# guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php (part 3 of 5)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [31], part 3 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 3 of 5
[passage 25](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) 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 individual's data. An individual presents at a CheapID Issuing Station and requests an ID be issued. The International Phenotype Database receives a request to add a new person to the database. If the request is from an authorized Issuing Station then a set of biometric information is send to the International Phenotype Database to process. The data is compared to all of the biometric records in the International Phenotype Database. If there are matches on the personal data sent in, one of three things happens. A request for additional information is returned, and more biometric information is sent in until there are no more matches. Typically this would consist of a DNA sample being processed to disambiguate similar fingerprints. A list of possible matches is generated, and a complex legal process of ruling out each possible match without undue invasions of privacy is begun � this is a serious process and to be avoided where possible. The case of identical twins with closely matched fingerprints would be about the only case where I can imagine this being necessary, but biology always surprises us. A pre-existing identity record is discovered for the person who is currently being enrolled, and a report is returned that will allow them to get their original ID reissued. Further investigation may also be required. Once it is settled that this person is to be enrolled with the set of biometrics submitted, the International Phenotype Database encrypts an identifier for this individual using the International Phenotype Database's public key, then re-encrypts this identifier using the public key of the relevant National Court System and returns this document, the Statement of Biometric Enrollment, to the Issuing Station to be presented to the enrollee. This is not yet an identity document, it is simply a statement of fact: this individual's data has been stored. Note that it contains no personal information whatsoever. It is my firm conviction that the International Phenotype Database is going to be more-or-less inoperable without using DNA fingerprinting for everybody. However, I am not an expert in biometrics, and it may be that an adequate level of uniqueness can be obtained from, say, 10 fingerprints plus both irises. But if DNA is not commonly stored a wide range of questions cannot be answered using the SIAB-ISA and inevitably parallel, less secure, less useful systems will spring up to handle DNA-based identity issue, resulting in a fragmentation of biometric security applications, a reduced global value, and competition. One system should exist, and it should be extremely heavily oriented towards individual liberty. Therefore, to maintain the unitary nature of the system, it must deal with DNA either

[passage 26](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) SIAB-ISA and inevitably parallel, less secure, less useful systems will spring up to handle DNA-based identity issue, resulting in a fragmentation of biometric security applications, a reduced global value, and competition. One system should exist, and it should be extremely heavily oriented towards individual liberty. Therefore, to maintain the unitary nature of the system, it must deal with DNA either now, or as the technology for handling DNA biometrics improves in future. Note that we are not assuming a single standardization for biometric records. There are too many instances where a person's morphology grossly changes (accidents, particularly burns) and new oddities of human genetic makeup are constantly discovered, including chimeras, who are single individuals with two sets of DNA, related to each other as if one part of their body was the sibling of another. We cannot assume standardization. Rather we need the records in the SIAB-ISA to allow a Professional Witness or other individual to securely verify that the person in front of them is the person on the ID card presented. DNA is the most unique and standard biometric data currently known, and logical pressure towards using DNA to identify people is likely to be inexorable as genetic technology improves and brings the cost of analysis down. Better to design a system to be secure enough to handle DNA properly from the very start. Legal Enrollment Process This process binds the bare biometric data in the International Phenotype Database to an individual's national identity number, and is the next step before a CheapID Identity Card can be issued. An individual takes their Statement of Biometric Enrollment to their National Court System and presents it, with appropriate identity credentials proving who they are (in the nation state records) to the Court's satisfaction. The Court then prepares an Identity Packet which is a unique identifier for this individual at a National Government level, similar to a Social Security Number as it is commonly used. This Identity Packet is encrypted using whatever cyphers are deemed appropriate by the National Government and then re-encrypted with the Court's public key. This document, plus the Statement of Biometric Enrollment is submitted to the International Phenotype Database. The International Phenotype Database then adds this Identity Packet to the information it is storing about this individual. This completes the enrollment process but no ID has yet been issued. Note the open question of how the Statement of Biometric Enrollment is tied to the individual, given that it has no biometric data visible. Ideally this entire process is done in a secure facility where there is no doubt about who is who during the issue process: the person remains in front of the issuing personnel for the entire process. However, a more liberal setting is possible if the Statement of Biometric Enrollment is somehow tightly tied to the individual during the issue process, perhaps by placing temporary biometric information on it. The primary operation of the International Phenotype Database is to run searches, and when it finds

