Friends of the late computer scientist Kim Cameron took the opportunity of gathering together), to remember Cameron, his life and contribution to digital identity and beyond via his 7 Laws of Identity.
Published in 2005, the laws have proved highly influential for companies, networks and individuals in tackling what Cameron saw as the fundamental issue for online identity: “The Internet was not built with an Identity layer.”
Seven of his friends and former colleagues and peers remembered Cameron through his seven laws in a special EIC 2022 session. Here are the 7 Laws as summarized by Kim Cameron in his 2005 paper, and the remarks of those remembering him through them.
Law 1: User control and consent
Technical identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent
Law 2: Minimum disclosure for a constrained use
The solution which discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution
Law 3: Justifiable Parties
Digital identity systems must be designed so the disclosure of identifying information is limited to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship
Law 4: Directed Identity
A universal identity system must support both “omni-directional” identifiers for use by public entities and “unidirectional” identifiers for use by private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles
Law 5: Pluralism of Operators and Technologies
A universal identity system must channel and enable the inter-working of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers
Law 6: Human Integration
The universal identity metasystem must define the human user to be a component of the distributed system integrated through unambiguous human-machine communication mechanisms offering protection against identity attacks
Law 7: Consistent Experience Across Contexts
The unifying identity metasystem must guarantee its users a simple, consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies
More memories of Kim Cameron have been gathered along with details of a new scholarship established in his name.
Click here to read more about Kim Cameron and his 7 Laws of Identity.
