# guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php (part 2 of 5)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [31], part 2 of 5. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (Text), 2006 (from the career record), https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the start (Hexayurt, 2002), before the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Design of cheap private identity and notarisation, the identity/accounts layer Harappa assumes.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - Small is Profitable (2002): Co-edited Rocky Mountain Institute book on the hidden benefits of right-sized, distributed power; The...
  - Hexayurt infrastructure kit (2003): A household kit around the Hexayurt: water-purifying bottles, dry toilets, efficient stoves and solar lights.
  - CheapID (2006): Design for a sub-$1 identity card, written for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense, that keeps...
  - The Future We Deserve: "Facebook for the Five Billion?" (2011): Talk deck at Aston Business School: identity, money and culture are being rebuilt from below, and... (suggested by machine)
  - Taking a crack at a practical system (introducing the ESCROWNYM) (2012): Blog essay proposing the escrownym: an identity lodged with escrow brokers under a legally binding... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017.
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy.
  - cryptographic applications: Cryptography applied: from 1990s cypherpunk practice to identity cards, Ethereum and Mattereum.
  - cyber and defense: Security work for defense clients, built on one idea: set rivals to check each other. Resilience and Opportunity in...
  - environment / green capitalism: Green economics: from oil efficiency to markets for facts about products.
  - fiction draws on: The work that fed the fiction.
- Ideas whose earliest source in this archive is this one: CheapID / identity for everyone; State in a Box
- Ideas developed here: Hexayurt
- Topics: CheapID, biometrics & identity (85%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: SIAB (25 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); CheapID (60 here; 25 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); SSTR (27 here; 8 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); identity infrastructure (11 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); State In A Box (12 here; 10 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); e-gold (7 here; 12 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); microfinance (5 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated); digital signatures (10 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); citizens (13 here; 63 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); DNS (6 here; 23 sources in all, earliest dated 2006)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): contracts; standards; citizens; supply chains; accounts; human rights; Frontier; digital identity; digital signatures; clean water
- Importance: core-text score 0.81 (1.00 is the top), number 15 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [66] [My State In A Box – Identity Services Architecture paper... (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/66.md): same career work: CheapID
  - [266] ["Blockchain: IoT's trust broker?" talk on the fly by... (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/266.md): same career work: Small is Profitable
- On the same works, just before: [100] [Hexayurt project (2002)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/100.md); [185] [Hexayurt (2002)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/185.md); [201] [Colophon, Danish Environmental Protection Agency (2003)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/201.md)
- On the same works, just after: [108] [User:Vinay Gupta/The Unplugged (2006)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/108.md); [29] [Saving the World on the Cheap (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/29.md); [66] [My State In A Box – Identity Services Architecture paper... (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/66.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php, document, 2006, https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [31], https://guptaoption.com/texts/31.md.

## Passages, part 2 of 5
[passage 13](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) hierarchical control structure would likely never have been adopted. The governance framework is inseparable from the technology. These are whole systems. The stakeholders who must be represented at the governance level of the ISA are: Private Individuals Transaction Coparties (those who sign contracts, like utilities) Infrastructure Providers Banks and other Conventional Financial Service Institutions Microfinance Institutions Global Powers Small Nation States International Policing Bodies Non-Governmental Organizations New Classes of Business which arise from the ISA This diversity of stakeholders is not surprising because we are dealing with an infrastructure system. Imagine how long the list of stakeholders is for the electrical supply system, for example. An easier approach, then, is to divide the stakeholders into four architectural levels: international bodies, governments, companies and individuals. International Bodies The ISA envisages two interlocking international bodies that collaborate with governments and other international bodies to operate the highest level parts of the system. One of these entities is modeled on the standards bodies of VISA and the Internet, and the other is akin to Interpol, or some of the nation-state identity databases that include significant data on non-citizens. The first body is the ISA Standards Board. It manages selections of basic technologies like which 2D bar code standard, what image compression format, which digital signature algorithm and other basic technology selection choices. This body is for technology. The second international body is the International Phenotype Database. The International Phenotype Database maintains an identity record for every single human being enrolled in the system, and possibly eventually for every human being alive. The majority of the work in this paper goes into ensuring that this Leviathan is blind and helpless without the active support of individual nation state governments. One critical detail is that the International Phenotype Database stores only biometric information: no name, no reputation or criminal data or any other fact is stored in this database. It is made to check if a person is in the system already, and if they are, to indicate an ID has already been issued. Other than that, the database is essentially useless. It is like a sea of faces and fingerprints with no context to other added value. Not even names are in the system. The architectural firewall separating the biometric information in the International Phenotype Database from the reputation and identity information stored by the National Government is a key innovation. The National Court System is the only entity in the ISA which has the capability to reunite biometric data with identity data to convict or exonerate a person. Both of these entities are expected to deal politically mainly with Global Powers and other international bodies like the UN. Governments To gain any credence at all, the ISA has to be endorsed and initially operated by at least on Global Power. Given that we are discussing what is essentially commercial infrastructure with an identity foundation, there are probably five or six possible implementors, including of course the USA, the European Union, and some of

