9 ms·

Rohingya turn to blockchain to solve identity crisis

38 points by andygates 8y ago

jgh 8y ago
What happens if you lose your identity card? Do you have to redo the test, and now there are two of you on the blockchain?
- tenebrisalietum 8y ago
  The right way to do it is put a revocation record of the old identity on the blockchain.
  - have_faith 8y ago
    Who has authority to do that?
    - GenericsMotors 8y ago
      > Who has authority to do that? crickets chirping
JustFinishedBSG 8y ago
I don't think it's a very good idea to record immutably and publicly your "indesirable" status. Sounds like it will just make ethnic cleansing easier
- arif_sohaib 8y ago
  Agreed. One solution could be restricted access. Government of Maynmar not allowed to access this. Same of Houthi and Yemen or Syrian rebels/Assad etc. Idea 2: it could potentially help hold these government's more accountable if everyone in the world has access to a record and thus proof of what they are doing.
- throwaway555555 8y ago
  Ordinarily, I’d agree with this, except to look at how this series of events transpired, one gets the sense that the aggressors in this scenario did not give a shit about identity as they went about (and continue to go about) dealing death (and worse) to pretty much anything in front of them. In this case it seemed to be based on regions or zones in rural territories. Anybody in those towns or villages, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and no amount information was going to make a difference. I don’t think they were going around, checking names and marking clipboards. By all accounts, there was nothing orderly about this one. Little more than a perimeter walked down to a kill zone. The people that got away had to move fast, and of the ones that made it out of the round up, it seemed to be children and people who played dead. So, add computerized record keeping to the mix. Will it be used to hunt people down? It’s probably a concern worth considering, but really the modus operandi seems to be search and destroy eviction from a territory, to clear out an area, not understanding and targeting network nodes in a constellation of peers.
doombolt 8y ago
Modern nation-state is a racket and oligopoly. So-called "recognized states" make monumental efforts at disallowing creation of new states and at making citizenship scarce, to help keep their monopoly. This doesn't seem to be in the benefit of Earth's people, and also amount of "unrecognized states" grows year by year. Previously, this backlog could only processed by holding a World War. It's an elephant in a room and I'm quite surprised I've never seen this idea discussed seriously anywhere.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  The creation of new states is far from a panacea for solving these sorts of conflicts. South Sudanese and Eritrean independence appears to have generally made their lives more miserable, for example. The real issue is that cultural identity is a very fluid concept, and states can try to steer their citizenry to express a very broad, inclusive notion of cultural attachment (as France and Germany did in the late 19th century) or a very narrow and exclusive sentiment (as the Ottoman Empire did).
  - doombolt 8y ago
    I think being South Sudanese or Eritrean is much better than being murdered for being a separatist, on ethnic cleansing scale. What's with the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century? You seem to refer of it as of something well-know and yet I have no idea.
    - roywiggins 8y ago
      > I think being South Sudanese or Eritrean is much better than being murdered for being a separatist, on ethnic cleansing scale. Oh, there's still ethnic violence on a large scale in South Sudan. It's between different groups inside the new country. > Since the outbreak of conflict, armed groups have targeted civilians along ethnic lines, committed rape and sexual violence, destroyed property and looted villages, and recruited children into their ranks. https://www.cfr.org/interactives/global-conflict-tracker#!/conflict/civil-war-in-south-sudan https://www.cfr.org/interactives/global-conflict-tracker#!/c...
rlpb 8y ago
How is the blockchain useful here? Why don't they maintain a git repository as a distributed database and issue digital identity cards using X.509?
- arif_sohaib 8y ago
  Part of an undertaking this big is securing funding and political/social support. Being a bit "trendy" helps with those.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    This is the most plausible rationale for doing it with blockchains (see also: many other blockchains) The whole system appears to rely on a trusted group certifying the [probable] authenticity of an individual's records and Rohingya refugee status, in which case you might as well let them host it on a well-backed up regular database...
    - sowbug 8y ago
