Illinois Tests A Blockchain-Based Birth Registry/ID System (illinoisblockchain.tech)

An anonymous reader quotes Government Technology: The state of Illinois, which has six blockchain pilots underway, will partner with Utah-based Evernym for a birth registry pilot meant to individualize and secure identities... The endeavor, one of six distinct blockchain explorations Illinois began last summer with a working group, is expected to utilize the Sovrin Foundation's publicly available distributed identity ledger and expand upon accomplishments of the W3C Verifiable Claims Task Force, the state said... Recognizing that identity -- and, now, digital identity -- begin at birth, the state will explore using these technologies to create "a secure 'self-sovereign' identity for Illinois citizens during the birth registration process," it said in the announcement.
More from the Illinois Blockchain Initiative site: Self-sovereign identity refers to a digital identity that remains entirely under the individual's control. A self-sovereign identity can be efficiently and securely validated by entities who require it, free from reliance on a centralized repository. Jennifer O'Rourke, Blockchain Business Liaison for the Illinois Blockchain Initiative commented, "To structurally address the many issues surrounding digital identity, we felt it was important to develop a framework that examines identity from its inception at child birth... Identity is not only foundational to nearly every government service, but is the basis for trust and legitimacy in the public sector."

In the proposed framework, government agencies will verify birth registration information and then cryptographically sign identity attributes such as legal name, date of birth, sex or blood type, creating what are called "verifiable claims" or attributes. Permission to view or share each of these government-verified claims is stored on the tamper-proof distributed ledger protocol in the form of a decentralized identifier... This minimizes the need for entities to establish, maintain and rely upon their own proprietary databases of identity information.
Evernym's "Chief Trust Officer" sees the program as "a major contribution to the larger effort of solving the online identity problem."

Comments

St00pid, as usual

[Cyberax]

All the blockchain ideas are incredibly stupid. It's like a law of nature. Just take any idea, add "blockchain", "sovereign", "decentralized" and it becomes instantly trendy.

No, blockchain won't help you to establish your identity. It's your private key that you use to sign blockchain updates that establishes it. And if your key is stolen then it's game over for you - somebody ELSE will be owning your identity. Forever. With no recourse for you.

All realistic proposals (including the one in TFA) include key revocation protocols through some kind of central authority (i.e. government), at which point the whole system becomes indistinguishable from a simple centralized database.

Re:St00pid, as usual

[GeekWithAKnife]

Your typical birth registry DB is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to tamper with. With blockchain you can have MILLIONS of copies as an authoritative source".

It is true that compromising the cryptographic proof of blockchain tech may cause identity theft to be far less believed and thus so much more destructive but it is also significantly harder AND the tech is constantly improving.

Key revocation can be automated via all nodes/clients in the chain and with multi-factor multi-key signing it becomes significantly harder to tamper with the system,

Short story, you have your private key, government has their key - decentralized and autonomous solution requires (outside of logins) BOTH keys to produce a unique signature. This is FAR more secure than the current system.

Blockchain can do more for securing your identity than current methods. Faking national insurance or the like is so much easier.

You may be a smart person but this time you gave an uninformed comment.

While it is true that there's a lot of buzz and hype about blockchain it does not make it any less a game changer. Literally will change the world we live in.

How about using the built-in blockchain id system?

[fahrbot-bot]

You know, the one using the letters G, A, T, and C.

(I think I saw a movie that did this ... and nothing went wrong.)

Re:why? why?

[FalcDot]

Actually, since we're talking about data that can be changed and/or corrected over time, it is vital to store all this data as an initial set, accompanied by precisely timestamped changes. Because if something occurred when the data was incorrect, or with a previous version of the data, then that exact situation needs to remain preserved for posterity.

If I sign my name to a contract today and I legally change my name tomorrow, then that contract needs to remain valid. Having a tamper-proof ledger that correctly records what my name was at the time of the signing, and what my name is right now, means that no-one can claim the contract is no longer valid just because of the name change.

Re:Without having read the article

[Applehu Akbar]

And because it will take an increasing amount of sex to mine each new baby, the population of Illinois will be algorithmically limited. Budget problem solved!

