Snippings

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Digital Jersey has established the first ‘data trust’ under Jersey Trust Law, through a pilot project that forms part of the organisation’s strategy to position Jersey as a leading jurisdiction for data stewardship.

The concept involves the innovative use of a trust structure to hold personal data so that it can be stored, managed and shared safely, lawfully, in accordance with the trust parameters and applying fiduciary duties to the stewardship of data within a highly regulated environment.

To test the data trust concept, data will be collected by cyclists in Jersey through special bike light sensors and held in the trust. Whilst the primary focus of the pilot is to test the viability of using a trust structure to explore the data stewardship concept, a secondary aim is to generate useful data and intelligence around safe cycling. Digital Jersey will now look to recruit cyclists to join the project.

From Digital Jersey launches a world first data trust | Digital Jersey:

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Images in a graphic novel that were created using the artificial-intelligence system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters.

From AI-created images lose U.S. copyrights in test for new technology | Reuters:

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Russian warlord passed UK money laundering checks with mother’s utility bill

Law firm relied on gas invoice when scrutinising Wagner group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin as prospective client

From Russian warlord passed UK money laundering checks with mother’s utility bill | Financial Times:

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This is what I wrote in Prospect Magazine in March 2005. That is, nearly two decades ago.

This is because computers, biometrics and digital signatures can work together to disclose facts about someone without disclosing his or her full identity. Your ID card could send a message to a machine confirming that you are over 18 without disclosing who you are or what your citizen number is.

From A better class of ID card – Prospect Magazine:

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There is going to be a resurgence of interest in digital identity in 2024 and the twn pincers of security and convenice begin to bite. What does this mean in practice though? There was a survey in The Times of London last year which showed that four-fifths of those who responded want an ID card. I am naturally cautious about polling the public on things that they don’t really know much about, so I do not interpret the results as meaning that they really want an ID card as people have in France or China have, but that they want something done about the “identity problem”. In this, they are correct. In the UK, as in the US, there is a problem and something must be done. But what?

At Fintech Week London back in 2021 I had an on-stage “fireside chat” with the UK’s then Minister for Digital Infrastructure, Matt Warman. He was clear that digital identity is fundamental to the evolution of fintech, and therefore financial services, in the City and beyond. Well, yes. Digital identity is fundamental to evolution of fintech everywhere and we need it now! One of Mike Engle’s digital identity predictions for last year in Forbes was that with the Improving Digital Identity Act nearing passage and federal government agencies accelerating the transition to NIST-, FIDO2- and iBeta biometrics-certified digital identity verification systems, we should look for “regulators to begin formalizing similar requirements for U.S. businesses.”

We really need the governments to step in.The former British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair and the former British Foreign Secretary, William Hague (now Baron Hague of Richmond), have issued a report calling for a digital identity infrastructure in the UK. In a report, the former Labour leader and former Conservative leader argue that government records “are still based in a different era”. What their report actually calls for is not for a “digital ID card”, as was widely reported in the press along with hysterical nonsense about how having an identity card leads to tyranny (as in Belgium or in Denmark?) but for a “secure, privacy-preserving digital identity for citizens” that allows them to interact more efficiently and effectively with government services.

I could not agree more. We Brits do not need an electronic version of the paper identity cards that were introduced in wartime and abolished in the 1950s. Nor do we need a centralised identity database of the kind used in many other countries. What we need is, as the eminent authors of the report say, it was well-designed, decentralised digital identity system would allow citizens to prove not only who they are (in the minority of transactions that would require such) but more general their credentials: their right to live and work in the UK, their age and ownership of a driving licence. It could also accommodate credentials issued by other authorities, such as educational or vocational qualifications.

That point about credentials is central to finding a way forward. We don’t need a national identity scheme, we need a national entitlement scheme. The future is not about carrying a card to prove who you are, since in almost all interactions this is not important, but about standard mechanisms (and ceremonies) to demonstrate what you are. Are you a member entitled to get into this club? Are you over 21 to buy this beer? Are you a member of the AARP? Are you qualified to drive this vehicle? And, of course, the most important credential of all: Are you a person?

Technologies such as advanced encryption techniques using zero-knowledge proofs allow attributes to be securely shared and verified without exposing the underlying data or sharing unnecessary information, without the need for paper documents or counter-signatures.