      It's possible, even easy, to insert fake attestations that biometric B corresponds to identity I. But an append-only log has the advantage over other databases that a simple older-record-wins heuristic is likely to prefer genuine identity records. A regular database has no way to make it infeasible to insert fake old records. Sure, you can publish checkpoints. But that doesn't work so well when you're up against a government that wants to erase your entire ethnicity.
      - notahacker 8y ago
        Isn't the sufficiently determined government with the ability to compromise an organization's computers almost as much of a threat to carry out 51% attacks on its private blockchain as to successfully target distributed copies of database checkpoints? (In practice, I think the Myanmar government's strategy would simply be to disregard the database rather than to attack it anyway, on the basis the local prejudice against the Rohingya isn't based around their numbers or individual identities but the claim that they are actually Bangladeshi illegal immigrants lying about Myanmar ancestry and land)
ben_w 8y ago
“Immutable record” doesn’t really work with “birth”, “death”, or “accidentally incorrect details”. Allowing mutability to any of those things doesn’t work well with preventing hostile forces with far more resources from corrupting your records — even a bug free implementation should, on topics like this, presume the hostile attackers can mount a 51% attack. (I’d go further and assume hostile actors could mount a 99.99% attack when it’s homeless stateless refugees fleeing hundreds of thousands of armed malitia).
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  if you treat the blockchain as an event-sourced datastore, you could publish amendment updates. Then you can rebuild the original record and all the amendments into a latest-accurate record.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    How do you know which “death” records are accurate? Or if such records are complete?
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      It's impossible to know without eg signing the record with the person's key, but you can at least see the history of modifications so information can't be hidden by overwriting or deleting it.
      - ben_w 8y ago
        Overwriting and deleting are not the only ways to hide things. Truth can be hidden if buried under a randomised pile of noise, of “corrections” and counter-corrections - who would rely on a database which needs to be cleaned up against deliberate hostile damage?
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        presumably you would want to restrict writing anyway. I thought that was implicit - any open-write platform is going to go to shit if it's immutable.
have_faith 8y ago
Putting disenfranchised poor people on a list to keep track of them that is controllable by whoever has the most electricity/money doesn't sound like a form of empowerment.
- lagadu 8y ago
  But blockchain!
billpg 8y ago
"We have a problem." "Solve it with block-chains!" "You've not heard my problem yet." "Doesn't matter!"
- sowbug 8y ago
  Did you read the article? The population has real, historical reasons not to trust the traditional centralized provider of identity. A trustless solution is an option worth considering. Blockchain-overuse snark is not the solution to every blockchain proposal.... especially if you haven't heard the proposal yet.
  - supermatt 8y ago
    Blockchain doesn't automatically mean decentralised. _HOW_ is this blockchain decentralised? _WHERE_ does the trust/authority come from? Theres very little information on it other than "because blockchain".
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    >Blockchain-overuse snark is not the solution to every blockchain proposal.... Yes, it is. At least until someone comes up with an actual use for it that isn’t a scam or something that could have been done much easier with existing technology.
  - scott_s 8y ago
    But the difficulty is that the traditional centralized provider of identity is the state, and they are the arbiter of identity because they have power. Being the state in power is why they decide anyone's identity. Declaring your own identity does not change the power dynamic.
    - sowbug 8y ago
      That's a good point, and I hope nobody is taking the position in this thread that someone has legal rights just because a digital signature matched. Unless the legal body grants that privilege, the match has no meaning. A decentralized solution removes the question who maintains a centralized database. That's important because, as you say, the answer to that question has always been the state. Which means it's never really been a question. If you're cool with the government owning your identity -- and truly having the power to erase your entire existence, so they're not denying you any rights because there is no "you" -- then it doesn't matter. But for some people, it might matter to be able to point to something other than the mirror and say "I exist, and not just because I say I do. This matters because [this entity] is taking actions that are inconsistent with my existence and implied rights." It's a small step, but it's one that opens up options that don't exist today.