[passage 14](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) international bodies like the UN. Governments To gain any credence at all, the ISA has to be endorsed and initially operated by at least on Global Power. Given that we are discussing what is essentially commercial infrastructure with an identity foundation, there are probably five or six possible implementors, including of course the USA, the European Union, and some of the larger trading partnerships. Global Powers do most of the talking about technical standards, and operate the International Phenotype Database at a technical level. They pay most of the bills for that service and reap the most tangible security benefits, much like the Internet and VISA are useful to everybody, but mainly governed and paid for by G20. Other Nation States can operate in one of two ways. Firstly, they can choose to allow their citizens to get an ISA identity if they wish to. Secondly, they can merge their own identity infrastructure with the ISA identity infrastructure, and rely on the International Phenotype Database to issue IDs from. What kind of states would do this? Poor ones. The issues here are similar to the issues of pegging currencies to one another, or the adoption of international currencies like the Euro. Complex arguments are made for all points of view, and the entanglements of sovereignty and convenience make for rich debate. There is no uniformity in these issues across nation states, but rather a landscape of response to perceived opportunity and risk. A critical feature is that the ISA comfortably functions with this degree of adoption diversity. One of the critical features of the ISA scheme is that it accepts states with a sharp division of powers between Courts and Governments and is therefore compatible with the American model, although it does not require it. The majority of the routine contact between the International Phenotype Database and the citizens of a country is mediated by the National Court System. National Governments make the agreements. National Court Systems implement them, and in cases where there is no division between the two, the system operates without disturbing those pre-existing equilibria. Companies There are four classes of company involvement in the ISA. Technology Vendors implement international standards for private companies and governments. Contract Co-parties rely on the identity backbone to reduce their contract risks when dealing with individuals and companies. Financial Services Institutions rely on the identity backbone to satisfy Know Your Customer and other legal requirements while the privacy features of the ISA protect their customers from unwarranted intrusion into their personal lives. Professional Witnesses offer contract signing services, including (in some implementations) access to a secure and reliable electronic voting infrastructure. An individual presents a contract to be signed, and the Professional Witness essentially notarizes the assent to the contract and verifies the person presenting against the individual's biometric ID. These companies absorb misidentification risk by indemnifying Contract Co-parties from losses associated with the Professional Witness making a mistake by mistaking one person as another in a contract signing situation. Note

