Consult Hyperion events and notices - Consult Hyperion

I can see an article of some sort. Anyone called David?

14th April 2009by Consult HyperionLeave a comment

[Dave Birch] Well, my paper on “Psychic ID: A blueprint for a modern national identity” has been accepted for the new Springer journal “Identity in the Information Society” (IDIS). I didn’t completely understand the form I filled out, not being familiar with the world of academic journals, but I think the essence of it is that I can put a PDF of my original on my web site provided it contains a link to the actual journal article, so once I can sort that out I will do so. But the main reason for this post is just to note how what started off as an idea in a discussion — basically, trying to visualise 21st-century digital identity management using Dr. Who’s psychic paper as a reference point, having given up on trying to explain keys, certificates and all the rest of the crypto-infrastructure — became a presentation and then a paper and finally a peer-reviewed paper that I’m rather proud of. I’ve found a way to explain to non-technical audiences — well, British non-technical audiences at least — that the combination of widely-available devices and intelligence can deliver an identity management infrastructure that can achieve much more than they imagine.

Continue reading “I can see an article of some sort. Anyone called David?”

Free!

23rd March 2009by Consult HyperionLeave a comment

[Dave Birch] Well, now I’ve got your attention here’s a quick reminder that next week is the 12th annual Digital Money Forum and we still have a few places left. They’re not free, but they’re well worth the almost insignificant delegate fee considering the incredible range of expertise and experience on offer. You can view the full agenda online over at the Digital Money Forum or you can download it here (248.3K). The Forum is now in its twelfth year, and once again promises the combination of discussion and debate, learning and fun, that has earned it the reputation as the place to be for people interested in the future of retail electronic payments. It continues to be a unique event, where interaction and invention replace product announcements and “death by Powerpoint” sales pitches. As you may know, this is a not-for-profit event that supports a variety of charities. This year we are supporting BUFFER (which provides specialist diagnostic equipment for breast cancer), Action Medical Research and Jubilee Action which helps children worldwide. This years Forum is made possible by the kindness of our sponsors Visa Europe, Monetise, WebMoney and VoicePay with support from our charity tournament sponsor ACI Worldwide.

Some come and join our experts from the World Bank, Financial Services Authority, The Economist, European Payments Council, Transport for London, Nationwide, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sidley & Austin, O2, The Guardian, Innovaro, Masabi, EAT, ABI, Finextra, Disruptive Analysis and the Free University of Brussels at the 12th annual Digital Money Forum in London on 31st March and 1st April at the Guoman Charing Cross hotel and come away with the kinds of new concepts, new friends and new business ideas that many of you have come to expect from this unique event. All delegates will receive a copy of our popular Digital Money Blook (the most interesting posts from this blog over the last year) and Larry H. White’s “Free Banking in Britain” along with “The Nudge Factor”.

Thanks for reading that. Now for the details of two terrific — and absolutely FREE — events on Monday 30th March in London. If you are interested in the future of electronic payments, you have the opportunity the spend a relaxing lunchtime and afternoon in the company of an assembly experts rare on these shores.

future, innovation, money

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Prime directive

13th March 2009by Consult HyperionLeave a comment

[Dave Birch] Thanks to the generosity of our sponsor, the StoLPan project, Consult Hyperion and city lawyers Sidley Austin will be running an free afternoon seminar on the Payment Services Directive (PSD) at the Guoman Charing Cross Hotel in London on 30th March 2009.

The seminar will comprise three sessions:

An overview of the PSD by William Long from Sidley Austin
National implementations in members states by William Long from Sidley Austin, and then after tea
A roundtable discussion (led by me) on the business impact featuring a couple of companies in the field.

Some observers think that for banks, the PSD represents cost with little benefit, but for some non-banks, the PSD represents an opportunity to get into the payment business. Why not come along and make up your own mind by discussing the directive with other experts in the field?

SEPA and PSD

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In 2018, we can start catching up with Lithuania

11th March 2009by Consult Hyperion1 Comment

[Dave Birch] One of my most frequent criticisms of the UK's national identity card scheme is that it is backward-looking, an electronic simulation of a Victorian ID card rather than an ID card for the 21st century. I gave an example of this in a talk recently by using the case of OpenID, noting that in Finland you can use your ID card to log in to OpenID, and pointing out that this bringing together of |nternet standards and national ID made sense on a number of levels. Needless to say, I have never heard OpenID mentioned in connection with the UK national ID card.

Now I hear that another country has gone over to OpenID. In this case, Lithuania.

Starting January 1st 2009 every issued Personal ID card has OpenID in it, backed up by personal digital certificate. National Certificate Center under the Ministry of Interior will be the national OpenID provider (https://openid.vrm.lt/). Provider service is currently in testing mode, it is not yet open to the general public, but it will go public anytime soon.
[From [OpenID – Eu] Republic of Lithuania goes OpenID]

Doesn't anyone else find it odd that our flagship national identity programme is so unambitious? That our roadmap to 2018 does not include services that are already rolled out in Lithuania?