Will this identity revolution happen though? I would like to think so. In the UK, oversight of the government’s digital identity projects has moved home to the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). According to its own statement, the Prime Minister has tasked it with ensuring “the UK is the most innovative economy in the world and a science and technology superpower.”
While digital identity has shifted to DSIT, and even though it could add three percent to the economy, it does not get a mention in the in the summary: “The move will bring together the five technologies of tomorrow – quantum, AI, engineering biology, semiconductors, future telecoms – along with life sciences and green technologies, into one single department for the first time.”

Oh well. Perhaps it will be different across the pond, where two-thirds of Americans expect to have a digital identity wallet by the end of this year and more than half of them say that they would prefer to use one issued by a bank. This is not because of a focus on privacy: Ease of use and loyalty options within preferred stores are the primary value-added features customers expect from wallets.

 

Now is the time for banks, fintechs and regulators to come together and agree the framework for an identity revolution that will cut fraud, grow the economy and make life easier for everyone.

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M-Pesa is a Kenyan system for cashless payment. This business model of the Kenyan communications provider Safaricom is built on the transfer of data. Now, employees of the provider have also leaked the personal information of 11.5 million users. The case ends up in court.

From Kenya: Data from 11.5 million customers of a provider end up on black market:

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The other protagonist at Bretton Woods in 1944, Britain’s Lord Keynes, had a different plan, one which unsurprisingly was would have helped Britain after the war far more than America, but it is instructive with respect to our current global issues. Keynes came up with the idea for a global currency called the bancor (bank gold in French) which was a sort of ‘use it or lose it’ system whereby pressure would be put on the creditor countries to reduce their surpluses as well as on the debtor countries to devalue and reduce their deficits, the latter being a trend which had exacerbated protectionism and international ill-will during the inter war years, the era of ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies2.

The bancor system involved pegged currencies (including a peg to gold) and an intricate system of devaluation and appreciation for debtor and creditor nations respectively to adjust imbalances. Critically, it was an international currency for trade settlement rather than a single country’s domestic currency (ie the dollar), and Keynes hoped to bypass the tendency of nations to want to compete with one another unfairly through currency devaluation and tariffs while also taking the pressure of debtor countries who couldn’t devalue enough to make their exports competitive on world markets (for this read the UK in 1945).

The bancor system was novel in the sense that for the first time (including the gold standard), creditor nations could be pressurised into appreciating their currencies or reforming their domestic economic policy to increase consumption and imports, thereby rebalancing the international trade system in a controlled way. This would seem like a pretty good answer to the world’s current imbalances, but first you have to get everyone to buy into the idea of a world currency which isn’t the dollar…or the yuan for that matter.

From Deglobalisation – a money problem not a political or ideological one?:

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Digital Jersey has established the first ‘data trust’ under Jersey Trust Law, through a pilot project that forms part of the organisation’s strategy to position Jersey as a leading jurisdiction for data stewardship.

The concept involves the innovative use of a trust structure to hold personal data so that it can be stored, managed and shared safely, lawfully, in accordance with the trust parameters and applying fiduciary duties to the stewardship of data within a highly regulated environment.

From Digital Jersey launches a world first data trust – Channel Eye:

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Meta will launch a paid subscription service that allows Facebook and Instagram users to verify their accounts for up to $14.99 a month, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced on Sunday.

From Meta to launch subscription service for Facebook and Instagram | Financial Times:

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 A person close to the company clarified that a government ID would be required to authenticate an account and that subscriptions would include monitoring for account impersonation.

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I think these online platforms have been intentional in deceiving their users and having them believe there isn’t any real value in user online identity. Meanwhile, they’ve created massive revenue streams to grossly profit from those same online identities. Truthfully speaking, some online profiles are worth more than others. One could be worth a billion and another needs a group of a billion to be worth that much, so there is some analytics and data interpretation involved. To be fair, these online platforms do offer a “free” service, but the question always remains: Does the potential risk of personal data collection by these platforms outweigh the benefits they provide?

From Online Identity: The Most Valuable Digital Asset:

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If you come from an economic perspective, then, the dynamic is clear: platforms should be paying you to get a blue tick, you should not be paying them.

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The right diagnosis is this: over the past 20 years we have normalised a digital economy that funds itself either by appealing to the sort of investors who will tolerate long-term cash burn if the ultimate pay-off is monopoly control or by creating business models that profit from morally ambiguous situations.

From The price of unfounded news hints at the true cost of the web | Financial Times:

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