Social Security
benefits. The advent of cars as machines that people operate gave rise to the development of licensing
1.7. SELF IN COMMUNITIES 9
of people to be able to drive the vehicles. These all assigned people numbers by the state so they can
present themselves to the state at a future time and be recognized. It is vital to remember that we are not
our government issued paperwork. We are people with our own identities, our own relational lives in our
communities. We must not mistake how identity in mass society operates for what it is a system, a set of
technologies to manage identity in mass society.
1.7 Self in Communities
Communities provide the middle ground in between the Small Society and Mass Society modalities of Identity.
Communities of interest, communities of practice and geography give us the freedom to move between
different contexts and develop different aspects of ourselves. This type of contextual movement and flexibility
is part of what it mean to live in cities and particularly large cities. Where people in one context would
not necessarily share other contexts. The freedom to move between different contexts exists in the digital
real. The internet enabled those in more remote locations to also participate in communities of interest
and practice well beyond what they could access via their local geography. We need to work to ensure the
freedom to move between communities is not implicitly eroded in the digital realm. One key way to do this
is to ensure that people have the freedom to use non-corelateable identifiers (pseudonyms) across different
contexts they do not want linked.
1.8 Self in relationship to Employers
The power relationship between an employee and an employer is quite clear. The employer does the vetting
of potential new employees. They are hired and given access to the employers systems to do work for them.
When the employee was no longer working for a company because of any number of reasons – retirement,
resignation, termination – the employer revokes the employees ability to access those services. This power
relationship is NOT the same of an individual citizen’s relative to their government or the power relationship
of a person relative to communities they participate in. In both cases the person has an inherent identity
that can not be “revoked”.
1.9 Power and Context
The Self in a Small society is embedded in a social mesh one can not escape. There is no “other place” and
one is defined in that society and because it is so small one can not leave.
The self in a Mass society is in a power relationship with the state. Where one has rights but one also must
use the identification system they issue and manage to interact and connect with it.
The self in community gets to navigate a myriad of different ones each with its own social constructions and
how power operates and flows within it. (egalitarian, religions, social) communities, work places (traditional
owner, worker | worker owners | holocracy).
1.10 Abstraction
The start of all our conversations about people’s identity comes from being embodied beings. The beauty
of the digital realm is that we can abstract ourselves from our bodies and via digital identities interact via
digital media. This gives us the freedom to connect to communities beyond those we could access in our
local geographic location.
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1.10.1 Atoms and Bits
Atoms and Bits are different. The difference between them is still not well understood.
•“Atoms” Physical things can only be in one place at one time.
•“Bits” Can be replicated and be in two or more places at once.
1.10.1.1 Physical Body (Atoms)
We each have only one physical body. Our physical bodies can only be in one physical place at once. It is
recognizable by other humans we meet and interact with. Because it is persistent we can be re-recognized
and relationships can grow and evolve based on this. When we move between contexts in physical space –
we can be recognized in different ones and connections made across them. We also have social norms, taboos
and laws that help us maintain social graces.
1.11 Digital Representation (Bits)
When we create digital representations of ourselves we get to extend ourselves – our presences to multiple
places at the same time. We can use a digital identity that is strongly linked to the identity(ies) and contexts
we use/have in the physical world. We also have the freedom to create a digital representation that steps
out of the identity we occupy in the physical realm.
We can be an elf or an ork in a online game. We can cloak our gender or choose to be a different gender.
We can cloak our race or choose to be a different one when we represent ourselves online. We can interact
on a level playing field when in the physical realm we are confined to a wheel chair.
These identities we create and inhabit online are not “fake” or “false” or “not real”. They are representations
of the self. The digital realm is an abstraction and gives us the freedom to articulate different aspects of
ourselves outside of the physical world.
1.11.1 Digital Dossier
In the digital realm, because it is encoded means that our movements around digital space leave trails, records
of the meta-data generated when we click, type, post a photo, pay for a song — do basically anything online.
We leave these behind and the systems that we interact with collect them and reconstruct them to develop
a digital dossier of us. This behavior, if it happened in the world of atoms, in the physical space, would
be considered stalking. We have a stalker economy where our second selves are owned by corporations and
used to judge us and target things at us.
1.12 Power in Space & Relationships
The freedom of people to transcend aspects of identity from the physical world is disruptive to some of
default power dynamics.
