CDR: identity-as-bits vs. identity-as-meat

[Ray Dillinger]

According to current law in all nations (as far as I know), 
identity is meat.  One person has one identity, and the 
identity is persistent and lifelong.  All law is based on 
this assumption. 

Emerging in this forum and elsewhere is a different assumption, 
which is that identity is bits.  If an entity has Alice's key, 
then that entity is Alice.  Alice's person may be a different 
person this time, but only if Alice's last person was stupid or 
careless. And in this case Alice is probably better off with 
a different person anyway.  Your dealings with Alice are still 
bound by the same guarantees of trust that you've always had 
with Alice: the laws of mathematics and the steps of the protocols. 
Alice's reputation and interests are likely to have changed with 
the change in person, but that's okay. 

Under the former assumption (Identity as meat) Alice transferring 
fortune and property to her son meant a change in the identity of 
the owner, and it was significant.  Under the latter assumption 
(identity as bits) if she wants her son to now be the owner 
of all her stuff, she just hands her son the Alice keys and as 
far as anyone else is concerned nothing has changed.  Alice is 
still the owner of the property, it's just that Alice now has a 
different person. 

Digital personas can be shared among several people, or handed 
off from one person to the other, without losing their integrity.  
This is one of their desirable properties.  

They can also be stolen, but so can most things of value.  If 
your digital persona is the owner of several tons of gold in the 
form of digital bearer notes, and somebody else steals your digital 
persona, guess what?  The ownership of those digital bearer notes 
has not changed.  They are still owned by the same entity.  You're 
just not that entity's physical person anymore. 

So if it is important to you that your identity remains "yours", 
guard your keys and audit your software, because on the net, 
identity is bits.  If you want to impose an "identity is meat" 
assumption, you will have to pursue it in the meat world, where 
that assumption is valid -- thereby abandoning any hope of 
retaining the benefits of the net environment, such as anonymity
or privacy.

				Bear