[passage 15](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) An individual presents a contract to be signed, and the Professional Witness essentially notarizes the assent to the contract and verifies the person presenting against the individual's biometric ID. These companies absorb misidentification risk by indemnifying Contract Co-parties from losses associated with the Professional Witness making a mistake by mistaking one person as another in a contract signing situation. Note carefully that the Professional Witness is verifying the Phenotype of the person signing the contract - their physical body - but has no access to name or other information. Consider the example of a car lease. A person presents a Professional Witness with a car lease they want to sign and a copy of their ID. First the witness matches you to your ID to make sure it is you. Then the witness records your assent to the contract, and signs the lease on your behalf, escrowing identity credentials with the National Court System in the process. Suppose that the lease is unpaid, and upon investigation it is discovered that it was not you who signed the lease but unknown identity fraudster who defeated the Professional Witness systems with the help of a member of their staff. The Professional Witness is liable for all associated costs to you, to the car lease company, and any additional injured parties because they made a professional error. Professional Witnesses must bear the full burden of proof in all cases. It is up to them to prove that the person they say signed a document actually signed it, and they are responsible for presenting incontrovertible evidence to this effect. Professional Witnesses have a peculiar exposure to risk: they are liable for the costs of a crime (identity theft) and are also witnesses to the fact a crime has been committed. Only a strong judicial system can keep them honest. Otherwise, Professional Witnesses will rapidly become corrupt, unreliable, and the systems will fail because of the misalignment of their incentives and the whole system requirements. They will start to present shoddy evidence, and the system will collapse. In this scheme, the needs of the Professional Witnesses for reliable identification are the primary drivers for biometric security standards because they are the ones with the primary exposure to pervasive misidentification risk. By collecting all of the misidentification risk in the system in a single location in the architecture, we create the financial incentives to hire engineers to keep the systems secure. Individuals Individuals come into contact with the ISA in one of three contexts: voluntary, default and compulsory use of the system. Voluntary use is where the ISA services are offered perhaps as an aid to doing international business, or in a context like getting a permit for entry to a foreign country. An oppressive system will not get used as people would rather avoid the activity than submit to intrusive identification. Default use has more implications. Perhaps one needs an ISA-type identity to get a passport, or the ISA-type identity is your passport. Perhaps it

[passage 16](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) doing international business, or in a context like getting a permit for entry to a foreign country. An oppressive system will not get used as people would rather avoid the activity than submit to intrusive identification. Default use has more implications. Perhaps one needs an ISA-type identity to get a passport, or the ISA-type identity is your passport. Perhaps it is required for opening a bank account, or for driving. Sufficiently motivated and desperate people can avoid the net but almost nobody will choose to do so. An oppressive system could well be used even by people who hate it. Compulsory use is quite simple. You have an ISA-type ID or you go to jail. The only reason that I can write this paper is because I believe that the ISA scheme proposed is the least bad of the available options for managing biometrics. I believe that, in the long run, security in the 21st century is going to critically revolve around actually knowing who people are and that, in fact, we can no longer afford to have nameless, faceless people shuffling around the world as human traffickers move them across borders, or as international terrorists move around the world as if the nation state did not exist. Hence the goal is to create a system which, even if it becomes compulsory in a few generations time, is not oppressive. We work not for today, but for our descendants in seven generations or more. This is due prudence. Financial instruments like cheques have been in circulation far longer than that. Concepts like interest on loans go back even further. Design decisions made casually by engineers working on the internet protocol will likely affect all digital systems build from now until the end of foreseeable human culture, if only through enshrining architectural distinctions embedded in the OSI models through generation after generation of culture and language. If this seems unrealistic, consider the distinction between "organic" and "inorganic" chemistry is a historical accident caused by the supposed impossibility of converting inanimate materials into any compound found in organic life. That barrier was crossed nearly two centuries ago by the synthesis of urea, but the divide created around it remains to this very day in university departments, language, terminology, technology and culture among chemists. We have to be sure that any system we are architecting with intentions of global effect is something that the future can live with because success is always an option. But success is no proof of quality, only of immediate fit and timing. We must strive for excellence, particularly in the political aspects of this system, if the system is adopted some of the abstractions it is built on may last hundreds of years. In short, whatever model of the Rights of Individuals we choose to enshrine in these systems may become the laws we, or our descendants, must live under. The Exercise of Individual Rights through the ISA Where do we find a template for thinking about the

