Mee Blog

While working on Mee digital wallet use cases (e.g. log in with wallet using SIOPv2, issuance of VC credentials, etc.) we encountered a familiar challenge: the RP needs to know about the person’s providers (e.g. OpenIDConnect provider, wallet provider, SIOPv2 provider, age verification provider, etc.) so it can display appropriate buttons/choices.

To solve this, we came up with a lightweight, general-purpose spec that can be used by any RP to learn about, adapt to, and take advantage of many kinds of providers that a person might have. It is at https://providerdiscovery.org.

We’d love to get feedback and see if this is something that others can use. Send us an email at contact@mee.foundation.

Inspired by the Linux Foundation’s announcement about the OpenWallet Foundation, I drew a picture of how smartwallet relates to a digital wallet and an authenticator from a functionality perspective.

The disappearing login is the latest sign of Facebook’s diminishing influence on the internet after more than a decade of spectacular growth.” writes Jonathan Vanian from CNBC

The Mee Project nonprofit is working on a surveillance-free alternative that involves the installation of a the Mee smartwallet (formerly _identity agent_) on the user’s device. We’ll be demoing it at IIW 35

In A Human Rights Approach to Personal Information Technology Adrian Gropper makes two interrelated points. The first is that we should build personal information infrastructure based on the human right to privacy. No argument there. But it’s his second point, about an architectural principle that must be adhered to in order to respect human rights, that I’d like to highlight.

The CCPA says “A consumer shall have the right, at any time, to direct a business that sells personal information about the consumer to third parties not to sell the consumer’s personal information…”.

Sounds good, but to get them to stop selling your data you have to fill in 6 fields, prove you’re not a robot, and click submit. And then repeat for the 200 digital services you use. Not going to happen. Just like you don’t read the 200 privacy notices.

This video shows how human information is managed on the internet and how this results in a lack of trust, independence, privacy, and power.

A few hundred years later, this truth that Locke argued was “self-evident” does not hold in the digital realm. This is partly because data can’t really be “owned” like other kinds of property. But the main reason we don’t have a sense of “owning” our online selves is that it seems like “everybody has our data … except us!“

Much of our human information (e.g., preferences, interests, affiliations, friends, medical records, location data) is collected by corporations through online surveillance² or simply expropriation. It is held, bought, sold, and leveraged for the corporation’s economic advantage, not ours. We are disempowered; “essential but worthless.”³ ⁴