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Privacy invasion by design

8th February 2009by Consult HyperionLeave a comment

[Dave Birch] I've been reading the excellent report on Privacy by Design that was published by the Information Commissioner's Office in December. As I'm sure many of you will know, the report was written by Forum friend Toby Stevens of EPG. As therefore might be expected, it is a thorough piece of work that makes practical recommendations. As I was reading through it, I began to wonder to what extent the implicit assumptions about what is "good" or "bad" (the report is not that simplistic, by the way) are purely cultural and therefore to what extent the idea of some kind of identity infrastructure that can deliver appropriate privacy, identity, credential, reputation and other structures on an international, web-wide basis is really plausible.

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Professor Lawrence H. White to kick-off the 2009 Digital Money Forum

27th January 2009by Consult Hyperion2 Comments

[Dave Birch] Lawrence White is the F. A. Hayek Professor of Economic History and the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the author of, amongst other things, “Currency and Competition” and “Free Banking in Britain 1800-1845”, books that changed my view of both the history and future of payments, so I am utterly delighted to be able to announce that Larry will be in London to give the kick-off talk at this year’s 12th annual Digital Money Forum on 31st March and 1st April 2009. You can view the full agenda online over at the Digital Money Forum or you can download it here (248.3K).

The Forum is now in its twelfth year, and once again promises the combination of discussion and debate, learning and fun, that has earned it the reputation as the place to be for people interested in the future of retail electronic payments. It continues to be a unique event, where interaction and invention replace product announcements and “death by Powerpoint” sales pitches. This year we are moving the agenda forwards again to look at some of the issues and drivers around the evolution of technology the electronic payments world.

As you may know, this is a not-for-profit event that supports a variety of charities. This year we are supporting BUFFER (which provides specialist diagnostic equipment for breast cancer), Action Medical Research and Jubilee Action which helps children worldwide. This years Forum is made possible by the kindness of our sponsors Visa Europe, Monetise, WebMoney and VoicePay with support from our charity tournament sponsor ACI Worldwide.

Once again we have decided to structure the Forum around four sessions followed by a variety of expert panels.

Session one recognises that the future of payments is linked to the future of money. if cash goes away, the cost of new entrants falls. What might they be? Private or public? Commodity or community?
Session two looks at the specific issue of security to see if biometrics and other technologies might be moving into position to make a significant impact on the payments world in the coming year.
Session three examines how successful payment schemes change societies and marketplaces, and takes an ethnographic perspective to help us to learn more about introducing new payment systems.
Session four looks at innovation in different ways: new processes, new technology and new frameworks. How can the payments sector take all of these imminent changes on board and make real innovation work.

Some come and join our experts from the World Bank, Financial Services Authority, The Economist, European Payments Council, Transport for London, Nationwide, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sidley & Austin, O2, The Guardian, Innovaro, Masabi, EAT, ABI, Finextra, Disruptive Analysis and the Free University of Brussels at the 12th annual Digital Money Forum in London on 31st March and 1st April at the Guoman Charing Cross hotel and come away with the kinds of new concepts, new friends and new business ideas that many of you have come to expect from this unique event. All delegates will receive a copy of our popular Digital Money Blook (the most interesting posts from this blog over the last year) along with “The Nudge Factor”.

Continue reading “Professor Lawrence H. White to kick-off the 2009 Digital Money Forum”

Footprints in the silicon

17th October 2008by Consult Hyperion1 Comment

[Dave Birch] I like the phrase “digital footprints” as I think it provides as useful metaphor and image. Your digital identities leave digital footprints behind and other people — perhaps people you don’t know — can follow those footprints. That’s a reasonably powerful picture to put in front of people. I was trying to come up with something like this because I was thinking about how to educate people to be aware of the new way of the world. Children, in particular, need to understand the ramifications of their new media use (not to stop them from using it, but to help them to use it more effectively). For example…

When these kids are in high school and college, will a prerequisite for dating my teenage daughter be reading my blog?
[From Digital Footprints: Raising Kids Online – Media Bullseye]

Probably. It would certainly be way for a prospective daughter-in-law to score points with me! There’s nothing wrong in helping children to lead lives online, but we must obviously do what we can to protect them and encourage responsible usage (which I think a digital identity infrastructure would do, but it’s not the only way of doing it). Who are we protecting them from, other than future in-laws? We all understand the risks, even if they are somewhat overplayed in the media and not understood at all by politicians. As I said before

so it turns out that by and large perverts don’t use social networking sites while pretending to be teenagers, but nonetheless something must be done, and who better to decide what to do than politicians.
[From Digital Identity Forum: Hard cases]

But your digital footprint isn’t only of interest to criminals and peverts, but also marketers. In other words, hiding your digital footprint away (or not creating one) isn’t a solution because allowing the right people to see your digital footprint at the right time means better products and services. In fact, if marketing could be on the basis of your digital footprint rather than a random collection of facts about you together with suppositions about group behaviour, that might be rather a good thing.

