What is an identity?
This single question is fraught with layers of complexity, and depending on the context within which it is asked, the answers that you receive are infinitely variable. However, it is possible to distill the question down to an origin concept, one dealing with the practical nature of identity as a tool that exists in the structure of Society and its administration under systems of law.
The administration of identity under systems of law is the modern equivalent of blood type and DNA sequencing used by every data-driven and managed system in existence. The identity you possess as a legal construct within Society is the primary key of your participation in all aspects of legal Society.
This encompasses your health care, education, income earning, saving, investing and legal compliance in any and every area of endeavor you touch as a participating citizen of civil Society. Tell me your identity, and I will know your world in whole, in history, and in data particulars.
Self Sovereign Identity deals with personal authority. Where does personal authority originate, and does Freedom and free will have a data structure?
Sovereignty is defined as:
Further, under jurisprudence, it is defined further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty
As noted, the concept of Sovereignty has changed throughout time, and is considered differently in different legal contexts. This basic fact is of utmost importance, even if little discussed, because the leverage of any Nation-State in time is directly related to the model of Sovereignty it uses to empower and enforce upon its citizenry a model of authority to act with integrity as a social politic.
What is the model of Sovereignty where you come from? This becomes the operative question.
In the year 2016, geographic walls are of particular interest in the political context of this conversation. We can literally look down on planet Earth from our own space station orbiting above and see that there are few boundaries separating one Nation-State from the next. We can go online and access internet-based resources and people through tools of communication, both openly and securely, that make little gesture to the geographic boundaries between citizens in different Nation-States. And yet, under the surface of all these realities runs an even more pervasive reality, one defining you as a data-object under the Sovereign care and custody of a geographically bound Nation-State.
ID2020 is a gathering to discuss the 1.8 billion people on this planet without a Sovereign identity currently. This is a problem for many people who would like to interact with the resources and opportunities of participating within a Sovereign Nation-State and civil Society, but who find it difficult-to-impossible to do so due to the lack of a primary key identifier.
ID2020 is also a gathering aimed at alleviating a modern day problem that antiquated models of identity origination and management have propagated upon all of the citizens of the world, no matter what Nation-State they prescribe loyalties and historical affinities to. Summarized graphically, this problem is easily identified by noting that the greatest risk of identity theft in the world belongs to a child with a National identifier, like a Social Security number in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
As an American citizen, this issue is of particular interest to me, as the Sovereign model that was created in America is literally our primary differentiation from every other Nation-State on Earth.
At the mere idea of our founding, men without any granted legal framework, and by personal Sovereign authority alone, placed their names upon paper and declared their independence from a King and his Sovereign model of legal participation requirements. This 'John Hancock' moment literally served up the origin of American Sovereign authority as belonging to Individuals, and served as the primary act in Constituting a new Sovereign model of participation by citizens in the world.
Of course, as is the case more often than not, the ideas of this new Nation-State, and the practical abilities of people to self-represent their own authority within a geographically bound context were not always aligned perfectly. Many innovations were required, both in legal structure and in physical creativity, to bring the ideas of the founding fathers of America into the realm of possibility. At the lead of this list is the very idea that the origin of personal authority and Sovereign power belongs in the custody of Individuals, and not in the hands of a King or his administrative machinery.
While a Revolutionary War was waged for this Right, and Civil War was waged for its application to all mankind, still the practical application of an identity system that structurally guarantees this Sovereign model of personal empowerment and responsibility has evaded us. In its place, National Sovereignty has placed its bureaucratic machinery to work administering access to the essential assets of participation within the American Sovereign model and Nation-State, and provisions access to the authority that Individuals may possess as citizens of our Sovereign Nation-State.
Where once we saw a Kings authority as a problem to overcome, we have been lulled into adopting a very similar model whereby Sovereign authority is granted, and denied, to every man, women and child as the administrative system so decides in time and under its own Sovereign authority.
Is this the optimal model of the American experiment? Is this the model of human authority we are all to be managed by forever? Is this the Sovereign model that the founders of America risked life and personal fortune to guarantee for all people?
Technologies are coming into existence that ask this question, and many more, in completely new ways. At their core is the John Hancock model and origin of personal authority, of Sovereign authority, to self-declare one's Sovereign intent and to put ones own identity into actions of importance to one's Nation-State in meaningful and integrity-enhancing ways.
The opportunity to solve a crisis, and deliver participatory identities to the 1.8 billion people that today lack them, while restoring a data model and Sovereign authority to the Individuals of this planet that every Nation-State derives its existence and vitality from is a revolutionary goal in itself. There are many who would like to achieve the former goal without even considering the latter. Yet, its too late... people are increasingly waking up to the fact that while they wish to be productive and loyal citizens within Nation-States that they love and respect... they are being exploited, and made vulnerable, by the design of an administrative machine that has failed to protect the very asset structure it was designed to embolden.
The origin of human authority resides within an Individual life. Babies are born into a civil construct that my Nation-State will defend with its blood and fortune to guarantee, wherein they are protected as Individuals-in-the-making with all of the Sovereign empowerment and responsibility that our Society makes for itself. Here, and perhaps everywhere... we do not receive our authority to express our Rights as Human beings... it is endowed by our Creator as unalienable, and it is the foundation of every Right that will ever exist, be stood up with integrity under the law and be defended with blood when necessary.
A self-Sovereign identity is about to change the way the world works... in every context... and ID2020 is a gathering at the United Nations to discuss what that means, and make sure everyone understands just how unavoidable it is.
More: What is Sovereign Source Authority and Self Sovereign Identity
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