What is Digital Identity all about?

Mon Mar 02 2026 at 06:00 pm to 07:00 pm UTC+00:00

Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Yusef Hamied Department of Chemistry, (entrance to lecture theatre, adjacent to the Scott Polar Research Institute) | Cambridge

Cambridge Philosophical Society
Publisher/HostCambridge Philosophical Society
What is Digital Identity all about?
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Professor Jon Crowcroft FRS
About this Event

We have many forms of identity, whether socially constructed (kinship, personas, relationships), or issued via organisations (employers, banks, clubs, government). These identities can be partly stored as a digital twin (e.g. by recording biometric information plus some identifier/number, and then possibly linked to other information credentials or entitlements - e.g. citizenship, age, health, finance, educational records and so on).
These digital ecosystems can be designed to allow us to control (access to) such data, or they can be part of state and commercial surveillance. The trustworthiness of such ecosystems is highly questionable. I'll walk through alternative designs and give examples of benefits and disadvantages, including threats (fake id, denial of service etc).
In this talk, I'll also outline challenges, including future problems like the mutability of allegedly unique and persistent biometrics like iris or even DNA, and speculate about the possibility of reflecting social structures properly in designs to create more fair and resilient systems that might be more acceptable than many deployed or proposed today.


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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Yusef Hamied Department of Chemistry, (entrance to lecture theatre, adjacent to the Scott Polar Research Institute), 29 Lensfield Road, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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