Identity Verification, Trust and Citizenship

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:35 am

Robin Linden has posted new information about the Identity Verification system (IDV) they are introducing on the Official Linden Blog here.

Initially they seem to be focussing on age verification so that owners of land with "content of a sexual or violent nature" can make sure that access is only given to those who have verified they are over 18. More interestingly though, for our purposes, "for Residents, it gives them the chance to independently verify certain aspects of their identity (their name, age, location and sex for instance) if they choose to. This will help establish trust by removing a layer of anonymity for those they interact with. Itâ€™s much easier to trust someone who puts their name behind their words and actions.". This could be the solution to our perennial issues surrounding use of alternate accounts in the CDS and the current impossibility of verifying whether all of our citizens are in fact distinct human beings.

Now, this could be the start of a fairly lengthy conversation. How much of the layer of anonymity do we feel comfortable removing? How much would be needed to check that Avatar A and Avatar B are different people in real life? But at least we have a potential solution emerging.

I spoke to Robin just now (she wanted to discuss our experiences in the CDS in preparation for a presentation she's giving and yes, I know I'm shamelessly name-dropping here ). I said that the IDV development was very interesting from our perspective and she said she would be happy to discuss these issues further with us. So let's think about this and provide some feedback; we may have the option to influence the way this develops to our benefit.

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 1:28 pm

Eeek! The rise of the Augmentationists!

Aliasi Stonebender · Post by **Aliasi Stonebender** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:59 am

Feh, Brumo. The two sides aren't opposite approaches, just /different/ ones. I fall into both camps, depending on the topic. In our case, having some link to an actual, real identity is probably the only way we can long-term preserve our system without (for example) switching to a 'votes weighted by land ownership' method that would be alt-proof but entirely undemocratic.

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 2:29 pm

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Let's do the vote-wighted-by-land-owneship-thing!

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 4:27 pm

michelmanen wrote:
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Let's do the vote-wighted-by-land-owneship-thing!

LOL Michel .... LOL!

Tanoujin Milestone · Post by **Tanoujin Milestone** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 5:22 pm

hm, answer to your second question: we could need it for the elections - lets put rl identity fraud aside for a moment - LL obviously has the data of my first and my additional accounts - if i could get a one time ticket to Flyinroc's party (some key or signature, i am no expert) as Avatar Dr. Jekyll and burn it at the ballot, and ask as Mr Hyde for a second one and get the answer: "you again?" - wouldn't that help a lot? But there will always be a workaround.

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 7:10 pm

Tanoujin Milestone wrote:
hm, answer to your second question: we could need it for the elections - lets put rl identity fraud aside for a moment - LL obviously has the data of my first and my additional accounts - if i could get a one time ticket to Flyinroc's party (some key or signature, i am no expert) as Avatar Dr. Jekyll and burn it at the ballot, and ask as Mr Hyde for a second one and get the answer: "you again?" - wouldn't that help a lot? But there will always be a workaround.

I heard at one point that they were going to block same IP addresses, but since some married couples both belong to CDS (like Asha and I do currently) we would be on the same IP addy.

Tanoujin Milestone · Post by **Tanoujin Milestone** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 4:16 am

Bromo, dear neighbour, i have a comparable situation here. As long as you do not share a single Computer, PW, Credit Card and bank account on RL with your wife (my regards to her), it should cause no inconvenience to voluntarily reunify the accounts of a single user, generate a one time, task related passport and keep all the data anonymous. It could be one of the 10 L$ services.

I made an alt, know what, you find him in my land holding group as second member...
User chooses "New Account" button from Login Screen, chooses a name, enters her Birthday, mail adress, selects an Avatar (2x6), enters account info (Real name, gender, country, pw, security q, security code) and agrees to the ToS. I did that, LL charged the fee for that alt, end of the story.

I just want the possibility to proof: It is me and my alts. It is me. You can trust me. The rest is up to the Techheads.

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:45 pm

Now that we've had a day or two to consider this information, what would we want out of Identity Verification (IDV) to help us? I can see a couple of options that could be useful and (more or less) acceptable to us.

1. Everyone verifies some RL information with the IDV company sufficient to provide unique identifiers. That could be as much as name, date of birth, gender and location or much less in order to preserve more of our anonymity. I'm told that your initials and date of birth are usually enough to provide a unique identifier. The chances of finding another person with the initials AF and the date of birth 8 February (not mine!) are approximately 1 in 150 000. If you add in location as well then this becomes quite a good way of making sure that avatars are controlled by different RL human beings. Provided the IDV company can confirm that Patroklus Murakami's RL info is 'AF 8 Feb London' and ANother Avatar's is CP '2 June Birmingham' we have stronger reassurance that they are different people.

2. Everyone provides some RL information to the IDV company in return for a unique identifier key, something like a Virtual Social Security Number which would be shared with the avatar and the CDS government. Once we've confirmed that everyone's unique identifiers are different, we have reassurance that they belong to different people.

Does anyone have comments on these ideas? Any other ways we could do this based on what we've been told so far (which is admittedly not very much!)

Tanoujin Milestone · Post by **Tanoujin Milestone** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 3:58 pm

as long as this does not turn into headhunting - the resonance is overwhelming btw.

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:35 am

I've just found a simpler solution, which may be what LL intends to do in any case. This following extract is from the Local Government Study Group's meeting in April this year attended by a number of CDS citizens. The full text is here.

Robin Linden: one idea is that you will only be able to authenticate one account.
Robin Linden: so you'd have to pick one, and the rest become less viable
Ashcroft Burnham: However, what is *really* needed for local government to work is a system of verified avatars, in which the system guarantees that each verified avatar is not an alt of any other verified avatar.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That would be a very good start!
Ralph Radius:
Robin Linden: exactly Ashcroft. You'd only be able to have one authenticated avatar
Ashcroft Burnham: (By requiring proof of RL identity, which will be kept secret, to the identity provider).

My emphasis in bold.

Under this system each RL person would only be able to authenticate one SL avatar. If every CDS citizen was represented by an 'authenticated' avatar then we could be reasonably sure that every citizen was a distinct human being. (There are obviously some ways round this, I could 'authenticate' my RL partner's av which he's never used for example. But the barrier to fraud would be quite high).

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:54 pm

That would solve one problem but create a whole host of others (not for CDS but for SL in general)

Tanoujin Milestone · Post by **Tanoujin Milestone** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 8:37 am

You have my full attention, Bromo, could you explain? I am very easy with verification, but that does not mean i want it forced down on people who will get in trouble - are there any issues beyond identity theft & security?

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:14 am

HI!

Oh, main issue would be if only 1 Avatar was allowed to verify per Identity - but turns out that is not an issue.

A quick perusal of the LL blogs reveal (from 29 August 2007):

"â€¢ Do I have to verify each avatar I use? You will have to verify each separate avatar that you use, but there are no limits on the number of avatars you can have verified. This can all be done under the â€˜my accountâ€™ section of the Second Life Web site."

from: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/29/i ... cond-life/

Which leaves CDS without an easy way to verify 1 vote per typist ...

Tanoujin Milestone · Post by **Tanoujin Milestone** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 4:05 pm

Linden Lab individually announces to charge "added value tax" to europeans via email. VAT applies to all payments to ll. This may indeed add a new layer of trust - to your nose, Bromo!
Me sighs and opens wallet