TECHNOLOGY: Individuals should be able to maintain their own verified digital identity

Saturday, August 2, 2025

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/how-solid-protocol-restores-digital-agency.html

Schneier on Security

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How Solid Protocol Restores Digital Agency

The current state of digital identity is a mess. Your personal information is scattered across hundreds of locations: social media companies, IoT companies, government agencies, websites you have accounts on, and data brokers you’ve never heard of. These entities collect, store, and trade your data, often without your knowledge or consent. It’s both redundant and inconsistent. You have hundreds, maybe thousands, of fragmented digital profiles that often contain contradictory or logically impossible information. Each serves its own purpose, yet there is no central override and control to serve you—as the identity owner.

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The economics of Web 2.0 pushed us toward centralized platforms and surveillance capitalism, but there has always been a better way. Solid brings different pieces together into a cohesive whole that enables the identity-first architecture we should have had all along. The protocol doesn’t just solve technical problems; it corrects the fundamental misalignment of incentives that has made the modern web increasingly hostile to both users and developers.

As we look to a future of increased digitization across all sectors of society, the need for this architectural shift becomes even more apparent. Individuals should be able to maintain and present their own verified digital identity and history, rather than being at the mercy of siloed institutional databases. The Solid protocol makes this future technically possible.

This essay was written with Davi Ottenheimer, and originally appeared on The Inrupt Blog①

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Good luck wresting control of “digital identity” from the all-powerful omniscient Gooferment. Never mind the technology giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple. And, of course, the completely subservient “We, The Sheeple” who don’t know how they are getting <synonym for the past tense of the procreation act.>!

Argh!

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① https://www.inrupt.com/blog/

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: The Untold Story of Japan’s Secret Spy Agency

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

“Very few people know what the DFS is doing and can enter the building,” according to an active-duty official with knowledge of the directorate’s operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The official agreed to share details about the directorate after The Intercept and NHK last year revealed that the spy agency had obtained a mass surveillance system called XKEYSCORE, which is used to sift through copies of people’s emails, online chats, internet browsing histories, and information about social media activity. The official said that they believed the directorate’s use of XKEYSCORE was “not permissible” under the Japanese Constitution, which protects people’s right to privacy.

Source: The Untold Story of Japan’s Secret Spy Agency

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Here’s an example of why no Gooferment’s Deep State can be trusted or contained by mere “constitution”.  Lysander Spooner had it right.

“Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” Lysander Spooner (1808-1887), No Treason (1870) http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm#no.6

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