What I learned at @kuppingercole’s #EIC11: #identity #IAM #privacy and secrets

I must admit to being very selfish at this year’s EIC. Instead of going to the sessions that would likely have been most useful to Quest, I went to those that spoke most strongly to my own curiosities. The first thing I did was explore how vendors, users, and analysts feel about standards. It seems like it’s a chicken and egg subject – still. Users wait for vendors to adopt standards. Vendors wait for users and analysts to put force behind them. And in the mean time, only obvious success (SAML) and obvious need (XACML) seem to get standards investment and attention. The most interesting moment of this leg of the journey was when @OASISopen‘s Dr. Laurent Liscia asked from the keynote stage how many people in the audience were vendors to “make sure we’re not talking to ourselves.” Apparently we weren’t, but it was an interesting glimpse into how the whole notion is perceived even by those most dedicated to that cause of standards.

I also went to an absolutely fascinating deep dive into EU privacy and data protection law, which was hosted by Dr. Jörg Hladjk of Hunton & Williams LLP. Perhaps the most interesting thing I walked away with was a new sense of how fragile these protections really are. I think people in the US tend to think about these laws as being very intimidating and forceful. But that likely comes from the vastly complicated contract, audit, and procedure (paperwork) that is needed to deal with the laws. However, two shocking things became clear over the course of the day. First, any reasonable legal basis can be used as a basis to get at the data. A person can sign away all the protection in a single stroke – as anyone who agreed to the terms to get an iPhone in the EU has done in some part. And, because the framework is so much more comprehensive, things like a EULA, which is routinely cast aside in US cases since it’s seen as so flimsy, is much more forceful in the EU since the user is deemed to be so much better informed and protected by the framework. Second, there are cases where protections in the US are stronger than in the EU. A good example is when it comes to breech notification, where a data steward is forced to notify you of some event that may have compromised your PII. It seems that between NSTIC, efforts at the state level (like California’s new proposed “social media” law), and other things in the works, the US may actually come out ahead of the game in a practical sense within the decade.

The last lesson was a pleasant surprise: nearly all identity minded people are closet philosophers. Anyone reading this is likely to know my undergraduate (and only) degree is in philosophy, and perhaps also that I still indulge that impulse heavily as often as I can. Dr. Emilio Mordini, CEO of the Centre for Science, Society and Citizenship (CSSC), gave a keynote on the nature of secrets that was a HUGE hit. Not to say everyone agreed with all his views. In fact, @NishantK and @ggebel both took shots at his ideas from the same keynote stage later. The idea that drew the most criticism was Dr. Mordini’s very unpopular conclusion that one shouldn’t worry about securing data, but rather tracking data. He feels it’s less important to worry about keeping a secret than keeping track of who knows the secret. All of this flows from his central thesis that all secrets are Pulcinella secrets – not really secrets but rather, like a secret in a small town, something everyone knows but no one says so long as the parties involved have the power to motivate everyone to not say it in the town square. Tim Cole goes into all the details of the Pulcinella story on his own blog. The truth of all of it is left as an exercise for the reader. But the thing that made me happy was the abstract conversations in the hallways and bars for the rest of the conference as everyone digested the deeply interesting issues that were raised and what they meant in our shared context of identity, access, privacy, and technology.