Identity and Identification in a Networked World Part 2
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Questions: Negotiation not in the favor of the weaker party.
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Toward an Archival Approach to Digital Identity Management
Fred Stutzman, Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina
Transitive states of identity is called into question…it’s all recorded or can be recorded
Document states of identity
States of identification:
Verified: credentialed and verified, uniquely identifying
Pseudononymous: non-verified, uniquely identifying
Anonymous: lacking verification
Identity control – agency control, source control, network control
OpenID, MicroID
http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/
http://claimid.com/
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Selling Your Self: Examining the Ethics of Identity 2.0
Alice Marwick, Culture & Communication, NYU
Difference between identity and identification online
Identity 1.0 drawbacks: Multiple logins/passwords, Identity context (myspace vs friendster vs flickr), Data collection (data aggregators, behavioral tracking, search engines), Identity fraud (theft phishing)
Identity 2.0 pros: – Single sign-on – Identity providers – user control – choose which identity to present when and to who – decentralized
User agency – does software five users control over their own information? – multiple personas? – software choice? – opt-out?
Openness
-open-source/open-standard – developer/uiser/citizen/participation
User-friendliness
Data protection
OpenID – opensource standard – url-based standard. store information on your site in microformats
ClaimID is using it, livejournal
the strength lies in openness and participation
the user-friendliness of single-sign-on is good, but the implementation is bad,
data security of the site that’s storing information is a problem
the more sites you visit, the more valuable this technology is
CardSpace – Microsoft’s Identity Metasystem – tied to a single computer.
more ambitious that OpenID, but problematic because infocards are issued by identity providers and tied to a physical computer
nothing to prevent Amazon.com from abusing information
conclusions
Solution to ID 1.0 problems?
Facilitate new forms of data gathering and aggregation
Interplay between user-provided data and monetization needs continued scrutiny
Disconnect in thinking about “identity”?
Managing Identities and Moral Identification
Noemi Manders-Huits, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
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The Emerging Age of Who
Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity
Identity is a sense of continuity.
Identity and personas – personas change over time
past behavior predicts future behavior (?)
packaging identity (driver’s license)
federation model – circle of trust
Agents: trusted sites, portal, school, bank, government, trusted application like Microsoft CardSpace.
Relying party trusts the issuer, and the privacy aspect lies in the acquisition of the claim is separated from the issuing of the claim
one central place for authentication
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Demonstration: TrackMeNot
Furman 210 Helen Nissenbaum & Michael Zimmer
Obfuscating your search queries through periodic submittal of false queries.
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Identity within Social Networks: The Creation of freeFormed.org
Megan MacMurray, Nanna Halinen, Catherine Colman, Jungmin Oh and Yonatan Kelib,
Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU
Enabling people to place their contacts within particular groups. Much more granular application of filtering/sorting.
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Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8
Danah Boyd, School of Information, University of California – Berkeley
Who counts as a friend?
Take cues for behavior in social networks based on those who brought you into the social network.
Motivations: – You are friends/acquaintences – socially inappropriate to say no – attention, popularity – fan of person, band, celebrity – identity signal – expand visibility (Friendster) – Bulletin and blog access (MySpace) – To see a private Profile (MySpace,FB) – As bookmark – Easier to say yes than no
People started gaming the social network…”9,000 closest friends” aren’t your closest friends, but people that you want to pay attention to
My Top 8
Change of context within MySpace and Facebook – used to be just the people you knew in a particular context, but now the contexts are mixed: Burning Man, your professor, your mom.
Stokely Carmichael – when speaking in person to different groups could addresses them “appropriately” but when appearing on television had to use a single voice, had to make a choice.
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The Cost of (Anti-)Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites
Ryan Bigge, Communication and Culture, York/Ryerson University, Toronto
Henry Jenkins – “The early discussion of the digital divide assumed that the most important concern was insuring access to information as if the web were simply a data bank. Its power comes through participation within its social networks.”
Neo-luddites
Against Technology – Steven E. Jones – “Many people who identify with the term “Luddite” just want to reduce or control the technology that is all around us and to questions its utility—to force us not to take technology for the water in which we swim.”
Protocol is to control societies as the panopticon is to discipline societies…
Two-thirds of Facebook members log on at least once every 24 hours, and the typical user spends 20 minutes a day…
“Participation as a form of labor – they are not so much participating, in the progressive sense of collective self-determination, as they are working by submitting to interactive monitoring.” – Andrejevic 2004
subcultural capital – hair cuts, clothes, shoes, etc.
sociotechnical Capital – Paul Resnick
“If you don’t have a facebook profile, you don’t have an online identity.” – Chris Hughes
isolatr
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Question to Jason: Is there a niche for, say, credit cards, that don’t share your personal information or otherwise take steps to protect your privacy?