[passage 27](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) person remains in front of the issuing personnel for the entire process. However, a more liberal setting is possible if the Statement of Biometric Enrollment is somehow tightly tied to the individual during the issue process, perhaps by placing temporary biometric information on it. The primary operation of the International Phenotype Database is to run searches, and when it finds a match, to take the stored Identity Packet that it acquired in this transaction, salt it (adding noise to the encrypted block to prevent message matching), re-encrypt it with the National Court key, and send it back to the National Court System of the individual located in the database along with whatever additional information pertains to the identity request, such as the contact information for the National Court System making the search request. The National Court System of the citizen involved is then responsible for liaisons with the court making the request. This will be covered in more detail below, but note that the access of the International Phenotype Database to information about the person is extremely limited: it knows nothing about them other than the shape of their eyeballs or fingers. Likewise, has the National Court System seen any biometric information? No, nothing has been divulged to any court, other than the primary evidence used to run the search. So if - and it is if - the Issuing Stations do not improperly retain a person's biometric data then a very private system has been created. Nobody single party has the ability to tie a person to their biometric profile, or retrieve their biometric profile from their name or other personal information like their Social Security Number. Can the same be said of any other proposed scheme? Identity Issue Process Finally we issue the actual CheapID Identity Card to the person who made the initial request. An individual asks the National Court to issue them a CheapID Identity Card. Note the praxis here � the court or government does not issue an ID, an individual requests one. This is the Voluntary or Default enrollment model. In the Compulsory model, the agency is reversed, and the court or government initiates. The court submits the Certificate of Biometric Enrollment to the International Phenotype Database, stating that the individual wants an ID issued. Again, note the flow � the National Court System is attesting that the individual in question wants something done. The International Phenotype Database keeps a copy of this digitally signed request from the court, and takes the biometric information which the court has requested, encrypts it with key provided with the request, and returns it to the court. This is a subtle and important point. In the simplest implementation of this system, the National Court System uses its own key for this request, and therefore is in a position to illicitly copy the biometric information passing through its hands during this process. A more sophisticated cryptographic protocol removes that temptation, but at the cost of a much more involved

[passage 28](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) is a subtle and important point. In the simplest implementation of this system, the National Court System uses its own key for this request, and therefore is in a position to illicitly copy the biometric information passing through its hands during this process. A more sophisticated cryptographic protocol removes that temptation, but at the cost of a much more involved process that may be vulnerable to cryptographic developments which break the RSA cryptosystem, as quantum computing is likely to. The National Court System then takes this information, decrypts it, and matches it to the individual making the request. If there is a mismatch, we have malfeasance. There is also the possibility of collusion between the International Phenotype Database and this individual, to return false information. How do we get around this? Remember that the biometric information is initially collected by an Issuing Station which signs the data which is initially passed to the International Phenotype Database. These signatures are passed transparently through to the court to verify. This adds one additional party to the list of those who have to collude to commit identity fraud. However, this set of exchanges needs extremely tight cryptographic analysis to get the precise set of transactions refined to an optimal balance between security and privacy. I believe that a system reliant only on digital signatures (as this outline does) is actually suboptimal and, in fact, if the exchanges are reworked using a cryptographic blinding approach (Chaum's approach, perhaps?) something significantly better emerges. This remains a task for the future. It is discussed in more detail in a subsequent section of this paper. If all is well, and the individual matches the data returned from the International Phenotype Database the court proceeds to take a subset of the biometric information returned from the International Phenotype Database and create a set of CheapID Identity Cards. Each card contains the following information: Biometrics on the individual who owns the card. For typical purposes, this is simply a high quality facial image like those found on passports and perhaps one fingerprint. The fingerprint may be encrypted with a key, perhaps the court key or a special security forces / police key. The fingerprint and other data may also be stored in a non-recoverable form that allows matching against a presented finger, but not retrieval of the fingerprint. Secure "biometric hash" algorithms do exist and are an area of ongoing research. (Nalini Ratha of IBM is one researcher in this area.) An court key encrypted unique identifier for the individual. Note that all data on the card is stored in a 2D bar code. The card itself looks like a mass of black and white squares. Also every field on the card is salted, so bitwise comparison between cards is impossible. Also note there is no name or other identifier on the card, other than the salted unique identifier placed there by the court. Some variations of the card may also allow areas of the card to be removed

