Posted on 06/22/2017 10:51:36 AM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
UN wants a universal digital ID for your data
Humanitarians and tech companies say a digital form of identification would be particularly useful for refugees separated from their personal documents.
Maja Vujinovic knows first-hand what it's like to be at a border when you don't have identification.
In 1993, her family was escaping Yugoslavia as its sovereignty was crumbling. At one border check, she heard a guard yelling, "So what? They don't exist. You can do with them what you'd like."
Because Yugoslavia stopped existing as a nation, countries weren't recognizing the IDs of its onetime citizens, Vujinovic said. Officially, her family's names, birth dates, professional history -- none of it existed.
Now, as the chief innovation officer at General Electric Digital, she spoke at the ID2020 Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Monday, a day ahead of World Refugee Day. At the summit, tech companies like Microsoft and Accenture and humanitarian groups including the World Food Programme and the UN Refugee Agency want to create a digital identification for every person on the planet, one that's tied to their fingerprints, birth date, medical records, education, travel, bank accounts and more.
It's a lofty goal, but a universal digital ID could ease the headache of travel and potentially ensure that you'll have access to it, since you could pull it up via a phone app. That's a particularly resonant issue for refugees, many of whom have to leave their homes behind at a moment's notice. During times of chaos, documents are often the last thing on refugees' minds, but the first problem they run into when they're seeking asylum.
There's still the challenge of adoption, but the summit was more about showing off what the technology can do.
Accenture demonstrated a working prototype that would provide a person's information through an app. In the absence of a personal device, that person could still be recognized through fingerprints or iris scans, as long as that information was in the database.
During the demonstration, David Treat, a managing director at Accenture, said that the prototype took three weeks to develop and that hoped it would be used at borders to show identification through QR codes.
"We're not talking about years and years of build," Treat said. "The technology is here, and it's scalable."
It's a scary thought to put all your personal information -- including your medical records and banking information -- in a single app, but experts at the summit believe that blockchain technology, a way of using databases to encrypt data that's also used for bitcoin, can protect users.
It's not a reality yet. For now, the ID2020 Summit is pointing to India as a case study of what a world with a digital ID could look like.
In 2009, India launched Aadhaar, a digital ID program in which citizens voluntarily enroll name, birth date, gender, address, phone number, email, 10 fingerprints, two eye scans and photo. In exchange, they can use the digital ID to sign documents online, apply for credit and jobs, go to hospitals and exchange money, among other features. Pramod Varma, the chief architect of the program, believes that India will become "data rich" in a few years.
There are 25 million authentications using Aadhaar every day, and in June, the program reached 1.1 billion people enrolled -- about 85 percent of the population.
But India's digital ID program also comes with its own security issues. While a government official told the Supreme Court in India that Aadhaar was "the most foolproof method that has evolved," the Centre for Internet and Society discovered that 130 million people had their information leaked from four government websites.
Varma said they're working on creating an "electronic consent architecture" so data ownership goes back to the users, not the government.
"Data sharing must put the person right in the middle," Varma said. "You or I must own our own data."
For now, you'll have to stick to your passport and driver's license.
Corrections, June 21 at 7:37 a.m. and 2 p.m. PT: This article originally misstated Maja Vujinovic's title and her role at the ID2020 Summit. She is chief innovation officer at General Electric Digital and was a guest speaker at the ID2020 Summit.
Hand or forehead, comrade?
The mark of the beast!
Just another ruse to get their long time plans achieved. They want EVERY child in the WORLD to be registered , at birth, with the UN
What could possibly go wrong?
Your permanent record.
And with the internet of things everyone winds up on the internet even if they were dead and gone by 1994.
I see census data from my grandfather from 1940, a 1913 newspaper article he was listed in, and more.
No place to hide.
Better to go Amish and off grid or to outer Mongolia.
http://id2020summit.org/
Monday June 19, 2017 8:00 AM
United Nations, ECOSOC Chamber
405 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
ID2020 Goals
By 2030,
enabling access to digital identity for every person on the planet.
2016 Summit Outcomes:
“Sweeping commitments from conference attendees to contribute towards the shared goal of universal digital identity. These commitments ranged from individuals pledging their time to corporations offering ongoing financial support.”
ID2020 Summit Spotlights Technology and Digital Identity at the United Nations
Panelists include world-renowned humanitarians and leading members of technology and blockchain communities
June 19, 2017 07:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time
NEW YORK—(BUSINESS WIRE)—ID2020, a public-private partnership dedicated to giving one-sixth of the worlds population access to an officially recognized identity, today convenes the 2017 Platform for Change Summit at the United Nations. Without identity, approximately 1.1 billion people disproportionately women, children and the worlds most vulnerable struggle to access critical services and social benefits.
We are very proud to be a Founding Partner of the ID2020 Alliance and to support todays summit. Working together, we can achieve the ID2020 mission to bring a safe, verifiable and persistent digital identification system to scale.
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ID2020, which supports the UNs Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 to enable an officially recognized identity for all, is focused on an open, human-centric approach to identity, one that draws on recent advances in biometrics and innovative technologies. As Dakota Gruener, Executive Director of ID2020, has said: Imagine being unable to enroll in school, vote, or open a bank or cell-phone account. Paper-based credentials can be lost or destroyed, and are fundamentally controlled by the issuing institution. In contrast, digital identity places control in the hands of the individual. This approach enables both significant improvements in the quality of life for more than a billion individuals and efficiencies for the governments, NGOs and businesses serving them.