Question to Jason: Rewards programs: how is that information shared between companies?
In Canada, limited sharing of information. Opt-in to have information shared. Geared towards the notion of “give us your information and we’ll solve your problems!” Companies play it up as a trusting relationship, that it’s to your advantage as a consumer to give us this information.
CLTV – customer lifetime value – how much are you worth and what level of service will companies offer you?
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Space 2 B me: A thesis on teen identity construction in instant messenger
Evelyn Grooten, New Media and Digital Culture, Utrecht University, Netherlands
Identity as a set of characteristics as shown in computers that we don’t have control over
Online disembodiment theory
No race and ethnicity online? Is the body important? Identity is shaped by a combination of appearance, words, thoughts, expectations, et cetera.
Define identity: Emile Benveniste, Judith Butler, Justine Cassell, Erving Goffman, Jos de Mil, Stuart Hall
Other ethnographic studies: Lori Kendall, Annette Markham (humorous writer), John Edward Campbell
Identity is the set of identifications you have.
Instead of using static names in IM, defining themselves via events or via relationships with others.
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The rewards of identity: Pursuing and targeting consumer surveillance
Jason Pridmore, Sociology, Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada
Loyalty programs:
“They represent a glimpse of life when some version of our reputation travels with us wherever we go.”
John Deighton – “Consumer identity motives in the information age.”
Loyalty marketing – First: reward loyal customers – Second: gather consumer information
CRFM, KDD
Retailers desire to tie transactional data directly to each customer
Use of: – phone number requests at register – warranty card survey – promotions and contests – loyalty and rewards cards
Frequent Flier Programs – supplement hotel, car rental and supermarket programs
Points as a new form of currency
Approximately 41% in the US carry at least 1 loyalty card, 76% of all Canadians carry one
Air miles – 69% of Canadian households
Shoppers Optimum Card: 50% of Canadian Women
Air Canada’s Aeroplan: 27% of Canadian households, with 92% of business travelers
122 million in the US & 25 million in Canada
Internal definitions of self (personal identity)
External impositions of classifications (institutional and quasi-institutional identifications)
Corporations pay the consumer for their loyalty – consumers “get something for nothing” but the nothing is identity and it has some value.
“points get you something”
“we can serve them better”
“we are going to learn more about you and be better at solving your problems”
development of a customer relationship – relationship based on a continual analysis of consumer data, and the consumer’s “identity” is subject to a number of “overlays” – means of identification
Enrollment data – Transaction – Third Party information (geo demographics, based on your ZIP code, they know something about you) – Market Indicators
Corporations thus suggest this provides a “total” or “360 degree” view of the customer
Corporations see this as a process of managing people and changing their behavior
Consumption as the focus of “systematic management” – process of overlaying data creates value but also creates distinctive consumer catergories – categories of risk and profit
Reduction of the consumer to a set of statistically relevant points that fit into a predictive model – consumer is seen as malleable
These forms of identification have particular effects
”...as consumers we appear to be directed down certain predetermined routes of consumption which ensure that consumerism is ultimately as constraining as it is enabling”
Steven Miles “Consumerism – As a way of life”
Recognize use of cards:
– as expressions of personal identity they are indicative of desires and lifestyle, yet these forms of identity always have to be confirmed
– facilitate forms of categorization and establish institutionally-defined definitions
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Fitting identities into preset boxes: reflections on the case of medical records
Valentina Lichtner, PhD, Centre for HCI Design, City University, London
Interpreted, Represented, Recognized
Considering the case of collecting information from people who “preserve their rights” by presenting a limited view of their identity.
Staff may add information to the description based on their judgement
Receptionist: What ethnicity are you?
Patient: African British
Receptionist: Doesn’t work… [doesn’t match the pre-set categories]
Patient: It does, you see, most people are mixed.
The representation of a patient’s identity will differ depending on the structure of the record, the information required, the needs of the system.
Traditional Muslim naming system – the surnames don’t necessarily match up. Proposal to change the surnames to match the system’s needs.
Western databases impose a Western identity to people from different cultures.
We’re not necessarily the same as the information about us.
Comment: Nation-states imposing the requirement of having names.
The second day of Identity and Identification in a Networked World
