Societal, ethical, and technical impacts of digital identities

The world of Digital Identities has its origins years ago when there were only centralized identity models. In recent years, federated identity models have spread to all sectors, from social networks and education to enterprises and governments. In recent years, several projects have implemented the new paradigm of decentralized identity, where users have a digital wallet and control over their identity.

This has caught the interest of governments worldwide, which are designing for citizens Wallets and Decentralized Identities, intending to have more secure digital credentials and privacy-preserving than physical ones.

Given the scope and scale of this innovation, digital identities are significantly impacting the web and, in particular, privacy and human rights, altering the assumptions and the balance that have shaped the web ecosystem. It is time to analyze the impact and threats, considering the large number of stakeholders, including governments, implementers, privacy and human rights advocates, and considering the number of technologies available and their respective standards development organizations.

So I wrote Identity & the Web as a paper that the W3C Team is releasing today, on the day we proposed a draft updated charter for the W3C Working Group on Federated Identity. The paper gives an overview of digital identities, focusing on decentralized identities and their impact on the Web and users, to understand the possible threats and how to mitigate them, both from a technology and governance perspective. We aim for the document to serve as an anchoring point in these conversations, and are inviting the community to review and provide input to help improve and complete it. Comments and input are welcome preferably before October 6, 2024.

We hope that by providing that place for discussing and managing systemic impacts, we can help the community in charting a credible path to strengthen the position of the Web during this rapid evolution phase of the information ecosystem.