This is the future of marketing intelligence. Its no longer demographics. Identity is not worth collecting. Lets safely secure that with our customers, promise them we won’t mine their identity. But the digital footprint, that is valuable. And the social context – Like Alan Moore says, this is the Black Gold of the 21st Century, the biggest prize. We can only discover social context accurately via the mobile phone, but the companies that build upon this dimension, those companies will seem like “reading our minds” in how accurately, cannily, they will serve ever better services and products and offers and campaigns for us.
[From Communities Dominate Brands: Datamining our identity, digital footprint, and social context]

We need a way to manage the connections between other people, our footprints and our selves.

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Topical suggestions

16th October 2008by Consult Hyperion3 Comments

[Dave Birch] Well, I’m in the process of putting together the agenda for next year’s 12th annual Digital Money Forum which will be held at the Guoman Hotel (the same venue as last year — the hotel above Charing Cross Station which we liked so much that we’re going back) on 31st March and 1st April 2009. Fortunately, as payments seems to be the only part of the banking business that is bringing in any money, we’ve already had a few people say that they’re looking forward to coming along and we already have sponsors who have committed to support us. This will all be announced properly next week. Meanwhile… As you know, over the years the Forum has built up a reputation as the place to go to discuss the future of retail electronic payments with people who are a little ahead of the curve and the delegates appreciate that we always try to move the agenda on to reflect the shifting leading edge of thinking on the future of money. I’ve already got a few ideas for key themes, but would appreciate some help from Digital Money Denizens before finalising the agenda, as I’ve been sidetracked by the recent nationalisation of the banking industry, imploding world economy and impending recession.

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Charlie Edwards, DEMOS

20th August 2008by Consult HyperionLeave a comment

[Dave Birch] Charlie Edwards is a senior researcher at the London “think tank” DEMOS. He writes, lectures and consults on national security, resilience, defence and intelligence. He works with international institutions, government departments, companies, and NGOs. A regular commentator in the national and international media, in this podcast he discusses the DEMOS essay collection “UK Confidential“, reflecting on issues of privacy and identity in the modern age.

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UK Confidential

2nd July 2008by Consult Hyperion4 Comments

[Dave Birch] The excellent DEMOS report on privacy “UK Confidential” contains contributions from many of the people i regard as thought leaders in the field and has ideas aplenty. It was supported by BT “in the interests of furthering public debate”, which it certainly does. I’m curious about the extent to which the “tag line” on the report is true or not. It says “an open society depends on individuals rediscovering the social value of privacy”. Is it really for individuals? It seems to me that it is something that needs to be woven into the fabric of society — partly through the technological implementation of identity, the kind of thing that interests me greatly — because it’s a social good.

Anyway, in the introduction, Charlie Edwards and Catherine Fieschi say that “We lack the language to discuss privacy holistically. We use outdated frames of reference that are no longer adequate to discuss the contemporary landscape of privacy concerns or re-frame complex issues about data protection and vulnerability in other terms”. I couldn’t agree more — I’ve been writing a magazine article arguing, similarly, that both the government and its critics on identity management share this outdated frame of reference (which I’ve labelled “Orwellian”) — and there’s no doubt that it is a major impediment, a contributing factor to the privacy logjam we’re now stuck in, where privacy and security are seen as opposites that we have to balance in some way. I don’t want to dip into the “what is privacy” discussion here, except to note that it is important not to make the mistake of conflating a brief period of essentially urban anonymity with privacy and therefore make privacy something we can return to or get back in some way: Most people, throughout most of history, have had no privacy whatsoever.
The essential core of privacy in a modern context, I think, must be built around choice and consent (this is why I’m looking forward to our participation in a couple of Technology Strategy Board projects on Privacy & Consent later in the year). I tend to see these as important components of future consumer propositions and therefore viable if chosen carefully — there’s no point coming with great privacy plans that business will never implement. They call the privacy component of an exchange an “invisible transaction”, which is nice way of putting it. If companies can find privacy-enhancing processes that go with the grain of business, then surely they will promote them (much as they have begun to promote “green” elements of their operations).
In the conclusion Charlie and Catherine say that “our collective ignorance means that we get the privacy we deserve” but I’m not sure I’d be so negative. People are ignorant about lots of things, but they expect professionals (eg, us, I hope) to make good decisions for them. I’m happy to contribute to that debate.

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