[passage 29](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) a mass of black and white squares. Also every field on the card is salted, so bitwise comparison between cards is impossible. Also note there is no name or other identifier on the card, other than the salted unique identifier placed there by the court. Some variations of the card may also allow areas of the card to be removed (tear off areas) to remove some information before the card is used. We will cover the exact construction of the card later on. Something like a hundred of these cards are prepared and printed. Think of them as secure business cards. There should be no picture on the card, although there may be some additional elements to help people tell one person's cards from another (a recognizable logo or personal mark, perhaps, but nothing that can be used as an identifier for the person.) This is because people are lazy. If you print a picture of the person on the card, people will inspect the image rather than showing the card to a machine which can verify the digital signatures. The court now deletes all of the biometric information that passed through its hands, leaving what is on your ID cards as the only biometric information existing outside of the International Phenotype Database. Without this step, we have an Orwellian 1984 database scenario. There are a variety of work-arounds which all greatly complicate the card issue process by splitting the process across yet more actors, or using more sophisticated cryptograph. But if you cannot trust the National Court System to do its job effectively in protecting individual liberties, then the fact it has access to biometric data is a minor issue compared to the existing issues in the nation state. A technical work-around for an untrustworthy court is a classic example of solving a problem at the wrong architectural level. We should, of course, be belt and braces about this: secure protocols, and trustworthy courts. Now this is an awful song and dance for a process that, in a biometric totalitarianism, can be reduced to a few simple steps: take their DNA and digitally sign it. Take a picture, digitally sign that. Stick it on one single card and shoot people if they lose their card. All of this vouching by the National Court System and shuffling around encrypted bits so people cannot peek is what separates this instantiation of biometrics from a totalitarian one. Human rights and especially democracy involves an enormous amount of paper shuffling with ideas about privacy and rights wired into every step, and that is what ensures that the will of the people is at least notionally expressed through their government, and that they have at least basic safety and security. So let's zoom back for a moment and consider this again. What is actually being done? Biometrics are collected. They're sent to a repository. They are then used to make an ID card. The song and dance with the courts and diffusing the process

[passage 30](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) least notionally expressed through their government, and that they have at least basic safety and security. So let's zoom back for a moment and consider this again. What is actually being done? Biometrics are collected. They're sent to a repository. They are then used to make an ID card. The song and dance with the courts and diffusing the process across both jurisdictional and architectural levels is where the civil liberties are put into the process. That song and dance with the courts and jurisdictions is your rights and mine in this model system. Most rights-respecting processes involve a lot of legal song and dance. Part of the reason we are having such a lot of trouble with privacy and identity theft right now is that the Social Security Number has become a de facto unique identifier that a person has no control over and furthermore that identifier has no cryptographic features to restore a measure of privacy. There is a profound absence of legal song and dance around use of the Social Security Numbers. As a result this current generation of American identity infrastructure is a personal liability in the financial domain through identity theft, and a liability to American democracy through various kinds of attempts to pervert democracy by attacking the identity infrastructure and having both additional votes cast, and votes denied, based on false identity information anchored by the insecure Social Security Number infrastructure. I do not believe, at this point, that a simpler system than the one I am outlining here can work and not be tip the balance towards totalitarian use of biometrics. It has many stages as an internet-age implementation of the principle "checks and balances." A Note On Practical Implementations In an SSTR context this entire ID issue process is expected to be compressed down to a processing center. Individuals come in at one end, have their biometrics taken, run against the big database in real time, and then have their CheapID Identity Cards printed on the spot. The legal formalities are exactly that: they are the superstructure on which the system is built. They do not get carried out by a formal court setting, but are discharged with paperwork performed under the notional auspices of the National Court System. In day-to-day SSTR operations, the majority of these legal processes may in fact be carried out as function calls between computer systems. As normality is restored and the SSTR phase closes, the National Court System explicitly takes over the entire process and, as problems occur, every step in the process has a valid legal foundation and issues can be resolved through the normalized rule of law which is one of the crucial goal states of SSTR. If biometrics are used in a field expedient fashion without secure legal foundation at every step, the odds of them being normalized into a legal framework at the end of the transition period is extremely low. Either they will continue to be used in a rights-stripping fashion