Todays convening of the second ID2020 Summit hosts experts from government, private enterprise, and innovative technology companies, who are collaborating to provide digital identity solutions for the global population. The event launches the ID2020 Alliance, bringing together these stakeholders on an ongoing basis with commitments of funding and technical resources, implementation of pilot projects, and collaborative standards development. The ID2020 Alliance approach is supported by a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation and major financial support from Accenture (NYSE:ACN), which will be announced at the Summit.
The event encourages stakeholder participation and expert discussions on the possibilities of applying innovative funding models, advanced technologies, and public-private partnerships to help solve this global challenge. Featured panels with some of the most innovative thinkers in the technology and humanitarian space will include keynote addresses from senior staff at key UN agencies and organizations like PwC, Microsoft, Accenture, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and The Rockefeller Foundation.
Only by working together can technologists and policy-makers create scalable, secure, and sustainable systems to be employed worldwide, explains Gruener. The promise of technologies like blockchain and other decentralized ledger systems create a pathway towards viable solutions in the quest for identity for all. By 2020, were aiming to have a proof of concept with real world pilot projects deployed in several locations. By 2030, our goal is to enable access to digital identity for every person on the planet.
An established identity needs to be a universally accepted human right and blockchain will play a key role in making that happen, said David Treat, Managing Director of Accentures Blockchain Practice. We are very proud to be a Founding Partner of the ID2020 Alliance and to support todays summit. Working together, we can achieve the ID2020 mission to bring a safe, verifiable and persistent digital identification system to scale.
Confirmed speakers at todays Summit include Assistant Secretary General, Chief Information and Technology Officer of the United Nations, Ms. Atefeh Riazi; the Chief Architect of Aadhaar, Dr. Pramod Varma; David Treat, Managing Director of Accentures Blockchain Practice; and senior executives from PwC and Microsoft.
A smaller group of participants will convene at Microsofts Technology Center in Times Square this afternoon to begin working on a coordinated roadmap for action. Globally renowned members of the blockchain development, humanitarian efforts and technologists will lead as session chairs including:
Saadia Madsbjerg, Managing Director, The Rockefeller Foundation
Karl Steinacker, Deputy Director for Programme Support and Management at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency
Anne Wallwork, Senior Counselor for Asia, Terrorist Financing & Financial Crime at the US Department of Treasury
Adrian Kunzle, Salesforce Senior Vice President of Product Development
Several notable thought-leaders will be participating in the afternoons collaborative sessions including:
Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings
John Farmer, Director of Technology and Civic Innovation at Microsoft
Tara Nathan, Executive Vice President at Mastercard
Joseph Lubin, Founder of Consensys
Patrick Spens, Blockchain Specialist at PwC UK
Microsofts mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more aligns with the values of ID2020. We believe that through new approaches to identity in the humanitarian ecosystem, we can ensure real progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Working closely with ID2020 and public and private sector partners, we remain committed to the goal of ensuring every person on the planet has an officially recognized identity, says Yorke Rhodes III, Global Business Strategist for Blockchain at Microsoft.
Other participating organizations include Intel, IBM, Thomson Reuters, SAP, NEC Corporation, Verizon, Samsung and the World Economic Forum.
In 2016, with the support of PwC, Microsoft, the International Telecommunications Union, and the UN Office of Partnerships, the first ID2020 Summit was a resounding success, drawing attention to the importance of identity from both the public and private-sectors.
The 2017 ID2020 Summit is made possible by PwC and is co-convened by the United Nations Office of Communications and Information Technology and Microsoft. With additional support from Accenture, the UN Development Programme, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
ID2020 Platform for Change 2017 Summit is being held at the official headquarters of the United Nations and at the Microsoft Technology Center in Times Square. The agenda can be found at http://id2020summit.org/. For event updates, follow on Twitter: @identity2020, #ID2020 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/identity2020/.
Maybe they would tie in voter registration and citizenship? And any non PC thought you might possess.
Better to go Amish and off grid or to outer Mongolia.
I was having the conversation with my kids the other day. It's difficult to wrap your head around the concept, but 100 years from now their great-great grandchildren will still be able to, with a few keyboard clicks, easily discover that in June 2017 great-great grandma "went to the beach with her BFF and got SO wasted". Take that a step farther, her descendants 500 years from now will STILL be able to easily discover that same information. Basically anything you post on the internet will be there until the end of humanity, be that in a century or a billion years....
And I want a pony.
Hey, UN, where's my pony?
*
666!
Jeff Bezos(Amazon.com) bought WaPo and has a $600M contract to provide cloud storage to the CIA. Oh no, would the CIA use Amazon to spy on us? We trust the deep state, right? At Pompeo's confirmation, there were questions about global warming and gay rights, but bobody asked questions about Bezos.
Except that due to "data rot", chances are that the data will not even be accessible in 50 years.
Why are these vermin allowed on our soil? Because our politicians want it.
I say we support this program with the condition that it will be required as voter ID.
The liberals will quickly lose interest
The key question is, do they want it to be voluntary or mandatory?
I suspect the latter.
No. They lie. The ultimate purpose is to take money from Whites and give it to non-Whites. Before they can get there they will have to identify everyone, and note their victim status.
While they are getting there, they will use it to throw in jail Whites who complain about anything.
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