THE REGULATORY FUTURE OF DIGITAL IDENTITY

Friday, 19th February 2010, 9 am – 5 pm

Venue: The University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, Room G.07

This is a one day workshop aimed at exploring the regulatory future of digital identity in the light of global differences in identity culture and law with experts from the legal, technical and policy domains.

Digital identity (broadly referring to the digital representation of an entity) has attained great significance in the light of its social, economic and legal ramifications. The digital identity realm encompasses a wide range of problems (like identity fraud, deception), challenges (e.g. pervasiveness, invisibility or seamlessness of digital identity technologies) and issues (for instance, liberty, privacy, control of digital identities, trust).

The regulation of digital identity is a complex phenomenon, given the contextual and ever changing nature of digital identity and the plurality of stakeholder interests. And an in-depth exploration of the field brings into focus how individualism centric the digital identity regulatory discourse is, evidenced by leading developments in the digital identity management and regulatory sectors, particularly in Europe and Canada. But digital identity is both an international and local creature that makes its play in different jurisdictions with different social and legal cultures. For instance, India is a phenomenal digital identity market in the process of implementing law that particularly impacts digital identity. But India does not have a social or legal culture of digital identity protection equivalent to the digitally advanced countries like for instance, the United Kingdom.

In such cases, and to help other countries, in the same position as India, with different socio-legal orientations, the workshop will explore some possible regulatory solutions with the intent of determining the best way forward for the regulatory future of digital identity.

Sponsored by: The University of Edinburgh Development Trust Small Projects Grants and SCRIPT.

Please pre-register your attendance with Simone-Louise Hull:simone.hull@ed.ac.uk
For further details, contact Rowena Rodrigues:R.E.Rodrigues@sms.ed.ac.uk