What Identity Is
Identifiers, attributes and claims. What an identity record is, how one gets created, and why one person, one row is the hardest promise in software.
The Oldest Problem
You will be able to explain, in one sentence at a dinner table, why a village needs no identity system and a city cannot survive without one.
11,993 words/52 min read2Identifier, Attribute, Claim
You will be able to look at any field in a database table and say whether it is an identifier, an attribute, or a claim, and defend the answer.
11,858 words/52 min read3Identification, Authentication, Authorisation
You will be able to take any sentence containing the word "auth" and say which of three completely different operations the speaker meant.
11,995 words/52 min read4The Record
You will be able to look at any table that holds people and say, for every column, whether it belongs to the record's own identity, to what the record…
12,324 words/54 min read5Names Are Not Identifiers
You will be able to take any form that asks for a name and say, for each box on it, which group of human beings that box excludes.
11,995 words/52 min read6The Document
You will be able to state in one sentence what a passport proves and what it does not, and defend that sentence against a fraud investigator.
12,000 words/52 min read7Enrolment
You will be able to name the three separate steps hidden inside the phrase "identity proofing" — resolution, validation and verification — and say what…
11,631 words/51 min read8Matching and Deduplication
You will be able to explain to somebody with no technical training why two records that clearly describe one person can fail an exact comparison, and why…
13,109 words/57 min read9The Register
You will be able to say what a register actually is — an authority's written assertion that a stated fact is true — and explain why its value comes from…
12,982 words/56 min read10Anonymity, Pseudonymity and Linkability
You will be able to place any system on a four-rung ladder — identified, pseudonymous, unlinkable, anonymous — and say what would have to change to move…
14,025 words/61 min read11What Goes Wrong When Identity Is Wrong
You will be able to name the four shapes an identity error takes — a record matched to the wrong person, a record that fails to match the right one, one…
12,185 words/53 min read