For Human Dynamics open collaboration on CoreID project.
This Reposository is intended to explore the potential for using and extending open source code by the increadible team behind Anvil now being advanced at MIT and elsewhere to accomplish the Media Lab research goal of providing a digital identity of our own for every person, known as "CoreID".
This collaboration is for the purpose of creating and demonstrating the potential usefulness of blockchain-backed digital signatures.
This collaboration is intended to develop and demonstrate the following technical capabilities:
1. shared key material for use on- and off-chain, with private keys remaining entirely in principal’s possession
2. utility and limitations of tamperproof ledgers for identity
3. evidentiary usage of cryptographic signatures
4. value of intermediaries for binding real world identities to cryptographic key material
5. third-party verified attributes/blind attestations
This collaboration is intended to apply and test the capabilities of the above technology in the context of meeting the following business and legal goals:
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Test the technology in the contextof achieving the aims and objectives described in the "CoreID" MIT Media Lab/law.MIT.edu research statement: https://law.mit.edu/blog/core-identity-blockchain-project
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Test the unique potential of US Federal Credit Unions to play the role of individual identity and personal data fiduciary agent of people through the following Use Case: https://github.com/mitmedialab/CoreID/blob/master/CreditUnionUseCase.md and https://github.com/alexfigtree/CoreID/wiki/Content-and-Actions-Model
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Establish a basis for achieving predictable legal results with this technology in the context of commercial contracts for the sale of goods
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Establish readiness, value and fit of this technology in identified business and legal contexts
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Create a re-usable set of business and legal tools enabling more efficient and effective adoption, use and advancement of this technoligy.
Here is the framework presented by Dazza Greenwood on June 12, 2017 as part of the decision to try an open source collaboration with non Media Lab people in this way:
"...why having a team for external collaborators for a specific project repo may be worth trying:
- Everybody is happy to work on this MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics project in some GitHub repo MIT Open Source license;
- The project is to develop a demo that will be shown at an unconference hosted by Sandy Pentland at the Media Lab late July;
- Membership on the GitHub project team is a temporary privilege subject to termination at any time by the Media Lab for any reason, and the team will be closed down when the demo project is over; and
- I am operating under an MIT Media Lab appointment and can take responsibility to ensure all external collaborators understand the rules, practices and expetations regarding use of the MIT name, intellectual property, etc (here is my cheat sheet on all that: https://law.mit.edu/contributing-our-open-source-projects)."
We hope this collaboration will result in example code in this GitHub repository, other project assets (eg diagrams, requirements, documentation, etc) and culminate with the creation of a demo in the form of a video to be produced by the MIT Media Lab and released under Creative Commons license. The video will reflect the input and feedback of all active and invited collaborators and will include explicit attribution and credit to all contributors to this project. As with other law.MIT.edu research demo videos, we intend to show this video at a digital identity event at the MIT Media Lab and to make it freely available via MIT.edu and YouTube.com channels, among other avenues of distribution. Any collaborator or other contriburor is also welcome and encouraged to distribute the resulting demo video through their own channels.
We hope that active and invited collaborators on this project will be interested and available to demo the code base in person or via live video at a July digital identity event and/or to participate in live discussion after the video is shown. After the demo has been completed and this project repo is archived, we also hope interested external collaborators will discuss and select followon projects with the MIT Media Lab on topics related to CoreID, digital identity and personal data ownership and control.
Finally, we hope this collaboration will provide a useful input to a future blockchain-backed digital signature "Mock Trial" to be produced by law.MIT.edu and Legal Hackers with other collaborators in the fields of law and technology. We hope that interested collaborators contributing to this project will also choose to collaborate on the Mock Trial.