Re:why? why?

[AmiMoJo]

I've been trying to imagine what a society where identities are disposable would be like. On the internet it's easy to change your identity, you just create a new account. Bans are basically impossible, all they can do it make it slightly harder but never impossible to generate a new identity and carry on using the service.

The benefit of being able to change your identity at any time is that you can move on from mistakes, or reputation bombing, or keep different parts of your life (work, politics, family) separate. There has been a lot of talk about how politics should not result in you losing your job lately, for example.

That would mean that punishments would have to be temporary and only affect one identity. At the moment, even after you come out of jail your criminal record follows you around, so we would have to change our idea of what prison is - a place for rehabilitation, that you come out of when you are no longer a danger to society.

Of course generating a new identity has its down sides. You start with no reputation, no credit history, and people who know you remember your previous incarnations.

I think it's worth speculating about, if only to better understand how poorly we manage identity now.

Central vs decentral

[sjbe]

Isn't blockchain mostly for transactions that will never be modified/reversed or are single well-defined actions at a point in time, like transfers of money or sales?

I think a birth fits that definition rather well.

- The whole purpose of blockchain is to have NO central authority, but a distributed public trust. - The whole point of a Birth registry is TO HAVE a central authority.

No, the purpose is to be able to verify data. Centralization or the lack thereof is a side effect - possibly a useful one but a side effect all the same. There is no inherent reason a birth registry has to be centralized. It just has been because it was was the most expedient and reliable process at the time to do so at the time most birth registries were developed. If anything it would be more useful to have a decentralized registry of such public records if it could be done safely and reliably because it become more robust if you have multiple copies. I have family that had critical master copies of documents (birth certificates and military records) lost in fires because they were centrally stored with inadequate backups.

Now whether a blockchain is a good use for this specific problem is something I haven't given serious thought to but it's an interesting question. I've said for a long time that Bitcoin is an idiotic implementation of a currency by people who generally value ideology over evidence in economics. But the blockchain technology it relies upon is actually really promising for a wide variety of practical applications and is probably the most valuable thing about bitcoin.

Re:How about using the built-in blockchain id syst

[Gussington]

That isn't blockchain, it's simply a really long serial number...

Re:How do Dems/The Left

[Anonymous Coward]

... Someone will get ahold of the state's key and suddenly millions of Guatemalans will be us citizens born in Illinois and eligible to vote.

Thats the exact thing which would be very very hard to forge even for someone with write access, because they would have to insert those birth records at the right point in the timeline of the chain and then recalculate the resulting hash from every db transaction after that, and then get a bunch of other independent chain operators to all agree that all those entries being inserted now, from 20-50 years ago are legitimate.

How we do it in Belgium

[houghi]

Here is how we do it in Belgium
1) When you are born or when you become an official person you get a National ID. This is your date of birth, an increasing number and a control number.
That is you. However that number is NOT to identify you. It is to be used AFTER identification. If this would somehow be broken for whatever reason, you can get a new one.
2) You get an ID. Since forever when you are 12. This ID is used to well, ID you. There is a number of the ID. You can verify if an ID is valid or not on https://www.checkdoc.be/ If it is stolen or lost you call it in and it will be blocked right away. You will have to go to the police for a temp one if they stop you (e.g. when you where speeding) and you can not do anything where you would need an ID, like take a loan. You will have to get a new ID. That take up to 2 weeks.

The data on the chip can be read via open source https://eid.belgium.be/en Source is available for also Linux, so you can read the code.
That ID is to, well, ID you.

The downside is that you can not block what can be read. That means that if it is read, they can read your address and age. So they could spam you. As long as you not put it in every reader you see, scamming is a lot harder (never impossible)

The thing is that the ID is not unique. You need to replace it every 5 years. It can be lost or stolen. The fact that that is possible is a GOOD thing, because that means the procedure is in place that theft is an option. Having something in place that can not be (easily) changed is the issue.

Companies, once they have identified you, will use the National Number. But only after identification. At that moment it becomes easier to use. However when identification is needed (e.g. if you want to increase your credit limit) you will need your ID again to identify you.

So US, it is open source, use it as you please.