[passage 31](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) rule of law which is one of the crucial goal states of SSTR. If biometrics are used in a field expedient fashion without secure legal foundation at every step, the odds of them being normalized into a legal framework at the end of the transition period is extremely low. Either they will continue to be used in a rights-stripping fashion by the new government, creating the temptation of easy totalitarian rule, or the biometrics system will fall out of use because they represent an illegal or even unconstitutional intrusion into people's lives. Biometrics technology must be given legal footing in order to become a valid part of the SSTR process. Criminal Investigations A National Court System submits a request to the International Phenotype Database to identify a person based on a fragment of biometric information, like a finger print or a DNA sample. The International Phenotype Database performs the search (perhaps charging the relevant National Court System for the computer time) and generates a set of results. Those results that are citizens of the nation state of the requesting court are returned to the National Court System. All that is returned is the Identity Packets of those involved, not additional biometric matching information. Upon request, the International Phenotype Database will contact the National Court System of the country of each person found to match the sample and inform them of the biometric match, and of the request from the National Court System that initiated the search that contact is made about this case. The expectation is that the person's National Court System will cooperate with the National Court System that initiated the search within the framework of any agreements between the two countries. One nice thing about this system is that it makes it very easy to define one kind of state sponsored terrorism. When biometric information about a terrorist is submitted to the International Phenotype Database and they match it to a nation state, if that National Court System simply never returns any further data, you have clear evidence of state sponsored terrorism by virtue of identity protection. Note that in the best form of this system, the International Phenotype Database never returns any information on matches outside of the jurisdiction of the National Court System that raises the query: it does not reveal the nationality or even the existence of any additional matches. The relevant courts are contacted, but nothing is relayed back to the originator of the query. This is likely untenable in the real world, but is how the system might operate in an idealized form. Technical Challenges There are three classes of technical challenges at the International Phenotype Database level. Searching six billion biometric records including issues like false positives and simply handling that much data. Securing the system, including audit trails, physical security, and prevention of an attack on this critical facility resulting in a global failure of the capability to search biometrical records or generate new identities, although existing CheapID Identity Cards would

[passage 32](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) the International Phenotype Database level. Searching six billion biometric records including issues like false positives and simply handling that much data. Securing the system, including audit trails, physical security, and prevention of an attack on this critical facility resulting in a global failure of the capability to search biometrical records or generate new identities, although existing CheapID Identity Cards would continue to work. Building out the technical infrastructure for the exchange of information and management of cryptographic keys within each National Court System. Obviously in an SSTR context, SIAB-ISA is about equipping some number of facilities in the host nation with the necessary technology and keeping it running for them as well as rolling out the associated financial services and contract validation services outlined later on in this paper. All of these services can be provided with technologies that are either common items or near-market refinements of existing systems. Based on my current exposure to the technology even the large scale biometrics matching appears possible given a few years for hardware to get faster and algorithms to grow more sophisticated. A lot of what makes this possible is that searches against this database are infrequent: once per lifetime upon enrollment, plus criminal investigations. However, one trade being made is full database searching without narrowing the dataset based on factors like proximity. We are not permitting operations like "search for records in the London area" because the International Phenotype Database is not allowed to know who lives in London. The narrowing is done after the biometrics matching step, and it is done by the local courts, not the biometrics database. This is extremely inefficient, but bigger computers are coming. The National Court System Jurisdiction By definition, one nation state, plus any areas that state is providing legal services for. Purpose In this context, the National Court System provides controlled legal access to the International Phenotype Database, and the various Issuing Stations and other parts of the ISA. Common Operations All common operations with a technical component are covered under the International Phenotype Database above. They are documented as a set of interactions between the International Phenotype Database and the court because the court has little or no direct access to biometric data except through that intermediary. Technical Challenges Deploying PKI in a court context and associated procedural changes are major issues, as is building judicial understanding of how the system affects their role. There are additional challenges in building a framework within existing legal systems to identify what is and is not rational and appropriate when dealing with biometrics in general. These challenges are not unique to the SIAB-ISA, however. One plausible approach is that each National Court Systems has a single national decryption center that manages the court's private keys, and then additional PKI to manage transfers of data to and from that center, and authorization and authentication. This is a major project, but considerably more tractable than the obvious alternatives. Issuing Stations Jurisdiction Authorized by the National Court System,