1.12.1 Disrupting Privilege
The push back against Google+’s requirement for the use of “real names” was led by women and others who
use the freedom of the digital realm to step out of the bias they experience in the physical world.
1.12. POWER IN SPACE & RELATIONSHIPS 11
The people who were pro-real name were largely white men from privileged positions in the technology
industry and implicitly through the support of the policies wanted the default privileges they enjoyed in the
physical realm to continue into the digital.
1.12.2 Shape of Space
In the physical world we understand how different physical spaces work in terms of how big they are, how
many people are in them, what the norms and terms and conditions are. We know that based on these we
have a social understanding.
The challenge in the digital world is that the space is shaped by code and defined by the makers of the
contexts. These contexts can change at their will. As has happened repeatedly with Facebook’s changing
settings for who could see what personal information. This instability creates mistrust particularly by
vulnerable people in these systems.
The commercial consumer web spaces currently have a structure where they collect so much information
about us via their practices of stalking us digitally. They have enormous power over us.
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Chapter 2
Names
Names are what we call ourselves and what others call us. They are a special kind of identifier because they
are the link between us and the social world around us. We present ourselves using names so people know
how to refer to us when talking to others or call us when they are talking to us. They convey meaning and
have power.
Digital devices can also have names are defined by the administrators of these devices. Places have names
given to them by people in a given context these help us refer to a geographic location. It should be noted
that the names first nations (indian or native american) people had for places are different then the ones
that the American’s colonized their land used.
Given Names These are the names our parents give us when we are born. In America we have a naming
convention of a first name and last name. This convention originates from ___ when states were seeking
to impose control.
Name structure in various cultures Different cultures have very different naming conventions. In Hong Kong
their is a convention of an english first name written in English and a Chinese character written last name.
In Mayanmar everyone has a first name.
Meaning in Wisdom Traditions Different wisdom traditions ascribe different ways to interpret and ascribe
meaning in names.
NickName These arise when people start to refer to us by a different name then the name we might give
ourselves. We can take these on and they can become our name. They might arise from our families, from
school, from sports teams, social clubs, work places. In these different contexts, the name that we are referred
to may have nothing to do with the name our our birth certificate and the people using the name to refer to
us.
Name on Government Issued Paperwork We have a convention in the liberal west of registering names with
the state. This originated out of several practices in the last several hundred years. One key aspect of this
is to both provide services to citizens but also to control citizens.
Pen Name / Stage Name A name used by artists for their artistic expression and authorship. It does
not match the name on government issued paperwork and is often used to obscure the link between such
authorship and government paperwork names so that they are free to express themselves artistically.
Autonym A name that one uses to refer to themselves. An example is that when Jorge Mario Bergoglio
became pope he chose to become Pope Francis.
Pseudonym A name that one uses to interact in various contexts that may be linked one’s name on one’s
government issued paperwork. Bob is clearly linked to the name Robert or Barb to Barbara or Liz to
Elizabeth on government issued paperwork. It is important to note that many non-european languages also
have examples of these.
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14 CHAPTER 2. NAMES
Mononym This is name consisting of a single word. Examples include Stilgarian and Sai. Madona or Cher
are examples of Pseudonymous, Mononym, Stage Names
Handle A name that one uses to represent ones digital identity in online contexts. It arose in computer
culture when people needed to have a user name within a computer system. This is closely related to Screen
names.
Screen Name The name that one chooses to have displayed on screen. In a system like World of Warcraft the
service knows identity information of their clients who pay monthly to access their service. They choose to
support those player presenting to the other players on the system and forums a “screen name” that reflects
their gaming persona or character name.
Name Haystack Different Names have different qualities of hiding in the haystack of the similar or the same
names. Some people have huge name – haystacks where tens of thousands people have the same name –
Mike Smith, Joe Johnston, Mohamed Husain, Avi Blum, Katherine Jones. Mike Garcia who works for NIST
said that there were 17 different Mike or Michael Garcia’s. People use pseudonyms to help manage the fact
that name-haystacks exist making them more or less identifiable depending on the size of theirs.
Roles RBAC – Roll Based Access Control is based on managing the rights and privileges for digital systems
based on roles. When a person gets a role assigned to them the inherit the privileges.