[passage 17](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) is adopted some of the abstractions it is built on may last hundreds of years. In short, whatever model of the Rights of Individuals we choose to enshrine in these systems may become the laws we, or our descendants, must live under. The Exercise of Individual Rights through the ISA Where do we find a template for thinking about the Rights of Individuals in the context of designing biometric infrastructure? Why, back to the Framers and the historical thinkers on Liberty, of course. It is necessary when designing technologies with such massive political implications (if they succeed) to consider the political levels explicitly at every major turning point to make sure that we have not designed a system for freedom, and accidentally engineered one for compliance. The watch word must be "would you be comfortable with your own children and grandchildren living under a system of the kind we are working on?" If the answer is "no" the system must be improved or abandoned, and certainly you cannot ethically support it. I would suggest that the ISA must implement technological versions of three fundamental rights. They are The Right to Privacy � The system should protect an individual from being identified except by legally appropriate powers. This right has to be extended using public key cryptography and other techniques to counterbalance the extensions in surveillance possible through biometrics, databases and network monitoring. The Right to Identity � This is analogous to the various discussions of rights to a citizenship without necessarily requiring a nation state implementation. For instance, perhaps an NGO could be authorized to issue ISA identities in instances involving stateless individuals, giving them an identity without a citizenship. The Right to Anonymous Free Speech � A combination of the right to privacy and the right to free speech. One of the natural consequences of the ISA is the capability to generate single sign on accounts for use on the Internet. Additional architectural levels are required to protect people's right to speak anonymously, while also preserving the recoverability of hard identity information when addressing hard cases like child pornography and international terrorism. If we do not build in these protective architectural levels from the start, states which opt for the compulsory approach to adoption will face human rights issues from the start. It's important to understand that these rights are not granted by the system, but recognized (in the grand fashion) as being inherent within the individual. Although governments may choose to implement systems compatible with the ISA standards and protocols in such a way that their citizens are deprived of these rights, it would behoove free governments to be prepared to use considerably political leverage to ensure that such an approach is at least penalized, and preferably outlawed. Architectural Location of Rights In the ISA system, rights are located in at least five locations. Firstly, the are present in the documents which frame the system including this document. Secondly, they exist in the technological substrate of the system,

[passage 18](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) be prepared to use considerably political leverage to ensure that such an approach is at least penalized, and preferably outlawed. Architectural Location of Rights In the ISA system, rights are located in at least five locations. Firstly, the are present in the documents which frame the system including this document. Secondly, they exist in the technological substrate of the system, particularly how information about a person is scattered across architectural levels to protect people from the system as a whole (hopefully.) Thirdly, the emphasis on the participation of the court system ensures some protections in at least some nations. Fourthly the ability for third parties to absorb risk and issue cryptographically secure identities allows people to veil the identity of another person if they are willing to take responsibility for doing so. This is a key principle. Finally, the fact that this system is being developed in an American context and from a theoretical base close to fundamental American political theory increases the odds of conscientious implementation at every level, guaranteeing a fifth level of protection. Getting biometric digital identity wrong ushers in some extremely unpleasant possibilities, including global totalitarian control of people from morning to evening through a mix of ubiquitous computation and radio frequency identification (RFID.) For this reason alone this work exists: to bar the gateway to biometric totalitarianism by presenting a better option in the public domain. A Final Word on Rights At a realpolitik level, getting a healthy and private global identity infrastructure in place is going to require something approximating a miracle. Fighting non-state actors of various kinds is hard without the ability to definitively identify and locate persons but the risk of enabling and empowering totalitarian regimes is so great that getting the necessary levels of international cooperation in the places where it counts (the Gap) is nearly impossible. We need new approaches based on the most advanced technology available, be it biometrics or our fundamental politics. System Design In a whole systems thinking context, the performance of the system as a whole is ensured by designing not just the components of the systems, but by carefully working to understand their interactions. In this sense, object oriented programming and database architecture are close relatives of whole systems thinking. Fortunately the individual components of the SIAB-ISA are relatively simple to describe, although some subsystems contain considerable technological complexity. The deliverable is an Identity Services Architecture which supports an identity standard called CheapID. CheapID is designed to be the cheapest and most robust possible personal identity card. We will briefly examine three core technologies, then move on to detail the system as a whole, working towards the CheapID towards the end of the paper. Biometrics Briefly, we assume four or five levels of biometric identification of a human being, ranging from a simple picture like a passport photograph through to a complete set of biometrics perhaps even including a DNA sample. The basic CheapID Identity Card envisaged later on contains a digitally signed picture of