[passage 33](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) plausible approach is that each National Court Systems has a single national decryption center that manages the court's private keys, and then additional PKI to manage transfers of data to and from that center, and authorization and authentication. This is a major project, but considerably more tractable than the obvious alternatives. Issuing Stations Jurisdiction Authorized by the National Court System, may be operated by an arm of the court, an NGO, or third parties like hospitals and Professional Witnesses. Purpose The issuing station exists to take a person's biometric information and relay it securely to the International Phenotype Database. It takes legal responsibility for the honesty and integrity of this task, and staff should be clearly identified and criminally liable, with a solid audit trail. Common Operations As documented under International Phenotype Database. It's worth noting that the security and reliability of the issuing stations is key to the security and reliability of the entire system. Suppose, for example, the station collects bogus data and transmits it to the International Phenotype Database? This gets caught by the Court, when the Court compares the data coming back from the International Phenotype Database to the person presenting the request. But what if there is collusion between an Issuing Station and the National Court System, to create a bogus identity by sending fake biometric data? This still gets caught when the CheapID Identity Card is presented for use, of course, but it is clearly possible for multi-party collusion to create fake people even if it is very hard to pass them off against challenges. However, the system is many, many times harder to spoof than current systems, where fake people can be created by a single government ad infinitum. In common use, institutions like hospitals might act as Issuing Stations. The basic mechanics of taking the necessary biometric data, possibly including DNA samples, fit nicely in a medical setting and could, in an SSTR context, be associated with primary health screening and vaccinations for example. Technical Challenges The challenges depend entirely on the level of biometric sophistication required. A basic Issuing Station is a digital camera and a net connection to a web site which provides an interface to the International Phenotype Database. The CheapID Identity Card Jurisdiction It is important to understand that the CheapID Identity Card reflects the international agreements which form the ISA in its internal structure. At an abstract level, the CheapID Identity Card has three statements on it, digitally signed by their respective parties. The first is from the Issuing Station, attesting that this is a picture they took and is an accurate likeness of an unnamed person (and the same for any other biometrics present.) The second is from the International Phenotype Database stating that it has an Identity Packet from a National Court System referring to the unique individual presented on this card. This implies that the individual has been enrolled and that any ambiguity about their biometrics has been resolved. Finally, there is a statement

[passage 34](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) (and the same for any other biometrics present.) The second is from the International Phenotype Database stating that it has an Identity Packet from a National Court System referring to the unique individual presented on this card. This implies that the individual has been enrolled and that any ambiguity about their biometrics has been resolved. Finally, there is a statement from the National Court System that it is willing to decrypt the unique identifier present on this card (the identifier is unique to the card) to reveal this person's real identity based on whatever legal criteria that National Court System requires. The combination of these three statements gives a solid link to this person's identity, protected by the Court's unwillingness to decrypt the identifiers on the card for frivolous or illegitimate purposes. However, in practice, there are issues with presenting all of this information on the card. Firstly, one may simply run short of bytes in the cameraphone implementation. Secondly, the digital signatures on the image from the Issuing Station and the International Phenotype Database create a de facto unique identifier which is unique to the individual, not to a given instance of their identity card. In naive implementations, the signature on the photograph becomes usable as a sort of substitute Social Security Number. Again, blind signatures may make it possible to carry these signatures from end to end without them becoming illicit unique identifiers in their own right, but is that reasonable? The algorithms allowing a blind signature (that is, for a party to sign a document it does not read, simply proving it was presented at a given time and not altered) are not trivial and begin to lift the system out of the domain in which simple reference implementations are possible. Finally, those algorithms are dependent to an unknown degree on the particular features of the RSA cryptosystem. In the upcoming post-RSA era (RSA is vulnerable to quantum cryptography) it will become necessary to shift algorithms. Digital signatures will almost certainly continue to exist, but the precise commutative properties of prime factorization may not be replicated in the new systems, killing entire classes of useful algorithms. Therefore, practically speaking, in a simplified implementation, the card bears only one digital signature: that of the court, attesting that the original signatures were correct. Audit trails may be kept at the court, perhaps involving re-encrypting some of the data in the audit trail with a public key belonging to an auditing agency, the International Phenotype Database, or the Issuing Station to prevent the Court's audit trail becoming an unhelpful store of biometric data. The Court can be challenged to produce the Statement of Biometric Enrollment for a CheapID Identity Card that is has issued if there are doubts about the legitimacy of the Court. Alternatively, we simply bite the bullet, carry all three signatures through the entire system, and salt the data from end to end. This approach may require hauling thousands of times more data across the system. The