Community groups also have different roles that might have . Earn role from getting a degree.
Titles, Given and Created There is a history of titles being pasted down.
Eastern Wisdom Traditions pass them down from guru to student creating lineage’s.
I have had conversations with friends about who the next “Identity Woman” might be. This identity that I
have constructed to hold an aspect of my self – work focused on people’s rights around their digital selves.
I could see at some point handing this identity over to someone else who wants to continue the torch over.
Collective Single Identity Theses identities are co-created by two or more people. They are managed and
maintained and people jointly act together to create a persona.
Chapter 3
Identifiers
For people Names are a special class of Identifiers. They are both self-asserted by people and are used to
refer to them and acknowledge them in social context.
System Identifiers In systems, bureaucratic, digital and techno-bureaucratic identifiers are alpha numeric
string pointers at/for people in systems.
This may seem simple but their are many different types and a person with a record in a system will likely
have more then one type. To get these different types of identifiers I will share different examples.
Persistent Correlateable Identifiers This type of identifier is re-used over time within contexts and across
multiple contexts.
Examples
Student Number – When I enrolled at my university I was assigned an 8 digit student number. This number
was persistent over my time as a student at the school. When interacting with school institutions I was
asked to share this number so that activity could be linked together across different facets of the institution.
Social Security Number – This number is issued by the federal government to those born in the US as part
of the standard process for being born. It is meant to help those who submit money to the SSN system and
when they retire be able to collect money from the system.
Phone Number – People today often have a personal number that they use across many different contexts.
It is common place to ask for a phone number to be able to contact a person. What people don’t know is
that those are used to look people up in data broker services. The phone number is used to link together
activity across contexts.
E-mail Address – Many people have one personal address and use it These are often used across different
contexts. What people don’t know is that those are used to look people up in 9data broker services like
RapLeaf.
Directed Identifiers A directed identifier is created to support individuals using different identifiers in different
contexts. The purpose of this is to inhibit the ability to link records across contexts.
Examples
The British Columbia eID System – This system enrolls citizens and issues a card to them. When the card
is used to access different government systems by the citizens. It does not use one identifier for the citizen.
Rather for each system it uses a different identifier for the system – an identifier directed for a particular
system.
Defacto Identifiers By combining a name names, and key attributes together systems use this combination
to create a defacto identifier which uniquely identifies a person often in the context of a whole society. An
example is the us of “name” “birth date” and “birth place”. It seems innocent enough to be asked for one’s
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16 CHAPTER 3. IDENTIFIERS
name, birthdate and place but this becomes a persistent correlateable identifier to link and track activity
across many systems. The creation of defacto identifiers that are persistent and correlateable limits people’s
ability to control how they present in different contexts.
Opaque Identifiers An opaque identifier is one that does not give away information about the subject it
identifies.
Examples of Opaque Identifiers
The BC Government eID program has at its core an opaque identifier on each card – it points to their card
record. It is just a number with no meaning. If they loose their card a new opaque identifier is issued for
their next card. Examples of Non-Opaque Identifiers
National Identity Number in South Africa contains a lot of information it is a 13-digit number containing only
numeric characters, and no whitespace, punctuation, or alpha characters. It is defined as YYMMDDSSSS-
CAZ:
YYMMDD represents the date of birth (DoB); SSSS is a sequence number registered with the same birth
date (where females are assigned sequential numbers in the range 0000 to 4999 and males from 5000 to 9999);
C is the citizenship with 0 if the person is a SA citizen, 1 if the person is a permanent resident; A is 8 or 9.
Prior to 1994 this number was used to indicate the holder’s race; •Z is a checksum digit.
The US Social Security Number is created via a formula and so the number gives away information about
the person it identifiers.
Phone numbers give away information about the metro region that a person was issued the number from.
End-Point Some identifiers that represent people are also end-points to which messages can be sent.
Physical Address It is often forgotten in conversations about digital identity that we had a system of end-
points for people before networks known as a mailing address. They system of mailing addresses was
developed and is maintained by the US postal service.
Network Address Phone Number – Now with cellular phones people have their own phone numbers (not just
one for a household or their workplace as a whole). This permits both voice calls being made, text messages
and MMS Multi-Media messages. The name space for phone number originates from the ITU-T. They are
globally unique. They are also recyclable.
