1.
How to avoid another identity tragedy with SSI?
Why Are We Here? - #Foremembrance on 27 March 2020
Christopher Allen — Decentralized Identity & Blockchain Architect,
Co-Chair W3C Credentials Community Group
CC BY-SA 4.0

2.
1. Empower global SSI communities
2. Open to everyone interested in SSI
3. All content is shared with CC BY SA
Alex Preukschat @SSIMeetup @AlexPreukschat
Coordinating Node SSIMeetup.org
SSIMeetup objectives
SSIMeetup.orgssimeetup.org · CC BY-SA 4.0 International

3.
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Sunset 19:06 March 27th – A Moment of Silence
CC BY-SA 4.0

4.
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Christopher Allen | Executive Director | Blockchain Commons
▪ Co-Chair W3C Credentials CG
▪ Co-Inventor & Architect of
Decentralized Identifiers
▪ Author Design Principles of
Self-Sovereign Identity
▪ Co-Author SSL/TLS
▪ Former Principal Architect, Blockstream
▪ Former CTO Certicom
▪ Former CEO Consensus Development
▪ Former Faculty Pinchot.edu
Email: ChristopherA@LifeWithAlacrity.com
Twitter: @ChristopherA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ChristopherA/
SSIMeetup.orgssimeetup.org · CC BY-SA 4.0 International

5.
LESS Identity & Trustless Identity
Two Major Tracks:
LESS Identity
“Legally-Enabled Self-Sovereign”
Identity*
Key characteristics:
● Minimum Disclosure
● Full Control
● Necessary Proofs
● Legally-Enabled
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Trustless Identity
Or more properly “Trust
Minimized” Identity
Key characteristics:
● Anonymity
● Web of Trust
● Censorship Resistance
● Defend Human Rights vs. Powerful
Actors (nation states, multi-national
corps, mafias, etc.)
* Originally coined by Tim Bouma (@trbouma) https://medium.com/@trbouma/less-identity-65f65d87f56b
CC BY-SA 4.0

6.
LESS Identity
“I want my identity to be digital, good and better, but in
the end, I want my identity to be less than the real me.”
— Tim Bouma (@trbouma)
“LESS Identity is for higher trust environments with
real-world identity verification, trust frameworks, privacy
with accountability and government acceptance”
— Christopher Allen (@ChristopherA)
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CC BY-SA 4.0

7.
Trustless Identity
“Identity is local, insecure, and labor-intensive…
Identity-based access will exclude at least a third of
world's future adults”
— Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4)
“1.1 billion people have no legal identity, including tens
of millions of stateless refugees.”
— The World Bank
7
CC BY-SA 4.0

8.
Trustless Identity
“And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the
most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most
extreme form of liberty.”
— Plato, from the “The Republic” Book VIII
“Identity can be a double-edged sword — usable for both
beneficial and maleficent purposes.”
— Christopher Allen (@ChristopherA)
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CC BY-SA 4.0

9.
Trustless Identity
“We desire to balance the need for fairness,
accountability and support of the commons in civil
society against the need to prevent human rights abuses
and the right to be able to freely associate.
When these needs conflict, we err to preserve the
freedom and rights of the individual over the needs of the
group. Put another way, we believe in accountability for
the powerful, and privacy for everyone else.”
— Christopher Allen (@ChristopherA)
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CC BY-SA 4.0

10.
Why do I care about Self-Sovereign Identity?
Last January 26th was the
75th anniversary of the
Liberation of Auschwitz.
I attended a moving ceremony
last week in Amsterdam,
where the Netherlands Prime
Minister apologized.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51258081
CC BY-SA 4.0

11.
An Apology
“When authority became a
threat, our government agencies
failed as guardians of law and
security.
…Now that the last survivors are
still among us, I apologize today
on behalf of the government for
government action then.”
— Mark Rutte (@minpres), Netherlands Prime
Minister on 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of
Auschwitz
11
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/toespraken/2020/01/26/toespraak-van-minister-president-mark-rutte-bij-de-nationale-auschwitzherdenking-amsterdam
CC BY-SA 4.0

