The Path to Self-sovereign Identity

https://base-camp.me/2020/12/23/passport-summit-the-path-to-self-sovereign-identity/

Who am I?

What is identity?

How has identity been held in the past? Abused and twisted in the past? Wrestled away from the individual in the past – and present?

And how can identity be returned to the people? Used to empower individuals? To help them transition to and through the next part of their life’s journey?

Complex questions with complex answers. But just because a question may be difficult or uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not worth asking.

These questions, and more, were asked at the Passport Summit at BaseCamp. Onsite for the event was BaseCamp CEO Brett M., President Greg L., COO Tom C., and VP of Sales Pat D., along with BaseCamp guide Kelsey P. and a host of virtual participants.

And unlike thousands of conversations taking place across the boardrooms of America, this difficult conversation began with an honest and painful look inward, an exploration of how people, organizations and governments have taken something as fundamental as identity and used it in harmful ways that obscure the individual and the individual’s rights – ways that should never be repeated again.

It started with a collage.

“In this collage, you see the word ‘identity’, and some of the images you see here are current tools that are used to manage identity,” said Kelsey P. as the group first approached the artwork. “You see the passport, the social security card, the driver’s license – maybe a fingerprint.”

But identity, noted Kelsey, is so much more than a government-issued piece of paper.

“There’s cultural heritage, there are dreams, ambitions, relationships and stories that these forms of identity don’t encompass, and they don’t tell you who someone is or what they represent,” she added.

Looking at the examples of identity – its passports, driver’s licenses, social security cards – and the ways identity has been abused in the past – the Holocaust, the Tuskegee Experiment, sex trafficking, or the events in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian, when over 5,000 Haitians were left stranded to die when they weren’t able to produce passports to leave the destroyed island – it became clear that the ways our world approaches identity can have devastating consequences for its people.

“Here we have a broken identity, because every piece of identity people use has been given to them by a government,” said Brett M., “which means no one is in control of their identity. It can be taken.” What’s more, he added, “It doesn’t include the real person’s Self. [It’s incomplete,] it only includes limited metrics.”

But BaseCamp aims to change this.

What followed over the next two days was a series of intense conversations surrounding identity and the ways it can be protected and used to empower individuals, mixed with exhilarating excursions designed to clear the mind, create a rush of adrenaline, and focus its participants on the monumental task ahead. The team rode an airboat through the intracoastal marshes of North Carolina, tore through the mud in Polaris RZRs at Clam Bay, and took to jet skis across the frigid winter ocean.

On the last day, to commemorate the difficult conversations had and the groundwork they’d laid together, Brett, Greg, Tom and Pat launched model rockets they had built themselves into the sky. To the foursome, the rockets were a symbol. Proof that if you know and own who you are, where you’re headed, and who and what you need to get there, there’s nothing that can stop you from reaching the world’s greatest heights.

“There are moments in the past where forms of identification have been used to strip people of their identity,” said Tom. “We want to be empowering and strengthening. To help people create what their identity is going to be, and to choose to share that only as they see fit.”

Self Sovereign Digital Identity – a revolutionary idea born at Basecamp. Learn from the past. Do not allow our mistakes to define our present. And empower people to control their Identity, their Self, and their Future.