[OpenID-Specs-eKYC-IDA] Fwd: Usage of scopes and purposes when requesting verified claims

[Jaap Francke]

Hi,

Meanwhile, we’ve signed the IPR paperwork, so I’m re-submitting my feedback.
Kind regards,

Jaap

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jaap Francke <jaap.francke at iwelcome.com<mailto:jaap.francke at iwelcome.com>>
Subject: Usage of scopes and purposes when requesting verified claims
Date: 31 March 2020 at 18:01:32 CEST
To: openid-specs-ekyc-ida at lists.openid.net<mailto:openid-specs-ekyc-ida at lists.openid.net>

Hi everybody,

I’m new on this mailing list, thanks for letting me in ;-).
I have potentially missed previous feedback or conversation around the Identity Assurance specification, but that shouldn’t stop me from sharing my views.

As a Product Manager at iWelcome, I am very interested in Identity Assurance. I’ve been involved in a number of projects where verified claims are a key element to the identity management solution. In the Netherlands, for example, consumer banks are using the IDIN schema to act as a claim provider for identity proofing purposes.
This is beneficial to Insurance companies that can sell certain products only to proven identities.

My feedback on the specs is below, I’m interested to see your responses, thanks.

Kind regards

Jaap Francke
CIAM Product manager @ iWelcome.


———

https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-4-identity-assurance-1_0.html

The "OIDC for identity Assurance” specs introduce a number of claims, in addition to the ones specificied by OIDC core.
In OIDC Core, there are 2 mechanisms to request claims:
- one is by usage of OAuth-scopes, (section 5.4 of Core spec)
- one by usage of the “claims” parameter in the request. (section 5.5 of Core spec)
Section 5 of the OIDC—identity-assurance specs indicate the usage of the claims pararameter. This may suggest it’s the only mechanism to be used in the context of Identity Assurance.
My view is that also the ’scope’ mechanism should be supported and may even be preferred for certain use cases.
Please enhance the specification to be more explicit about usage of scopes as a means to request verified claims.

Usage of ’scope’ to request verified claims makes sense to me because in a typical “identity landscape” the requested claims do not vary on a request-by-request basis, but instead are a reflection of an RP’s functionality which can be rather static. By pre-defining/configuring scopes at the OP (potentially in terms of ’essential’, ’trust_framework’, etc..), the scope is essentially a profile of the claim request. This would not only simplify the protocol implementation both at the RP and OP side, but it would also make it easier for the OP to make the authorisation decision whether or not the RP will be granted the requested verified claims. 'It is at the discretion of the OP to decide whether the requested verification data is provided to the RP.’ Making this decision is much easier when a request includes a scope as a reference to a predefined profile of requested end-user claims and associated verification data. My suggestion is to consider including such a mechanism in the specifications.

My second observation is about the optional ‘purpose’ parameter in a claims request. The specs state that the OP MUST display this purpose in the respective user consent screen(s) in order to inform the user about the designated use of the data to be transferred or the authorization to be approved. If the parameter purpose is not present in the request, the OP MAY display a value that was pre-configured for the respective RP.’
This part of the specification assumes or seems to imply that the user gets a consent screen every time that verified data is requested. I think that this is not realistic:
- it is common practice that certain consents are included in a Privacy Policy (PP) and/or Terms of Service (ToS). The user gives his consent once and the consent is persisted at the OP for future purposes.
- if not in PP or ToS, a consent screen may be presented only ‘once’ and the user’s consent is taken to be valid for the next 6 months (as an example)
- in some situations there are other legal grounds/reasons/purposes to request the claims and verification data. Besides ‘consent’, the European GDPR indicates other legal grounds (contract, vital interest, legal obligation, ..). When an RP asks for a verified claim, it may do so based on a legal obligation and the user’s consent would not be needed.
- Privacy regulations aim at situations where personal data is exchanged between legal entities (data controllers, data processors). From an IT perspective, the OP and the RP may be operated by the same entity (for example an Insurance company as data controller that is both the data controller for the OP and various RPs) so consent would not apply at the moment of requesting the claim. The consent should already have been given at the moment the personal data was provided to the OP.
My proposal would be that the ‘purpose’ could be a string (as per current specification) or a reference to a ‘purpose’ that has already been established somewhere. This approach makes it easier for the OP to make the decision to provide the requested data or not.

Furthermore, it could be considered to extend the list of verification methods with the ones defined by NISTIR 8112.

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