[passage 19](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) towards the CheapID towards the end of the paper. Biometrics Briefly, we assume four or five levels of biometric identification of a human being, ranging from a simple picture like a passport photograph through to a complete set of biometrics perhaps even including a DNA sample. The basic CheapID Identity Card envisaged later on contains a digitally signed picture of the person. Optional higher security credentials would include increasingly large amounts of identifying biometric information, often encrypted so that it could only be read by authorized parties. I believe it is important that system enrollment uses a full set of biometrics, in some implementations even including DNA, because the consequences of having a single individual with two or more globally recognized ISA identities are extremely serious. The strong protections we generate for privacy and free speech rest on our ability to absolutely pin down individuals who abuse these protections by, for instance, committing acts of terrorism. A person with two identities can do something horrible under one identity, then slip away under another. The system must be robust enough to compete in the policy marketplace and displace other candidate systems with less protection for human rights. 2D Bar Codes with Digital Signatures 2D bar codes can store digital information in surprisingly large quantities, up to around 3Mb on an 8.5" x 11" or A4 sheet of paper. Writing such bar codes is simple and economical: laser or ink-jet printers, label printers and card printers are all reasonably cheap. Reading back data from these bar codes can be done in one of three ways. The simplest, cheapest and slowest is the flatbed scanner as found in any office. Cheap models are well under $50. Resolution is excellent (well above 300 DPI) and bar codes read this way could likely be at close to full theoretical data density. Of course this currently requires a computer to be present at the station. Next there are commercial 2D barcode readers. Most of these systems are designed for relatively small data sets � a few hundred to a few thousand bytes at most. Many of these systems are designed for extremely high speed operation which leads to a different set of design criteria than are ideal high data density. However, there are many vendors and a good deal of variety in available commercial readers. Finally there is the humble camera phone or computer-connected camera. This is the likely workhorse of common CheapID transactions. The best of the current generations of camera phones are capable of capturing enough data from their cameras, and have sufficient processing power to get just under 600 bytes back from a single image using standard black and white bar codes. Non-standard color systems may triple that data density. The limitations are largely optical. Many camera phones do not have a "macro" capability for the necessary detailed close ups of the ID card, or have a focal length of around one meter. As a result an identity document, even on Letter sized

[passage 20](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) single image using standard black and white bar codes. Non-standard color systems may triple that data density. The limitations are largely optical. Many camera phones do not have a "macro" capability for the necessary detailed close ups of the ID card, or have a focal length of around one meter. As a result an identity document, even on Letter sized paper, fills only a small part of their field of view and so very few pixels are translated into data. However, given a camera phone that has a good close up camera mode it may be possible to extract significantly more information from CheapID Identity Cards. One of the critical distinctions between CheapID and simpler approaches to identity is that in CheapID, the identity card contains a variety of fields, each of which may be signed and optionally encrypted by a different party, all within the broad standard of the ISA. The complexity of the international agreements and so on is reflected all the way down into the identity documents and the legal process that produces them. Dependence on network infrastructure and centralized identity databases is greatly reduced because certifications of facts like "of drinking age" or "has driving license" are stored encrypted on the card rather than pulled in over the network. The technology naturally supports this outcome, unlike approaches like RFID-based identity documents that more or less require constant central database access to turn the ID number on the RFID tag into meaningful information about the person in front of you. In the long run, it may be that the 2D barcode aspect of the CheapID system is temporary. Better local data exchange mechanisms are certainly being worked on, although perhaps not less expensive ones. However, the conceptual and legal framework embedded in each card may turn out to be endure through many successive implementations. Court Escrow The Identity Services Architecture revolves around Court-like entities that manage private keys for encrypting and decrypting identity information under legal (or other) authority. Security in the system comes from the completeness of the records in the International Phenotype Database. Privacy comes from the architectural separation of that biometric data and the identity and reputation data held by nation states. Although a court cannot request the release of biometric identity records for its own use, it can submit biometric evidence to the International Phenotype Database and request a search. Such a search can pair evidence with an identity record, but the court cannot simply pull records from the International Phenotype Database. It can search and get identity information back in results, but not request biometric information directly. Only the court can take an encrypted CheapID Identity Card, and recover fields like the individual's name or their government-issued identity number, if one exists. These fields are private even from police in most cases. This allows these cards to be used for many purposes that a less private identity card could not be used for. The common practice of matching a face to an

