0:00 Present our presentation by Representative Cutler on the role of the state and how to
0:08 keep the feds out of our business. That'll be later discussions.
0:19 My boss is here, Marvin Dodge. I hope that joke didn't get me in trouble.
0:26 Oh.
0:33 You don't last long with a personality like Maz do.
0:39 So this is going to be 10 minutes and then we're actually going to do break out into
0:43 two breakouts before lunch. I'll give some instructions after this for that.
0:49 Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks for putting the break. I think the sound will work. –
0:54 I will see if the sound works. If not, we'll bring our live demo team back up
0:59 here to help. So, I brought a couple of friends with me to help. Let's see what
1:04 they have to say. And the sound did not work.
1:14 Is your sound up? It's going to be off.
1:27 It was muted though.
1:36 One more try. Welcome to Utah, folks. Digital identity is fabulous. It's really
1:43 great. You're going to want one.
1:53 What is the state's
2:06 role
2:13 in digital identity? Wait, am I not in charge of all the digital identity around
2:18 here?
2:22 If you see him, tell him he is in charge. That'll be just fine. We've all seen lots
2:32 of evidence of the challenges with digital identity, the breaches that are happening
2:37 around the world, often with governments involved in these and And let's talk about
2:45 what the role of the state is compared to the role of the federal government or the
2:49 role of private industry. And I would suggest to you that the role of the state,
2:57 as we have heard so many times, is not to control or to create but to endorse. And
3:03 the reason it's important for the state to be involved is a matter of trust. In our
3:09 society, some of our largest tech companies have lost the trust. and the
3:14 trust needs to come back to the individual. And as Phil Windley presented,
3:20 put the individual back in control. So let's try this again on what the state's
3:28 role is. Look, this is important. The role of the state is to endorse, verify,
3:33 authenticate, protect, and guarantee an individual's digital identity. This is
3:38 even more important. Personally, I really like control. But the role of the state is
3:44 not to own, create, control, gatekeep, or surveil an individual's digital identity.
3:49 – In the age of AI, even a legislator can create terrible videos that could fool
3:58 somebody who's not paying attention. I think we understand the points there.
4:08 Historically, the state has had a significant role in identity. Often we
4:14 think of, oh, well, you know, the feds have a passport, the feds provide a social
4:19 security number. But this goes back to the presentation before. The root of the
4:26 identity is typically a state-endorsed credential. We often start with a birth
4:31 certificate that in most cases is issued by a state. And the state handles most of
4:39 the vital records. They're often used by others in private industry or by the feds,
4:45 but the vital records is primarily a state responsibility.
4:53 This was mentioned earlier, but I think this is really important in the crux of
4:58 our argument for a state endorsed digital identity. In the tech world where many of
5:05 us live, there is often a call for expediency and for efficiency. It's more
5:12 efficient to use this or it's easier to adopt VHS than beta. It's easier to adopt
5:19 or some people believe you know they like the Android interface or the iPhone or iOS
5:27 interface. If we start with efficiency as our value, then we will get a completely
5:37 different set of products than if we value protection, security, and privacy. I think
5:47 if there's anything we've learned over the past few years, and when we think about
5:53 social media, we think about online fraud, is that we have to be more purposeful in
6:00 designing our identity systems and in the systems that are going to be used by
6:06 millions and millions of people. Because if we make a mistake, that mistake scales
6:13 again and again. So our argument is to think carefully about your values. What
6:18 are your values as a state? What are your values as an individual? Do we put our
6:25 rights protecting our children at the top of our list? Many people would argue that
6:32 in designing social media, child protection was not the top value. And over
6:39 the years we've had to pay a price for that as things have changed and that
6:45 because that wasn't the most important value in designing these systems. Our
6:52 argument is that we should protect the vulnerable. You've all read the articles
6:58 of people, vulnerable adults, vulnerable children getting scammed by people. We
7:04 heard a heartbreaking story today of what can happen when a bad actor takes
7:12 advantage of somebody. We must look at our values and put our most important personal
7:19 values, our most important moral values at the top of the list and not let
7:26 efficiency, interoperability, or profit take over the design of our identity
7:33 systems.
7:38 Those of you in the world of designing systems understand that we have to think
7:45 big and we have to consider a lot of different elements in our governance
7:51 framework. We've got to consider how are we going to audit these systems? What are
7:56 the open protocols? Because historically, we have to agree on a protocol and a
8:02 standard to to get mass adoption. We have to think about how will this be enforced?
8:10 We saw an example just a minute. Okay, if the enforcement and the verifier is so
8:15 ubiquitous that it can be put on a mobile app, that'll reduce the cost to install
8:21 readers in all of our places. Should we have a right to paper? That's going to be
8:29 a debate that I think many of us will experience. Our friends in the UK have
8:34 said everybody gets a digital identity. We have some people who don't want a digital
8:38 identity. How do we help them move forward when 95% or 99% of the world is moving to
8:47 digital transactions? Can we build transparency into the system so we can
8:54 identify fraud? Will we prevent all fraud? You of all people know that preventing all
9:01 fraud is impossible, but can we make the systems transparent so that we can
9:05 identify that fraud earlier and quicker so we can take steps to reduce that fraud as
9:15 we go forward. Okay. Last I'll leave you with this thought is that comparing the
9:23 state controlled identity which we've been talking about and certainly we have some
9:27 examples of that in other countries compared to a user controlled or a liberty
9:35 -based model. And we discussed many of those key elements. Selective disclosure.
9:42 One issue we haven't talked a lot about but is really important as we think big is
9:47 the guardianship. We've seen the importance of guardianship in social
9:51 media. Should a parent be able to control what apps a youth has access to? With
9:59 vulnerable adults, how do we design systems to take into account that there
10:04 are going to be adults in our lives that we have guardianships over or youth and
10:09 we've got to have that as a key mechanism to have a guardianship capability. So
10:17 those are the key things that I wanted to present to you.
10:26 It's been mentioned by my good friend Senator that if we leave this up to the
10:32 federal government, we're going to be stuck in Maya.
10:37 We're not moving forward. If we leave it to our friends in industry, their
10:43 hierarchy of values is different. They have fiduciary responsibility to make
10:47 money. And in some cases, they will view making money as more important or
10:53 interoperability as more important than protecting the vulnerable and protecting
10:57 individual rights. It is our responsibility to exert
11:04 our constitutional and moral principles of liberty, self-determination, and
11:09 individual autonomy. Thank you for coming and for participating in this. And I think
11:14 we're moving to the break.