Synchronic Web Digital Identity: Speculations on the Art of the Possible

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of the Synchronic Web infrastructure for establishing a versatile and cryptographically secure digital identity system to enhance trust in the digital infosphere.

Contribution

It introduces a novel conceptual framework for digital identity based on continuous states within a digital space, extending existing infrastructure towards public-facing applications.

Findings

Development of the Synchronic Web infrastructure for cryptographic provenance

Application of the infrastructure to multiple mission-specific domains

Proposal of a new philosophical approach to digital identity

Abstract

As search, social media, and artificial intelligence continue to reshape collective knowledge, the preservation of trust on the public infosphere has become a defining challenge of our time. Given the breadth and versatility of adversarial threats, the best--and perhaps only--defense is an equally broad and versatile infrastructure for digital identity. This document discusses the opportunities and implications of building such an infrastructure from the perspective of a national laboratory. The technical foundation for this discussion is the emergence of the Synchronic Web, a Sandia-developed infrastructure for asserting cryptographic provenance at Internet scale. As of the writing of this document, there is ongoing work to develop the underlying technology and apply it to multiple mission-specific domains within Sandia. The primary objective of this document to extend the body of existing work toward the more public-facing domain of digital identity. Our approach depends on a non-standard, but philosophically defensible notion of identity: digital identity is an unbroken sequence of states in a well-defined digital space. From this foundation, we abstractly describe the infrastructural foundations and applied configurations that we expect to underpin future notions of digital identity.