e-Humanity

Universal identification protocol and infrastructure plan.

This is primarily an institutional/political solution rather than a technological one. Although interoperable with certain national identity systems, and funded by national governments, e-Humanity will be based on the right of each human to a secure, autonomous identity, and will not be able to be withheld, withdrawn or censored by any government or corporation.

Technically it proposes the establishment of an identity layer in the World Wide Web itself, as a web standard governed by the same multistakeholder interactions which have enabled the Web to transform the world as it has. In addition it proposes an international treaty giving governments (including law enforcement) regulated rights to interact with the identity modules of any and all humans, in return for a small levy similar to a universal service fund, which supports firstly a transnational encrypted cloud infrastructure where each registrant has a domain space and some database storage, and secondly a standardised system for creating and uploading identities to that infrastructure.

Existing systems with adequate privacy such as eIDAS and MIT's project SOLIDcan be underpinned by e-Humanity, and its status as web standard will allow endless innovations to be added on top of it, by public and private sectors. The World Bank will be joined by large elements of global civil society and private enterprise in supporting the e-Humanity Treaty, which will overcome the reluctance of many governments to share their hitherto monopolised power of issuance. It should be noted though, that citizens of non-signatory nations will have the same right to an e-Humanity identity as anyone else, as long as they access the standardised process of registration (which could be made available to them by private enterprise, or in the embassy of a signatory.

It puts the issuance of and access to ID in the hands of humankind as a whole, rather than nation-states or corporations, by adding a feature to the World Wide Web and by international treaty.

Firstly there will be a deterrent against abusive access in the form of a tamper-proof audit trail of authorised access. Secondly access will be incremental on a need-to-know basis: initial access will only be to confirm that a person of that name exists and was born on a certain day in a certain place.

Since lack of access and/or technical inability will prevent some individuals from taking control of their identity modules until they reach a certain age or conducive situation, the information recorded should be minimal during that time and access to it confined to 'data wards' such as parents/guardians of minors or authorised public officials, whose authority and access can be revoked by the identity-holder when they are able to assert their autonomy.

e-Humanity should be a substrate for national (and indeed, private) identity systems to be built on top of. Its auditability could be ensured by existing cryptographic solutions, digital certificates etc. The cloud servers which make it available should be distributed much as DNS servers are, and funded by similar means. The governance of the system should also resemble the multistakeholder system governing most of the internet and the Web.

All spoken languages and written scripts, as well as accessibility features such as audio and braille rendition, currently accommodated in the Web should also be applied to e-Humanity.

W3C's well-established process for deriving Web standards can be followed for the proposed new standard/s. 

Some features, for example confirmation that a person of a certain name was born in a certain place on a certain day, can be made available offline in locally hosted modules. Some other functionality could be made conditional upon successful sychronisation with the cloud when conditions permit. 

All languages and scripts, as well as accessibility features such as audio and braille rendition, currently accommodated in the Web should also be applied to e-Humanity.

Recognition and support from the World Bank would trigger buy-in from large parts of global civil society (including the W3C) and private enterprise, and some governments would be willing to sign the e-Humanity Treaty as it complements their existing e-citizenship and e-residency schemes. Once a critical mass of participation is reached, it becomes difficult for governments not to engage.

Experience in activism and understanding of global tech governance.

The funding model is similar to widespread Universal Service Funds, except that instead of a government requiring companies to contribute a percentage of turnover, the international treaty requires governments to contribute a percentage of their per-capita GDP, which can be done in kind, namely the provision of cloud infrastructure and registration facilities.

We are engaged citizens and believe our project can enhance the position of engaged citizens everywhere.

The fact that we need to conduct our usual everyday lives while promoting e-Humanity voluntarily.