Notes on Laws of Identity (Part 2)

Here is the second part of note on the Laws of Identity. Enjoy.



1. "Laws" in Laws of Identity should be understood scientifically - hypothesis about the world resulting from observation which can be tested and therefore disprovable. Laws shouldn't be understood here from moral or legal perspective.

2. Digital Identity is defined as a set of claims by one digital subject about itself or another digital subject. A digital subject is a person or thing represented or existing in the digital realm which is being described or dealt with. Finally, a claim is an assertion of the truth of something, typically one which is disputed or in doubt.

3. Examples of claims:

• A claim could convey the identifier. ("jdoe" is the username for John Doe)
• A claim could assert that a subject knows a given key.
• A set of claims might convey personally identifying data.
• A claim could propose that a subject is part of a certain group.
• A claim could state that a subject has a capability.

4. Our definition leaves the evaluation of the usefulness (truthfulness) of the claim to the relying part (or the party to which the claim is made). Evaluation of a digital identity thus results in again producing claims. Matters of trust, attribution and usefulness can then be factored out and addressed at a higher layer in the system than the mechanism for expressing digital identity itself.