EP37 | The Off Switch You Don't Control

Yeah, thank you, Richard.

Morning, everyone.

Well, it is morning, but good afternoon or good evening, I guess, depending on when you're listening to this.

So, yes, I'm back to my favorite source ever, Microsoft Research.

I feel like I was neglecting them over the last few pods, so went digging and found a couple of interesting things.

And they're just fairly cool, so I'm not going to go any deep, sort of introspective or, you know, find the hidden meaning here conversations.

None of that today.

Very, very straightforward.

And as you said, Richard, the first one is...

Yeah, you're right.

Is it Viga? Viga.

Must be Viga, mustn't it? But anyway.

And this is something that I thought was super interesting.

And even my wife, I mentioned it to my wife this morning.

We don't often talk about the pod a lot, actually, but we were sat outside.

In the cool air, in the heat wave that we have here in the UK, supping a tea and a coffee, respectively.

And she thought, actually, she saw a lot of value in this, so I'm glad I picked it.

And I guess, you know, the basic problem is...

It's fairly straightforward, isn't it? So a lot of digital identity flows ask for, dare I say, much more information than they actually need.

So if a service wants to know whether I'm over 18, it's fairly obvious from my face, but for the younger generation, obviously a bit more challenging.

But that flow doesn't really need my full driving license or my full passport.

You know, if a service wants to know whether you hold a particular professional status, for example, it doesn't need the full certificate, the full credentials, right? It needs, what we need is a fact to be proven, right? And I think the distinction matters because you know, identity data.

I've lost track of how many times I've given an image of my driving license, an image of my passport, and then it's out there, right? And it is high-risk data, and we all implicitly, or we have to implicitly trust it's being managed in the right way, because if you don't, you can't get access to the

service, and we want access to the service.

But, you know, once you hand over that sort of document, like I say, you're, you're relying on people to manage that appropriately.