Aleksejs Ivashuk - Decentralized Id for those that need it most

Transcript

and I would like to start out with a caveat that I work in human rights field uh so um my presentation will be more about the social impact of blockchain um I have tried to um make the presentation as accessible of as possible because recognizing that I work in a different field than um many par my participants here might be used to so um in our field we're noticing that blockchain based Solutions are are already making an impact some positive some negative and it's important to talk about these things and to um share knowledge between our two Fields so my presentation will

be about that so I will uh break it down it's very simple uh the first part of it will be framing the problem talking about what is the problem that we have um with the rise of blockchain based Solutions um or lack thereof and the second part will be focusing on Solutions what are the solutions that we can look forward to with um blockchain that can help not just the most vulnerable populations in the world like the stateless Exiles political dissidents refugees and so on and so on but also everybody because everybody is impacted by uh the risk of having your Iden proof

of identity being tampered with or taken away political wins change nobody can predict them and so my family never knew we're going to end up being stateless we're natives to European Union but we don't have a proper legal identity we're not given that and um I'm not going to get into too many of these details I will um start out by Framing what is the issue that we're uh facing um so when you think of uh proof of identity um proof of residence proof of your nationality all of these things um are crucial to allowing you to exercise

your rights if you don't have a nationality then you don't have a right to have rights when you don't have residents you also are um lacking many rights so there's a big difference between the two but for for the sake of keeping simple uh we'll just um term it as uh lack of uh legal identity but obviously you can break it down into um further details as to whether it's residents nationality citizenship etc etc so um the question is the critical question is who issues your legal

identity more however who owns it if you were to open up your passports you might be surprised to read that you're not the owner of your legal identity I'm I'm surprised people are surprised about that uh the legal identity that you have is owned by your government to whom you belong to and we have romanticized this whole notion of belonging but it's quite literal you are owned by this government you are something useful to this government and in exchange for being useful you are gr granted certain rights because you are granted legal identity now um throughout history of course academics have talked about

various monopolies that state actors have had so State actors are the the authorities that issue your legal identification they have absolute complete Monopoly over that historically they have had a absolute complete Monopoly over violence so that's something a monopoly that is talked about more but other things like Monopoly of identification the media data currency hasn't been talked about much and it's very interesting that some of these centralized U monopolies have began to give way to decentralization this is why with

cryptocurrency we have you know decentralized currency there's no one Authority that issues the currency now um in human rights uh that's that's already relevant um but what interest interests us more is the potential in decentralization of identification um when you think of centralization of power whenever you have any absolute power given to any Human Institution or any human it's a bad idea you're going to have a lack of accountability and you're very likely going to have abuse and

Corruption and misuse and just tempering now in the world there's a billion people who lack legal identification that number should be mindboggling that's a statistic from the world bank now um I drew a a little gradient there among these people there's various vulnerable people in the world so there are the stateless minorities refugees Exiles indigenous people etc etc and it's interesting that um that among all these people that lack legal identification or lack properly legal identification because some of

these people might have some form of legal identification like a tolerated stay or temporary residence or just a piece of paper from the police um stating that they were arrested and this is their name um all of these people are extremely vulnerable based on what kind of ID they hold now on the gradient with the state actors we have you know the competence side that's the the sort of the perfect State actor that never discriminates that effectively can identify the all of its people that is on its territory that is able to fairly issue

identity papers uh after it has identified all of the people on its territory uh that Utopia doesn't exist there's no country in the world that is capable of doing that never mind actually doing that so usually you know we have something in between happening um and then Malay side un fortunately that's and I I term that that way on purpose because um when uh when we have state actors refuse to Grant ident identity papers or discriminate it's not based on any rational grounds it's usually due to phobias like xenophobia or due to racism

24 countries in the world don't allow women to pass in nationality some countries in Europe only recently started to allow women to pass on nationality like Netherlands they only started to allow women to pass on nationality from 1985 and so um that impacts heavily what kind of identity papers people will have so whenever you have um a state actor afflicted by malaise you will have potentially have them be Mal malicious this is why in countries like me ymar we have a very authoritarian State going after its um minorities

refusing to issue them proper identification and and just ethnically cleansing them and killing them trying to kill them off uh so we have this gradient and um in between there's there's much I want to call it mess um and so that is a problem that we're facing and it is um something that uh affects everybody like I said because um various um groups in the world that are currently vulnerable um among many of these people are people

of yesterday that were perfectly um stable in in their life and had an equal identity p paper to that of other fellow citizens but in came some sort of political change and I'll give a specific example now with um with BOS um which is currently making half a million people stateless in Europe um and it is making these people stateless because four years ago these people went out to protest against the government uh that that people were not in agreement to the unfair elections that were um done in in