scott_s 8y ago
A people's lack of identity in a nation is a civil problem. Technology does not solve civil problems. I don't see any indication in this article how blockchain-based identities will solve the civil problems faced by the Rohingya people; specifically, if the nation they are in does not want to grant them citizenship or basic rights, I don't see how asserting one's identity in the blockchain solves that. The article states: "Noor’s goal is to give Rohingya the power to reclaim their identities with a resilient system that their host countries will recognise, allowing them access to social programmes, legal rights, education and healthcare." But that's begging the question. The problem is that the state won't recognize them. Why would a blockchain based solution change that?
- sowbug 8y ago
  It's valuable to remember facts today, before they're forgotten, even if today's institutions don't attach the desired significance to them.
  - scott_s 8y ago
    Blockchain is not required for that. You could just use a normal database.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      Who decides if it's accurate? Granted, you might not need blockchain anyway. But I do believe some kind of cross signing setup at least is a better answer than just a normal database.
      - scott_s 8y ago
        Who decides if the blockchain based solution is accurate? An illustration: you do not trust Amazon because of a TLS certificate. That certificate means that you trust the entity on the other end is Amazon. But it doesn't make you trust them. You trust Amazon because of a bunch of soft reasons: you have ordered through them before, and it worked; they appear in the media a lot as a place people go to buy stuff online; a lot of your friends and colleagues buy things through them and are satisfied. All of these factors go into your soft judgement of why you're willing to give Amazon money. (If you don't trust Amazon, substitute them for some online entity that you do trust. If there are none, please accept that some people do trust online entities enough to give them money and expect to receive goods or services in return.) This is what I mean by technology does not solve civil problems: in this case, a specific technology solves the specific problem of establishing an online entity is who they say they are. But now you're back to the same problem that exists with any human interaction: do you actually trust the other side? Back to the database: if we're going to trust some individual or institution to be the arbiter of accuracy, we're better off just using a normal database with whatever encryption we want. Because once your system has that basic level of trust, you don't need blockchain. And back to my original point: this set of information (in whatever form) makes no difference if the people in power don't care. This information will not make the people in power care. The problem with any oppressed people is caused by those in power abusing that power. Those in power have power because they have might and the belief of the people that they will use that might to enforce their power. Blockchain doesn't change that.
nrclark 8y ago
Don't blockchains need miners to validate every transaction? Who exactly is going to be running all these computers, and why? What happens when the internet goes down?
- sowbug 8y ago
  Would you prefer your local bureaucracy to do those things on paper?
  - nrclark 8y ago
    Not a question of preference, and not a troll - I'm actually curious about how/if it could work in practice.
    - sowbug 8y ago
      I don't know. But all the questions asked by OP would be applicable to any computerized system, and I doubt that a identity system designed today would operate entirely offline.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- advisedwang 8y ago
  Many of the smaller blockchain projects are implemented on top of flexible blockchains like Ethereum, rather than being ground-up.
psergeant 8y ago
I’m close to some aid workers in this part of the world. There appear to be a bunch of wide-eyed technologists desperate to foist blockchain on the whole crisis, from recording health records to this. That the “Rohingya are turning to it” rather than a few people are Really Excited About Blockchain is not well supported.
- tCfD 8y ago
  Sadly, the history of people faced with difficult, complex problems turning to opportunistc 'one weird trick' quacks out of desperation is long and depressing.
Moodles 8y ago
Blockchain person: "Hey just prove to me you're a real Rohingya refugee and I'll add you to my blockchain" Rohingya refugee: "But isn't a blockchain supposed to be trustless. Aren't we just trusting you to verify me?" Blockchain person: "Yeah whatever, do you want to be on my blockchain or not? I got a lot of funding for this" Rohingya refugee: "Sure okay" Rohingya refugee Myanmar government: "Hey I'm a real person. I'm on this fella's blockchain. That proves it." Myanmar govenrment: "We don't care."