12.
What Went Wrong?
Remember, more Jews died as
a percentage of population in
the Netherlands than in
Germany, France and other
countries.
Part of this is because the
Nazis took over civil
administration.
They had the data!
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“Netherlands, Belgium and France…
The percentage of Jews of the total
population did not differ very much
and was low in all three countries:
0.75% of the French and Belgian
population, and 1.5% of the Dutch
population. …
Three quarters of the Dutch Jews
were murdered…
both in terms of percentages and in
absolute numbers”
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
CC BY-SA 4.0

13.
How did this happen?
In 1932 JL Lentz become the head
of the “National Inspectorate of
Population Registers” in the Dutch
civil service.
In the 1930s much of the world
was in the grip of The Great
Depression. The efficiency of the
Dutch civil service ensured all
citizens had access to basic
services, and was among the best
in Europe.
13
http://www.persoonsbewijzen.nl/passie/sites/index.php?mid=226952&kid=4302
CC BY-SA 4.0

14.
It worked!
Lentz was given the task of promoting
more unity in the population registers
of the municipalities
By 1936, he help establish a decree
that every resident in the Netherlands
must have a personal identity card in
the civil archives, and that these
cards must all be controlled from a
single office in each region.
Lentz won a Royal Award for this.
14
http://www.persoonsbewijzen.nl/passie/sites/index.php?mid=226952&ki
d=4302
CC BY-SA 4.0

15.
The Civil Archives
These centralized civil archives were
one of the first targets captured by the
Nazis, and were considered a valuable
asset.
Almost immediately after capitulation,
Lentz was asked by the Nazi’s to create
difficult to forge National Identity Card.
Lentz literally wrote the book on personal
identity and “proof of inclusion in the
population ledger” in 1940.
15
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_the_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office
CC BY-SA 4.0

16.
Forgery by the Resistance
“Resistance members soon started to forge
identification cards at a large scale…
However, forged documents could be easily
detected because they could be compared
against the records in the civil registries…
Some civil servants were willing to falsify
records in the civil registry so that they
would match up with forged identification
cards. Nevertheless, the civil registries
remained a potent weapon in the hands of
the Nazis to identify…the population who
were Jewish”
— Wikipedia on “Bombing of the Amsterdam Civil Registry”
16
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_the_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office
1942 Biometric Facial Authentication
CC BY-SA 4.0

17.
Archives Become Target of the Resistance
Despite the efforts by the Resistance to
create forgeries, these archives were
used by the Nazis to check forged
identity cards using “proof of inclusion
in the registry”, in particular those with
the J on them against the civil records.
The Dutch resistance tried destroy the
civil archives on 28 March 1943.
Unfortunately only 15% of the records
were destroyed.
17
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_the_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office
After the Bombing
CC BY-SA 4.0

18.
Meanwhile in France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_France
Like in the Netherlands, the French
“Vichy” government also assisted in
Nazi deportation of Jews and other
“undesirables”.
However, in 1942, the Vichy government
refused to continue to arrest Jews on a
large scale and send them for
deportation. The Nazi’s did not control
the civil archives as they did in the
Netherlands.
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CC BY-SA 4.0

19.
75%
104,000
Deaths
Jewish Deaths
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Netherlands
23%
74,000
Deaths
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/netherlands-greatest-number-jewish-victims-western-europe/
France
CC BY-SA 4.0

20.
A living history
After January’s Holocaust Memorial, I had
lunch with a child of two survivors of
Auschwitz, who was also very moved by
the the event and the Prime Minister’s
apology.
His mother had been rounded up using
this data in a razzia after protests &
strikes by sympathetic Dutch citizens.
His father fled and was hidden by the
resistance in Utrecht but was ultimately
betrayed, probably by Nazi’s using civil
data as an early social network analysis.
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CC BY-SA 4.0

21.
A living history being lost
When I first spoke to the Dutch Identity
community about this history, older
members of the community thanked me
for sharing, as they felt embarrassed by it.
Younger members of the community also
thanked me, but told me that though they
were taught about the Holocaust in
school, that they never heard this
particular story before.
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CC BY-SA 4.0