bellus and the government cracked down and so half a million of these people left the country and since bellus like any other state actor has absolute Monopoly on issuing identity papers has that centralized power and also combined with absolute Monopoly on uh as with any other state actor on determining who belongs they can easily punish their dissident so that's another way people become stateless and of course I'm I'm talking about uh statelessness because I'm a specialist in statelessness so I'm bringing up examples in that regard in regards to other vulnerable groups here

like indigenous populations um in Southeast Asia you have uh various indigenous nomadic people and so they don't get their papers because they get discriminated against because they're nomadic well in Europe we have something similar with Roma they face a lot of discrimination because they're more mobile they're they're not as settled and uh there's a lot of prejudice in uh toward them in that regard so um the point being is that uh current vulnerable groups are not um how do I put it uh anybody who has citizenship now

anybody who has identity papers now that doesn't secure you in the future because any state actor cannot guarantee to you Security in the future because political wins change different governments get elected and it should be um a disturbing thing to um to consider that more and more um State actors are increasing a gathering of data and control and trying to control that data and so you have a situation where you have um more centralized power becoming more powerful and then if if the ownership of

that data is in the hands of a government that does not have good intentions and nobody can guarantee what government will exist in the future you have a serious risk factor for everybody not just the current um vulnerable groups and so that brings begs the question of why why blockchain why why are we uh talking about this uh topic and as somebody stateless but also um being aware of how other stateless Le communities stateless Le organizations are are utilizing blockchain the solutions are already here we're already using them it's not a question of if or

how so a simple example is that when you go to the bank what do they ask you let us see your legal identification or anything else education employment freedom of movement legal identification and they don't care if you say like well my government discriminates against me or discriminate against my mother because she was a female they don't care to hear that story they just need to see the identification and so various stateless people already recognize that well the bank is not allowing me um to have a bank account I can open a crypto wallet so blockchain is being used that

way but the centralization of identification proof of identity and ownership of identity is a much bigger deal because as a started out the presentation I talked about how legal identification is a gateway to All rights now it's a big question of course for the future as to how much acceptance there will be of blockchain based Solutions decentralized identification but the need is clear not just for current vulnerable groups but for everybody because your government may

also change whether democratically or for aoup it doesn't matter and we should also already draw the lessons from history as was the case with Nazi Germany because they have used identity and identity stratification in a very ruthless way and that government was elected so even democracy cannot prevent um you know such things from happening so with more and more data there needs to be security not just from hackers not just from um criminals we also have to make sure that we help the state actors

themselves to fulfill their one role that they have in providing security to its own citizens and its their own members because they cannot guarantee what power will actually be there in the future so the good news is that we carry much of our ID data with us it's your face it's your fingerprints it's your DNA you can adjust your um identity proof in in various ways and sometimes I I think about how how crazy it is that in the 21st century we still carry little pieces of paper or paper booklets as proof of something as important as our legal

identity um but of course course if we have a really strong proof of identity it it's going to be very important to consider who owns it because if all that data about you about where you graduate about you know who your parents are about your DNA and so on and so forth you can you know adjust the gradient if that all of that data is an ownership of a centralized power are we asking for trouble the answer is yes so the real solution is really with decentralization and there's uh it's

exciting to see various projects come up within a previous presentation I've noticed ID know was here but they they're more about proof of uh you know that you're human but a lot can be tied in um or a lot of lessons can be drawn from from that um project in terms of one person owning one one um ID and uh there's various others like ontology and um other blockchain projects that create uh a market for various Sol of various solutions to people about exactly this topic of decentralization of

identification so the the need is is uh really strong for us to have the centralization of identification not just for the most vulnerable populations but for everybody in the future but for the vulnerable po populations this is particularly the case because if you are in a situation where you get stripped of your citizenship or nationality you need a plan B wouldn't it be good if there was any form of ID even if it's a weak form of ID that if you if you've stripped of your National if you no longer can use your passport if you can no longer show in any way that you are who you are

wouldn't it be good to have any form of decentralized ID that you can use anywhere that it's accepted as a backup plan in case you punish for being a particular ethnic group or being part of particular ethnic group and so on so um to conclude I want to say that with blockchain based Solutions there's a lot of potential good that can come out of this technology but we already see the harm just like with

digitalization we see governments having a head start with all their resources with all their connections and of course Monopoly on violence when they for example approach crypto exchanges and say well we're going to regulate you you can bet that they're going to import some of their preferences and some of their biases into that regulation and that's the issue we're already facing that's not you know a theur I've personally faced this issue in terms of binance doesn't accept various forms of IDs from vulnerable groups and why there's other

crypto exchanges because they're just not familiar with it what is this um and so you're left on a sideline and we see this time and time again like in countries like Kenya where digitalization is being driven forward but it's the government that has um the being plugged by um uh very various discriminatory policies that it has in place that is influencing this the technology sector to import this discrimination so it's important to have um a more equal balance intake of feedback not just from State actor

