Linking - 23rd

Linking

DATE: November 20th, 2012

TIME: 16:30

ROOM: 1

TOPIC: Identity linking

CONVENER: Lalla

SCRIBE: Victoriano

# of ATTENDEES: 10

MAIN ISSUES DISCUSSED

1. Linking identities at an SP, either two separate identities from two institutions or a social identity and an institutional identity.
   Lalla and Joost offered to use cases to set the stage.
   Lalla's use case was an user that needs a service that is not still connected to her institution, so she uses her social identity and goes through a complex registration process. Then, the service is connected to the institution and, for any number of reasons, the user prefers to use the institutional identity, but, at the same time, does not want to loose all the information from the previous registration.
   Joost's use case comes from a real situation they have had in SURFfederatie where University A students needed a University B.
   Joost's solution has been an "account linking proxy service" where users can link both accounts.
2. A global transportable identity.
   The group discussed that a globally unique transportable identifier, whatever that happens to be, would be a useful tool for this problem space.
   ORCID was put on the table, but the group concluded that it has a serious identity bootstrapping design flaw that might not be solvable/solved in the foreseeable future, this makes it less useful than it could be.
   Hideaki brought up the issue that a centralised global service for this kind of identity would not be a great idea. But, if that can be somehow made fault/disaster tolerant "on the cloud", with the wide meaning of "cloud", that is not as bad, even acceptable.

ACTIVITIES GOING FORWARD / NEXT STEPS

1. User self-inflicted privacy leaking should be take into account.
2. The account proxy service could be an interesting topic to investigate both for federations, as a service, as a srvice, and for SPs.
3. Maybe it is possible to help ORCID with their bootstrap problem, but the group doubts.
4. At least in Europe, STORK might be of some help.