[passage 21](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) an encrypted CheapID Identity Card, and recover fields like the individual's name or their government-issued identity number, if one exists. These fields are private even from police in most cases. This allows these cards to be used for many purposes that a less private identity card could not be used for. The common practice of matching a face to an identity card, but not being able to recover any additional information about the individual without a court order, is the key novel transaction in our system. A Brief Recap Before we wade into the guts of the system design in detail, let us briefly recap. The goal is to produce an Identity Services Architecture which provides a nation state level identity backbone that has some interesting new properties, and that is broadly speaking affordable. One of these properties is being able to uniquely identify individuals. The goal beyond that goal is to re-implement the fundamental processes of the nation state on a modern technological base, with the objective of reducing the overhead of running a state by 90% and steering the way that other states adopt information technology in their own operations by providing a worked example in an SSTR context. We propose that by doing so we can cut "canyons" through the cost landscape in the areas where useful and rights-protecting technologies lie by paying the costs of R&D and early adoption, and thereby steer other nations away from implementing biometric totalitarianism, which we regard as an ever-present threat. Because we are consciously attempting to re-engineer the processes of the nation state, the political considerations are not secondary to the system but integral to it at every level. Biometrics are not morally neutral technology. Correctly applied cryptography can counterbalance most of the negative effects of biometrics while preserving their most useful properties. At the heart of this system is a cryptographic schema for implementing an international, cross-jurisdictional legal process for managing personal information securely, with appropriate levels of individual protection, while recognizing that many states afford their populations less freedoms (or freedoms of a different type) than the American system. We must honor local diversity in order to create an internationally interoperable system. Finally, there is one technological gimmick which sits at the heart of the system: printing everything needed to identify a person on a digitally signed 2D barcode and reading it back with a camera phone. That's a technology with a relatively short life-span. There are twenty years at most before it is replaced with something better. The durable component of the system is the scheme for managing personal information, not the "hack" for getting it to be cheap in the here-and-now. This gets pretty involved, so try to put yourself in the political position of each entity in the process. My assertion is that the system works well for every constituent entity in the system and therefore is viable, once established. I may be wrong, but this is the reason I believe that this system is

[passage 22](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) be cheap in the here-and-now. This gets pretty involved, so try to put yourself in the political position of each entity in the process. My assertion is that the system works well for every constituent entity in the system and therefore is viable, once established. I may be wrong, but this is the reason I believe that this system is workable while most other proposed schemes are not. A system without losers can usually out-compete a system with winners and losers. The International Phenotype Database The International Phenotype Database is the only entity in the ISA that has access to biometric information in bulk. No other entity � not national court systems, not governments, not private companies, not individuals � is empowered by the ISA scheme to hold personal biometric information. This entity is a singular planetary repository for biometric data. As such it is about the most dangerous entity on the planet from a civil liberties perspective, and is expected to be under constant political pressure from totalitarian forces. Remember that the keystone of the ISA is that this database does not contain names, biographical or reputation data about persons. The only tie between the biometric data in the phenotype database and the biography of the individual in question is an encrypted unique identifier operated by the National Court System of that individual. And even that court does not have the right to retrieve individual biometric records, only to search the database to bind pre-existing biometric information relevant to an investigation to an individual. If this rule is broken, the system collapses into totalitarianism very easily. To understand this risk, examine minor areas where we see just how much power lobbying groups can have over international policy. Consider the so-called "copyright lobby" and how their desire to maintain the current status quo on intellectual property works its way into international treaties under the auspices of groups like the World Trade Organization. The copyright lobby is fighting for the past and is willing to sacrifice the future to get there, and they are succeeding in several key areas, although the measures being taken are perhaps becoming increasingly repressive in the manner of entities falling out of history. Digital Rights Management technology threatened to restrict the freedom of speech of digital technology users in the name of protecting business models that were designed around the same time the printing press. How much more serious is the threat from the combined might of the national security groups of many nations? The threat to the integrity of the International Phenotype Database is pressure from abusive governments, corrupt secret services, international mafias and every other power-grabbing totalitarian agenda on the face of the earth. Everybody who wants control, everybody who wants to fight the future, everybody who is (rightly) scared of biometric technology in the hands of totalitarian regimes collects in one place and fights for control, some pulling for commercial interests, looser privacy standards, the others fighting for individual rights. This is the