38 points by andygates 8y ago

jgh 8y ago

What happens if you lose your identity card? Do you have to redo the test, and now there are two of you on the blockchain?

tenebrisalietum 8y ago
The right way to do it is put a revocation record of the old identity on the blockchain.
- have_faith 8y ago
  Who has authority to do that?
  - GenericsMotors 8y ago
    > Who has authority to do that? crickets chirping

JustFinishedBSG 8y ago

I don't think it's a very good idea to record immutably and publicly your "indesirable" status. Sounds like it will just make ethnic cleansing easier

arif_sohaib 8y ago
Agreed. One solution could be restricted access. Government of Maynmar not allowed to access this. Same of Houthi and Yemen or Syrian rebels/Assad etc. Idea 2: it could potentially help hold these government's more accountable if everyone in the world has access to a record and thus proof of what they are doing.
throwaway555555 8y ago
Ordinarily, I’d agree with this, except to look at how this series of events transpired, one gets the sense that the aggressors in this scenario did not give a shit about identity as they went about (and continue to go about) dealing death (and worse) to pretty much anything in front of them. In this case it seemed to be based on regions or zones in rural territories. Anybody in those towns or villages, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and no amount information was going to make a difference. I don’t think they were going around, checking names and marking clipboards. By all accounts, there was nothing orderly about this one. Little more than a perimeter walked down to a kill zone. The people that got away had to move fast, and of the ones that made it out of the round up, it seemed to be children and people who played dead. So, add computerized record keeping to the mix. Will it be used to hunt people down? It’s probably a concern worth considering, but really the modus operandi seems to be search and destroy eviction from a territory, to clear out an area, not understanding and targeting network nodes in a constellation of peers.

doombolt 8y ago

Modern nation-state is a racket and oligopoly. So-called "recognized states" make monumental efforts at disallowing creation of new states and at making citizenship scarce, to help keep their monopoly. This doesn't seem to be in the benefit of Earth's people, and also amount of "unrecognized states" grows year by year. Previously, this backlog could only processed by holding a World War. It's an elephant in a room and I'm quite surprised I've never seen this idea discussed seriously anywhere.

jcranmer 8y ago
The creation of new states is far from a panacea for solving these sorts of conflicts. South Sudanese and Eritrean independence appears to have generally made their lives more miserable, for example. The real issue is that cultural identity is a very fluid concept, and states can try to steer their citizenry to express a very broad, inclusive notion of cultural attachment (as France and Germany did in the late 19th century) or a very narrow and exclusive sentiment (as the Ottoman Empire did).
- doombolt 8y ago
  I think being South Sudanese or Eritrean is much better than being murdered for being a separatist, on ethnic cleansing scale. What's with the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century? You seem to refer of it as of something well-know and yet I have no idea.
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    > I think being South Sudanese or Eritrean is much better than being murdered for being a separatist, on ethnic cleansing scale. Oh, there's still ethnic violence on a large scale in South Sudan. It's between different groups inside the new country. > Since the outbreak of conflict, armed groups have targeted civilians along ethnic lines, committed rape and sexual violence, destroyed property and looted villages, and recruited children into their ranks. https://www.cfr.org/interactives/global-conflict-tracker#!/conflict/civil-war-in-south-sudan https://www.cfr.org/interactives/global-conflict-tracker#!/c...

rlpb 8y ago

How is the blockchain useful here? Why don't they maintain a git repository as a distributed database and issue digital identity cards using X.509?