[passage 35](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) the Statement of Biometric Enrollment for a CheapID Identity Card that is has issued if there are doubts about the legitimacy of the Court. Alternatively, we simply bite the bullet, carry all three signatures through the entire system, and salt the data from end to end. This approach may require hauling thousands of times more data across the system. The Issuing Station would pass 1000 encrypted packets to the International Phenotype Database which would then sign each one, and so on down the chain to the CheapID Identity Card itself. This is an appallingly inefficient brute force solution but technical history has shown us that brute force often produces correctness in software systems, which is a factor to consider. In any case, it is certain that the CheapID Identity Card cannot carry any bitwise identical fields which would allow one card to be matched to another. There are a variety of plausible approaches, as outlined above, and the task of the system implementors is to pick a solution that works in practice. A good enough system can be created by trusting the signature of the Court if you can challenge it and require them to produce the signatures of the International Phenotype Database and Issuing Station. This is a good enough solution to know the scheme is viable, although it can be improved. Purpose Let us revise the physical appearance of the CheapID Identity Card once again. It is a sheet of paper or a plastic card covered in a mass of 2D barcode data and bearing few or no other identifiers. Each individual has dozens or hundreds of cards, each one bearing their likeness in the form of a digital image encoded in the barcode and signed as discussed above. There is no visible picture, so that people must show the card to a device which can check digital signatures in order to see the face encoded on it. No two cards corresponding to a particular individual share any bitwise fields. Why? The goal is to create a system in which the lives of those who do not break the law are almost entirely private. This means that the ISA has to be able to support some novel operations. The most important is being able to have absolute assurance that a person had committed an act, but no awareness of who they are unless the act turns out to be illegal. This single property is the key to commercial use of the ISA in the context of State In A Box. Because this desirable property did not exist in prior technological substrates, outside of the context of proxies in some kinds of transactions, neither legal nor financial infrastructure has taken advantage of the fact that our technological substrate can now support this property. This is leapfrogging. In an SSTR context, it becomes possible to rapidly build the new generation infrastructure for CheapID Identity Cards and the necessary legal supports in the National Court System. It seems like a stretch,

[passage 36](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) some kinds of transactions, neither legal nor financial infrastructure has taken advantage of the fact that our technological substrate can now support this property. This is leapfrogging. In an SSTR context, it becomes possible to rapidly build the new generation infrastructure for CheapID Identity Cards and the necessary legal supports in the National Court System. It seems like a stretch, but the technology is getting easier all the time, and the security requirements for a solid biometric database are unarguable, as are the problems of leaving that database behind when one leaves, or deleting it. By placing the dangerous database in a protected environment like the one the ISA provides through the international framework, the worse abuses can be headed off at the pass, while keeping the system available. The bonus is a new kind of commercial transaction: Blind Contracts. We will discuss blind contracts in some detail later in the paper, but the core of the concept is that, if the contract is not broken, one or both parties can remain anonymous. If it is broken, the anonymity is compromised, and the legal process can unfold. A contract that is assented to by a person with a CheapID Identity Card is a blind contract. One of their ID cards stays with the contract, digitally signed in all probability, and acts as a token of their identity. However, until such time as the National Court System becomes involved and chooses to decrypt the ID card, there is no way to identify the signatory. The contract holder has absolute assurance that somebody knows who signed the contract, but no information about that person unless something illegal or dishonest happens. Doesn't that seem right, as the world would work if we had a just and efficient society? Nobody really wants their grocery store colluding with their mortgage broker and their health insurer to pitch them additional services. In reality, we almost all like our business to be conveniently private, but we are let down by shoddy and outdated pre-database-monitoring identity infrastructure. However, an entirely private world as I am describing does not work for all political systems, and certainly does not work for all security situations. The goal here is, as always, more privacy for the law abiding citizen, and more ability to identify threats and illegal activity and halt them. Because of a small feature � the Certificate Revocation List Check � which we will discuss below, in some implementations it is possible if national security requires it, to trace every instance where an individual has used their CheapID Identity Card. In other implementations, this is not possible. This is an architectural decision which is left with the National Court System. Common Operations Identity Check This is how the cards are used for routine identity transactions. A person presents their CheapID Identity Card to an identity check of some kind. The person making the check takes a photograph of their card with a cameraphone, or otherwise gets a copy of it

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/31-4.md (part 4 of 5).
End of [31] guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php, part 3 of 5. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.