Practical versus moral identities in identity management

Abstract

Over the past decade Identity Management has become a central theme in information technology, policy, and administration in the public and private sectors. In these contexts the term 'Identity Management' is used primarily to refer to ways and methods of dealing with registration and authorization issues regarding persons in organizational and service-oriented domains. Especially due to the growing range of choices and options for, and the enhanced autonomy and rights of, employees, citizens, and customers, there is a growing demand for systems that enable the regulation of rights, duties, responsibilities, entitlements and access of innumerable people simultaneously. 'Identity Management' or 'Identity Management Systems' have become important headings under which such systems are designed and implemented. But there is another meaning of the term 'identity management', which is clearly related and which has gained currency. This second construal refers to the need to manage our moral identities and our identity related information. This paper explores the relation between the management of our (moral) identities and 'Identity Management' as conceptualized in IT discourse.

Identity Management Systems: Singular Identities and Multiple Moral Issues

“…Indeed, no matter how accurate a description of a person can be including one's appearance, behavior, habits, and beliefs such a description is inevitably incomplete compared to the sum of experiences, memories and beliefs about oneself experienced by an individual (Manders-Huits and Hoven, 2008). In the context of IM systems this principle highlights the risk of an imposition of purely administrative notion of identity and a reductionist treatment of individual users as mere objects of computation (Manders-Huits, 2010). This observation on the epistemically privileged position translates into the claim that an individual should have a say in the construction or interpretation of one's identity in IM.…”

The Ethics of Computing

“…Papers discussing identity implicitly acknowledged this need for control, considering the importance of identity maintenance in the context of autonomy (n = 7), harm (n = 9), and privacy (n = 16). As an example, control over self-identity through management of information used to construct identity (e.g., Floridi [2011]) can be grounded by a desire to respect individual autonomy [Manders-Huits 2010]. Potential harms to an individual's right to self-identity were linked to violations of privacy, wherein a lack of control over person data change those with access view and interact with the user.…”

Sovereignty, privacy, and ethics in blockchain-based identity management systems

“…The problem with this approach is that even if such a conceptual model explicitly abstracts away from the moral-philosophical considerations it does not mean that the resulting solution will be morally neutral. As Manders-Huits ( 2010 ) argues, any human identity management system inevitably carries a special set of moral concerns. Primary of which is a nominalisation of identity—the reduction of personal identity to a set of forensic descriptions; a process that ignores fundamental moral considerations of respect for persons.…”