arif_sohaib 8y ago
Part of an undertaking this big is securing funding and political/social support. Being a bit "trendy" helps with those.
- notahacker 8y ago
  This is the most plausible rationale for doing it with blockchains (see also: many other blockchains) The whole system appears to rely on a trusted group certifying the [probable] authenticity of an individual's records and Rohingya refugee status, in which case you might as well let them host it on a well-backed up regular database...
  - sowbug 8y ago
    It's possible, even easy, to insert fake attestations that biometric B corresponds to identity I. But an append-only log has the advantage over other databases that a simple older-record-wins heuristic is likely to prefer genuine identity records. A regular database has no way to make it infeasible to insert fake old records. Sure, you can publish checkpoints. But that doesn't work so well when you're up against a government that wants to erase your entire ethnicity.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      Isn't the sufficiently determined government with the ability to compromise an organization's computers almost as much of a threat to carry out 51% attacks on its private blockchain as to successfully target distributed copies of database checkpoints? (In practice, I think the Myanmar government's strategy would simply be to disregard the database rather than to attack it anyway, on the basis the local prejudice against the Rohingya isn't based around their numbers or individual identities but the claim that they are actually Bangladeshi illegal immigrants lying about Myanmar ancestry and land)

ben_w 8y ago

“Immutable record” doesn’t really work with “birth”, “death”, or “accidentally incorrect details”. Allowing mutability to any of those things doesn’t work well with preventing hostile forces with far more resources from corrupting your records — even a bug free implementation should, on topics like this, presume the hostile attackers can mount a 51% attack. (I’d go further and assume hostile actors could mount a 99.99% attack when it’s homeless stateless refugees fleeing hundreds of thousands of armed malitia).

beaconstudios 8y ago
if you treat the blockchain as an event-sourced datastore, you could publish amendment updates. Then you can rebuild the original record and all the amendments into a latest-accurate record.
- ben_w 8y ago
  How do you know which “death” records are accurate? Or if such records are complete?
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    It's impossible to know without eg signing the record with the person's key, but you can at least see the history of modifications so information can't be hidden by overwriting or deleting it.
    - ben_w 8y ago
      Overwriting and deleting are not the only ways to hide things. Truth can be hidden if buried under a randomised pile of noise, of “corrections” and counter-corrections - who would rely on a database which needs to be cleaned up against deliberate hostile damage?
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        presumably you would want to restrict writing anyway. I thought that was implicit - any open-write platform is going to go to shit if it's immutable.

have_faith 8y ago

Putting disenfranchised poor people on a list to keep track of them that is controllable by whoever has the most electricity/money doesn't sound like a form of empowerment.

lagadu 8y ago
But blockchain!

billpg 8y ago

"We have a problem." "Solve it with block-chains!" "You've not heard my problem yet." "Doesn't matter!"

sowbug 8y ago
Did you read the article? The population has real, historical reasons not to trust the traditional centralized provider of identity. A trustless solution is an option worth considering. Blockchain-overuse snark is not the solution to every blockchain proposal.... especially if you haven't heard the proposal yet.
- supermatt 8y ago
  Blockchain doesn't automatically mean decentralised. _HOW_ is this blockchain decentralised? _WHERE_ does the trust/authority come from? Theres very little information on it other than "because blockchain".
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  >Blockchain-overuse snark is not the solution to every blockchain proposal.... Yes, it is. At least until someone comes up with an actual use for it that isn’t a scam or something that could have been done much easier with existing technology.
- scott_s 8y ago
  But the difficulty is that the traditional centralized provider of identity is the state, and they are the arbiter of identity because they have power. Being the state in power is why they decide anyone's identity. Declaring your own identity does not change the power dynamic.
  - sowbug 8y ago
    That's a good point, and I hope nobody is taking the position in this thread that someone has legal rights just because a digital signature matched. Unless the legal body grants that privilege, the match has no meaning. A decentralized solution removes the question who maintains a centralized database. That's important because, as you say, the answer to that question has always been the state. Which means it's never really been a question. If you're cool with the government owning your identity -- and truly having the power to erase your entire existence, so they're not denying you any rights because there is no "you" -- then it doesn't matter. But for some people, it might matter to be able to point to something other than the mirror and say "I exist, and not just because I say I do. This matters because [this entity] is taking actions that are inconsistent with my existence and implied rights." It's a small step, but it's one that opens up options that don't exist today.