authorities top down but also from the most vulnerable users and that's why it's important to for the blockchain sector to build these connections to make sure that it is actually adding value to the world and not harming especially those who um tend to benefit the most from technology but also the most vulnerable in regards to um the current realities of uh of different societies and and um discrimination they in so I will stop right there and uh just as a last thing uh to um to initiate the the whole advocacy

campaign for better uh more responsible use of blockchain uh several leading groups of uh coalitions of um uh stateless people and Exiles and refugees combined forces and are creating what's called blockchain for human rights advocacy Network and the launch of it will be on April 12th in here in um impact Hub z uh and it will be about creating the connections to the blockchain sector to provide input about what is actually of value to uh to those

people who who want to use a technology to to access some basic human rights um and and to try to create a balance between such groups and of course uh the the state actors um who have their rather strong say in in the sector and so you're most invited to attend there and I'll stop right there thank you Alexis thank you very much for your presentation very important and use of the technology and really inspiring congratulations uh does anyone have some

question okay the microphone is going to correct right I can put whatever information I like on a blockchain right I can give a fake name fake address fake employment records fake education fake everything M what I mean who's there to attest that the information is correct and then who determ and will be accepted you if I if I show you my passport you you accept that's my passport the data and it's accurate because it's come from a an authority that that we do trust yeah yeah that's a great question and I want

to break it down in two parts so first of all the Trust In the state actor right that's something we were brought up from the very early age trust it like you would trust a god uh I would question that many state actors are committing many human rights violations it's very hard to find a state actor who is not committing some sort of corruption or human rights violation so there's some issues with that there's a lot of incompetence we've had plenty of cases in human rights where a person's files just deleted because the bureaucrat didn't want to deal with it we have a lot of issues in this regard and so we want to paint a more accurate picture of what is the actual problem um and so you know we should trust a responsible State actor right um but like I said in my

presentation we have a little bit of a dilemma that with any Monopoly absolute power no matter how responsible that actor wants to be power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely so we need to do this not just for the sake of ourselves we need to do this like I said to help the state actors because yeah but sorry that's people right and sure we can we can create a platform pull it out of data we we're all corruptable right we all have our own uh biases and influences yes what I mean I guess my question to you is what system do you put in place to ensure that whatever data I put on a blockchain that you assert should be valid as identity uh data is true

because I mean you you need you need that data to be verified in order for it to be relied upon right and I mean we're not looking to over right the state actors we're looking to create a little bit of competition a healthy competition and so the important and so the second point I was going to go into is that and like I mentioned in the presentation a lot of the data for identity is actually already public and it's something that state actors can't own or control so you know not just in terms of facial recognition and so on so forth but even going to more abstract things like a name or your parents connection to your parents or your place of birth um and date of birth these things for instance

are already being um sort of uh confirmed issued by in some countries by hospitals that are in no they don't have a connection to authorities they do it themselves but right the hospital is an authority you're trusting essentialized Authority it's the hospital yeah in fact it's the it's the Midwife at the hospital yeah so the more competition the better is what we're saying so we are for the hospitals to be independent you know what I mean if they are actually a centralized Public Authority if they if the state actor tells them like no don't issue documents to such children and childhood statelessness is a huge issue right now we can at least

try to work on resolving that right so by encouraging hospitals to be independent of any political uh discrimination or biases that's as like a fraction of what we can do so it's important but another key thing is that just like when you're learning a new language you don't need to come up with you know you you don't need to learn it in its own language you can use the old language um to to learn a new one so the the same logic in terms of um for coming up with uh block blockchainbased Solutions a stateless person or other vulnerable person they will have documents and that's another reason uh

another way we um we're utilizing blockchain now like rohinga project they are using for archiving because the government wants to destroy this documents they want these people to stop existing but blockchain is being used to conserve these documents land leases and you know education certificates and so on you can use all of that I mean the the potential is mindboggling so it's it's not a question of um you know know which centralized Authority should we use instead of the old ones no we the more competition there is in creating the centralized identity the better and the same goes for we need to make sure I think personally we don't have one

powerful Corporation creating the centralized ID that will become you know widespreadly used No it should be more like with credit cards if one doesn't work you know you go to the next the centralized ID that can uh verify you so competition is key we need to make sure to avoid uh too much centralization of power does that make sense yeah I I completely agree with the sentiment but I think putting it into practice sounds incredibly difficult so if you've got hinger data now on a blockchain you now need to turn that into an identi identity system you then need the world to accept it right so the question the world then asks is how do we know that the data's been put on is actually true right um who are the people that put it on on

chain do we know that do we know that the the documents been uploaded are actually accurate and correct relate and relate to that that person with that name there could be a thousand people with that same name how how do you know you put the right right information relation to reach I think the the alternative I I don't want to be polite but I have to end the conclusion and I please I don't want to be polite but ask you to keep the conversation outside because we are very late for the next section and I thank you very much for all and have a good day thank you Alexis thank you