[passage 23](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) other power-grabbing totalitarian agenda on the face of the earth. Everybody who wants control, everybody who wants to fight the future, everybody who is (rightly) scared of biometric technology in the hands of totalitarian regimes collects in one place and fights for control, some pulling for commercial interests, looser privacy standards, the others fighting for individual rights. This is the obstacle to creating the International Phenotype Database. To solve this problem we must rely on the formation of a trans-ideological consensus on identity management. When the engineering and policy are sufficiently advanced, it is possible for all sides to agree that the proposed solution is right. In such cases the proposed solution is hardly ever understood as having been a negotiable policy decision, but is more usually simply seen as being "how the world works." Good examples of this are: paper currency, numerical telephone numbers, energy efficiency. Nothing which is not extremely flexible and sophisticated will get past this gauntlet of public opinion and private fear: it is the primary roadblock to overhauling the global identity services systems, and applies to all candidate systems. Maybe SIAB-ISA is good enough. Probably not, though. It may have insufficient assurances of privacy. Without a mandate from a group of rights-respecting military powers with the capability to defend the International Phenotype Database from corruption and coercion the scheme is simply inoperable. Institutions with little respect for fundamental human rights cannot operate a system like this, and precious few of the governments of the world take human rights seriously at the level required to make this scheme operable. But there is one very large encouragement for such a combined effort to institute the system described. To get the greater security which a global biometric database gives, you must give the greater liberty which comes from that database being well managed by institutions that the global population can trust with their very lives, and those of their children for untold future generations. With sufficiently refined engineering, Security and Liberty are not enemies. By recognizing the individual right to privacy, a deal can be struck between governments and their respective people that will result in a way to adopt biometric technology in a beneficial way. One way of thinking about this is to say that Security + Privacy = Liberty. The repository of that rights-based idealism is the International Phenotype Database. Jurisdiction The International Phenotype Database is an international body that exists initially by fiat. In order for the system to be trusted it is operated by an international technical coalition including a reasonable number of representatives from nations who do not trust or like each other. The balance of power at the heart of the system is that each nation state group cooperating to manage the system is doing so partially to protect its own citizens form unwarranted surveillance and monitoring from the security forces of the other groups present. Because any country can run searches against the database on an equal footing, there is a

[passage 24](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) The balance of power at the heart of the system is that each nation state group cooperating to manage the system is doing so partially to protect its own citizens form unwarranted surveillance and monitoring from the security forces of the other groups present. Because any country can run searches against the database on an equal footing, there is a strong incentive for every country to restrict the database to its due bounds, simply to protect the privacy of their own citizens. To attain this kind of balance of powers, the system must be simple, transparent and auditable, and groups like Amnesty International should be able to review or even help operate the system. The parallel with VISA is that banks are competitors who had to learn to cooperate to get an international payment system working. The mutual tension around protecting the biometric privacy of your citizens from The Bad Guys Over There (i.e. national rivals) applies to all sides equally, and maintains the integrity of the system. There is no parallel with the Internet because the Internet has no fundamental competitions at its heart. Peering issues between backbone providers are the closest analogs, and are a poor fit. The treaties under which the International Phenotype Database is created must explicitly recognize the rule of law in the nations who are working with the system. The International Phenotype Database can be seen as an organization convened by the court systems of various nation states working together. Purpose The International Phenotype Database has one basic purpose: when shown a set of biometric information it can search through the biometric data of every human enrolled, and possibly every human on the planet in later years, and return a set of matching records. However, these "matching records" consider of only two fields: a National Government identifier ("is an American") and a block of data encrypted encrypted by that government and given to the International Phenotype Database when this person was enrolled in the system. The International Phenotype Database is blind. It can see the "body"� a person's biometrics � but not their identity, not their reputation, nothing except a citizenship and a block of data it cannot read. Because of other features in the ISA, it is likely that this search will be performed initiated once per lifetime for the average individual - on enrollment, and never again, although searches related to criminal cases may be common. A search can only be initiated upon request of a National Court System. Police forces, for example, have no direct access to the system and neither do governments. Furthermore there is no use case which results in the return of biometric data to a National Government from the International Phenotype Database. It is a "roach motel" for biometric data as far as governments are concerned, as it must be. An individual can request that the International Phenotype Database releases their biometric records to them. Common Operations Biometric Enrollment Process This is the process that stores the

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/31-3.md (part 3 of 5).
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