scott_s 8y ago

A people's lack of identity in a nation is a civil problem. Technology does not solve civil problems. I don't see any indication in this article how blockchain-based identities will solve the civil problems faced by the Rohingya people; specifically, if the nation they are in does not want to grant them citizenship or basic rights, I don't see how asserting one's identity in the blockchain solves that. The article states: "Noor’s goal is to give Rohingya the power to reclaim their identities with a resilient system that their host countries will recognise, allowing them access to social programmes, legal rights, education and healthcare." But that's begging the question. The problem is that the state won't recognize them. Why would a blockchain based solution change that?

sowbug 8y ago
It's valuable to remember facts today, before they're forgotten, even if today's institutions don't attach the desired significance to them.
- scott_s 8y ago
  Blockchain is not required for that. You could just use a normal database.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    Who decides if it's accurate? Granted, you might not need blockchain anyway. But I do believe some kind of cross signing setup at least is a better answer than just a normal database.
    - scott_s 8y ago
      Who decides if the blockchain based solution is accurate? An illustration: you do not trust Amazon because of a TLS certificate. That certificate means that you trust the entity on the other end is Amazon. But it doesn't make you trust them. You trust Amazon because of a bunch of soft reasons: you have ordered through them before, and it worked; they appear in the media a lot as a place people go to buy stuff online; a lot of your friends and colleagues buy things through them and are satisfied. All of these factors go into your soft judgement of why you're willing to give Amazon money. (If you don't trust Amazon, substitute them for some online entity that you do trust. If there are none, please accept that some people do trust online entities enough to give them money and expect to receive goods or services in return.) This is what I mean by technology does not solve civil problems: in this case, a specific technology solves the specific problem of establishing an online entity is who they say they are. But now you're back to the same problem that exists with any human interaction: do you actually trust the other side? Back to the database: if we're going to trust some individual or institution to be the arbiter of accuracy, we're better off just using a normal database with whatever encryption we want. Because once your system has that basic level of trust, you don't need blockchain. And back to my original point: this set of information (in whatever form) makes no difference if the people in power don't care. This information will not make the people in power care. The problem with any oppressed people is caused by those in power abusing that power. Those in power have power because they have might and the belief of the people that they will use that might to enforce their power. Blockchain doesn't change that.

nrclark 8y ago

Don't blockchains need miners to validate every transaction? Who exactly is going to be running all these computers, and why? What happens when the internet goes down?

sowbug 8y ago
Would you prefer your local bureaucracy to do those things on paper?
- nrclark 8y ago
  Not a question of preference, and not a troll - I'm actually curious about how/if it could work in practice.
  - sowbug 8y ago
    I don't know. But all the questions asked by OP would be applicable to any computerized system, and I doubt that a identity system designed today would operate entirely offline.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
advisedwang 8y ago
Many of the smaller blockchain projects are implemented on top of flexible blockchains like Ethereum, rather than being ground-up.

psergeant 8y ago

I’m close to some aid workers in this part of the world. There appear to be a bunch of wide-eyed technologists desperate to foist blockchain on the whole crisis, from recording health records to this. That the “Rohingya are turning to it” rather than a few people are Really Excited About Blockchain is not well supported.

tCfD 8y ago
Sadly, the history of people faced with difficult, complex problems turning to opportunistc 'one weird trick' quacks out of desperation is long and depressing.

Moodles 8y ago

Blockchain person: "Hey just prove to me you're a real Rohingya refugee and I'll add you to my blockchain" Rohingya refugee: "But isn't a blockchain supposed to be trustless. Aren't we just trusting you to verify me?" Blockchain person: "Yeah whatever, do you want to be on my blockchain or not? I got a lot of funding for this" Rohingya refugee: "Sure okay" Rohingya refugee Myanmar government: "Hey I'm a real person. I'm on this fella's blockchain. That proves it." Myanmar govenrment: "We don't care."