E-mail Address – These addresses permit people to send messages to the address they have. They are
globally unique. The name space for domain names resides with ICANN. They are also recyclable.
Device Identifier Many digital devices have unique identifiers. Activity on digital networks can be linked
together by tracking these activity originating from particular devices even if people using them .
Non-End-Point These are identifiers that do not resolve in digital or physical networks.
Document Identifiers Documents like birth certificates have serial numbers that identify the document.
Document Validation Systems These systems are used to look up which documents are infact valid. When
properly constructed they don’t give away any information about the person. Those using the system type
in the serial number of the document and information it contains and the system simply returns a Yes/No
answer about weather it is valid or not.
Beacons A beacon actually broadcasts from a digital device a persistent correlateable identifier to any device
that asks for it. It creates a form of tracking people and their devices in the physical world.
Examples
RFID chips, cellular phones, laptop computers
Polymorphic These systems generate different identifiers depending on context.
Examples
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The BC eID system way of using one card that then supports the use of different identifiers depending on
context.
Time Limited & Revocable Some identifiers are created and point at a person but are revocable. An example
is a phone number that is after one stops paying one’s phone bill for a month is re-assigned to another person.
An employee at a company may have an employee number that is revoked (no longer valid) once employment
is terminated. A passport number is an identifier that has a time limit it is good for 5 or 10 years. A landed
immigrant card (green card) in the US is only good for 10 years.
Un-Revocable These identifiers are persistent and are not revoked. Examples include Social Security Num-
bers.
Identifier Issues Identifier Recycling Some identifiers are in systems where identifiers that point at one person
can be discontinued (they stop paying their phone bill or using their e-mail address) and then the identifier
can be re-assigned to a different user.
Delegation (Acting on Behalf of Another) This functionality is critically to a variety of user populations.
Elders who want to delegate access to their accounts children. Service professionals who have contractual
relationships with clients such as an accountant managing access to financial & tax records. Most systems
are designed with an assumption that people themselves are the only one accessing accounts. This creates
a problem when people want to delegate access they have to turn over their own credentials so the person
they are delegating to “pretends” to be the actual user.
Stewardship (Care-Taking – Oversight) Their is another role that is slightly different then delegation when
someone turns over a power of attorney like function for a particular account/set of functions. Stewardship
of identity is the type of relationship a parent has for a child’s identity or the type of care needed to help
the mentally disabled with their interactions online.
The Mesh of Pointers We end-up with a way that identifiers work together as a web of pointers towards a
particular individual.
18 CHAPTER 3. IDENTIFIERS
Chapter 4
Name Spaces
Different identifier systems work differently some originate from physical space and others operate purely in
the digital realm.
Local A great example of a local name space in the physical world is a school classroom. It is not uncommon
in american classrooms that when there is a name space clash – that is two people have the same name in
the same space – they take on different names to be identifiable within that context. Take for example those
with the names “Stowe” “Fen” and “Chris” – each is one part of the name Christopher : Chris – Stowe –
Fer. When they were in grade school each took on a different part of the name and it stuck with them.
Global These names spaces mean that identifiers within them are unique and global. Phone numbers, domain
names and thus e-mail addresses.
Private Some private name spaces seem like global name spaces but they are run by private companies under
privately decided terms and conditions. Examples include skype handles, twitter handles,
International Registry These are identifiers in a global space that are registered and managed globally an
example is domain names.
Attributes Self Asserted These are attributes that people self defined. They include things that are subjective
like “favorite color” or “name”
Inherent These arise from the individual and typically do not change (such as birth date) and are not as
morphable. Sex and ethnic identity are things that people have and display in the physical world that don’t
(typically) change throughout one’s life.
Ascribed These are attributes that are given to us by others or by systems. This may include names that
are imposed on us by social convention and or power relationships.
Assigned These are attributes that are given to us by others or by systems.
Examples:
Social Security Numbers are assigned by the Social Security Administration.
Conclusion Identity is a big topic and outlining the core concepts needed to understand it was the purpose
of this paper. We need to think about how the systems that manage identity are structured. Are they
designed to have power over people, supporting people having power with one another or enabling power to
be networked between us to create something greater then ourselves. These questions are relevant across the
whole life-cycle of identity from cradle to grave.
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