22.
Lessons for Today
Despite the trust in government
today, we never know what may
happen tomorrow.
Centralized architectures and
immutable proofs can be used for
both good and evil.
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Archives are now the Amsterdam Zoo Cafe
CC BY-SA 4.0

23.
An opinion
I believe that this living history from survivors of WWII is why Dutch
citizens & Netherlands government are so supportive of the
human-rights privacy aspects of GDPR, and I believe part of the
reason why Self-Sovereign Identity is on the agenda here before
many other countries.
But Remembrance is still needed — it has been 75 years since the
Holocaust. The passing of the old generations and ‘fake news’ are
fading these memories.
23
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/18/world/europe/beyond-anne-frank-the-dutch-tell-their-full-holocaust-story.html
CC BY-SA 4.0

24.
How can we be heroes?
“Where are the false
identification cards and fake
baptismal certificates in a world
of immutable records? How can
honest to goodness hero fake
an ID in a world where IDs can’t
be faked?”
— Thomas J Rush (@quickblocks)
24
https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/27/meet-the-man-who-saved-62000-people-during-the-holocaust/
Carl Lutz forged documents saving 62,000 Jews
CC BY-SA 4.0

25.
Still a need for Trustless Solutions
Nationalism, tribalism and xenophobia are on the rise across the world.
● In Russia (Putin) Brazil (Bolsonaro), Great Britain (Johnson), Poland
(Kaczynski), Turkey (Erdogan), the USA (Trump), and more.
● Normalization of xenophobia encourages violation of human rights
● Academics, critics, journalists, Muslims, and transgender people have
all been targeted.
● Facial recognition is becoming adopted worldwide
● Covid-19 pandemic is causing nation-states to collect location info
● These new dangers require new ways to protect human rights
25
CC BY-SA 4.0

26.
But we need both!
The Netherlands today is a “high-trust” society. The citizens trust the
government, and the government trusts the citizens. This is good!
We want this! But this is not true everywhere.
And LESS Identity is where the money is — Self-Sovereign Identity
has deep “trustless” roots, but almost all the major advancements in
the last two years have been in projects for commerce and are to be
recognized as legal by governments.
But as standards emerge, don’t lock out the “trustless” solutions —
they serve different needs not served by LESS Identity.
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CC BY-SA 4.0

27.
An Identity Community Foremembrance
I would like to see at Sunset in Amsterdam on 27 March
that the self-sovereign and larger identity community
have a moment of silence. A Forward Rememberance, a
#Foremberance.
To remember sculptor Gerrit van der Veen who forged
80,000 Jewish civil records, and author and painter
Willem Arondeus and 11 others who were found guilty of
attempting to destroy the civil archives and thus were
executed by the Nazis.
To salute all those who died to protect the defenceless in
WWII, who eased suffering in genocides past, and fought
discrimination and totalitarianism.
27
CC BY-SA 4.0

28.
An Identity Community Foremembrance
To foremember about those today at the front.
The protesters in Hong Kong, those trying to
discover details about the Xinjiang “re-education”
concentration camps in western China, the
government of Gambia taking Burmese Aung San
Suu Kyi to court here in the The Hague to demand
protection for the Rohingya, to those protecting
immigrant children on the US Mexico border or
protecting us against Cambridge Analytica-like
attacks this years elections, and to all those
protecting minority communities such as gays,
transexuals, and more.
And to salute all those defending the vulnerable.
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CC BY-SA 4.0

29.
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Christopher Allen | Executive Director | Blockchain Commons
▪ Co-Chair W3C Credentials CG
▪ Co-Inventor & Architect of
Decentralized Identifiers
▪ Author Design Principles of
Self-Sovereign Identity
▪ Co-Author SSL/TLS
▪ Former Principal Architect, Blockstream
▪ Former CTO Certicom
▪ Former CEO Consensus Development
▪ Former Faculty Pinchot.edu
Email: ChristopherA@LifeWithAlacrity.com
Twitter: @ChristopherA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ChristopherA/
SSIMeetup.orgssimeetup.org · CC BY-SA 4.0 International