[Openid-specs-heart] The Number and Ownership of Authorization Servers.

Aaron Seib aaron.seib at nate-trust.org
Tue Dec 15 18:25:46 UTC 2015


“The consumer should be supported in choosing a standards based authorization service (and\or identity provider) that is independently operated by the consumer themselves (build or buy) or by someone that they have selected (outsourced where the consumer pays a third party to do this on their behalf or allows another to sponsor its operation on their behalf).  The independently operated service may be operated publically (the state of Deleware may make one available to all Delewarians) or privately (the third party that gets paid by the consumer or the sponsor of the consumer) and or the consumer may elect to leverage one operated by the Resource owner.”

 

I think that answers the question of ownership.

 

Now –I don’t think there is an answer to the number of AS’ a person may have.  Clearer we all start with having 0.  Some people may work their way up to having one or more.  I gather that some consumers will want more than one but I don’t think I internalized the why but I may not have to know the why.  If I understand correctly the RO can only ever rely on one on a transaction basis.  The rule could be to always use the latest one I pointed you to.  

 

In a practical sense each RS may have to have on set up for those consumers that haven’t got one otherwise.  So maybe that is the default behavior?  A RO should disclose nothing until the consumer has indicated which AS to use and then only use the latest one that they pointed you to.

 

I don’t think we can get any more granular then that right?  You might have 3 AS that you have configured and you gave the enterprise that owns the RS where your mental health data one the URL for your AS1, the enterprise that has your physical therapy records the URL for AS2 and the PCP you have seen since you lived at home with your mom is still using AS3.

 

Aaron Seib, CEO

@CaptBlueButton 

 (o) 301-540-2311

(m) 301-326-6843



 

From: Eve Maler [mailto:eve.maler at forgerock.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 12:38 PM
To: Aaron Seib
Cc: openid-specs-heart at lists.openid.net
Subject: Re: [Openid-specs-heart] The Number and Ownership of Authorization Servers.

 

Eliding old text below to make the thread shorter...

 

Here's my reading. The phrase is a term of art originally crafted by Adrian. It's a bit analogous to business/IT decisions about "build, buy, or outsource", only applied to individuals' ability to be autonomous and have sovereignty over their own lives (decisional autonomy, a key component of privacy writ large) and data (a key component of data privacy).

 

build: Alice could literally write the AS code herself and stand up her own service, say, under her deck at home on her own hardware, or on a "blade server" at her ISP.

buy: Alice could personally invest the time to investigate and contract with a software solution supplier and stand up her own service, again on one of the above hardware choices.

outsource: Alice could survey the available AS SaaS services on the market and choose one.

 

Adrian's HIE of One open-source project makes some of the above scenarios possible.

 

You can imagine the layers of "terms of service" or "EULA" or whatever that would/could apply at each level of the hardware/software/trust relationship stack, and we wouldn't want to stick our noses into 99% of it except where the services and apps and operators first have to "meet" at a technical level. The UMA WG, in fact, is only sticking its nose into the UMA-specific part of it, plus some exemplar agreements to give a flavor of what's possible in those larger terms of service, EULAs, consent receipts, etc. (The consent receipts might have a larger proportion of UMA-specific content in them than the others!)

Eve Maler
ForgeRock Office of the CTO | VP Innovation & Emerging Technology
Cell +1 425.345.6756 | Skype: xmlgrrl | Twitter: @xmlgrrl
Join our ForgeRock.org OpenUMA <http://forgerock.org/openuma/>  community!

 

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 9:25 AM, Aaron Seib <aaron.seib at nate-trust.org> wrote:

Okay – so what is the answer?  I am assuming that the first case that argued that the topic of number and ownership of AS should be out of scope is off but the language in the charter isn’t clear to me yet… 

 

Support independent authorization services and identity providers, to be chosen by people who may build, run, or outsource these services.

 

Support is clear to me – it implies that it should allow for so the first word I am good with.

 

What is meant by an independent authorization service?  Specifically what are we saying?  Independent as in not ran by the government (Private) or independent as in not ran by either the Resource Owner or the person that the data is about (the consumer who is the subject of the PHI)?

 

What is meant by “To be chosen by people”?  We got all kinds of people.  The guy who runs the lottery machine down the street is a people.  At least his mom thinks so.  

 

Was it meant to say that a consumer has a right to choose the AS and IdP that they want used?  That would be clearer if it said it that way.  The last eight words seem to be tacked onto the end ‘who may build, run or outsource these services’.

 

I am assuming it was intended to mean that “The consumer should be supported in choosing a standards based authorization service (and\or identity provider) that is independently operated by the consumer themselves or by someone that they have selected.  The independently operated service may be operated publically or privately and the consumer may elect to leverage one operated by the Resource owner.”

 

I presume this is something that is doable, right?  The Resource Owner doesn’t incur any additional burdens by selecting the independent AS preferred by the consumer do they?  If they do we are going to have to figure out how to limit that liability or they will never do it, right?

 

I think the perception of a privacy risk is most prevalent when the resource owner is also the operator of the authorization server selected by the consumer.  The consumer should be familiar with those risk before making that choice and this should not be referred to as an independent AS, right?  

 

The notion of which Independent AS’ are trustworthy (and if a Resource Owner operated AS could be trusted) is out of scope but I don’t think that implies that their existence doesn’t have to be acknowledged to get where we are going.  Right?

 

From: Eve Maler [mailto:eve.maler at forgerock.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 11:24 AM
To: Aaron Seib
Cc: Adrian Gropper; Crandall, Glen; openid-specs-heart at lists.openid.net


Subject: Re: [Openid-specs-heart] The Number and Ownership of Authorization Servers.

 

Actually, what's in our charter related to number/ownership/trust around (UMA) authorization servers would probably be these passages <http://openid.net/wg/heart/charter/> :

*	"The following efforts are out of scope: ... Development of related trust frameworks."
*	(non-normative background info:) "PoF’s primary focus is on privacy and security protocols that could demonstrate machine-executable representation of patient authorization and consent.  At the center of the effort is the notion that both implicit and explicit authorizations are necessary for the exchange. The authorization could be managed through a recognized/trusted Patient Authorization Service that the patient to could use mediate the exchange of their own personal health from a number of patient portals that they may have access to."
*	"The specifications must meet the following basic requirements, in addition to specific use cases and requirements later identified by this Working Group: ... Support independent authorization services and identity providers, to be chosen by people who may build, run, or outsource these services."

What are the technical requirements for profiling the specs to support an AS that serves a single RO (as in Adrian's vision), vs. the business and legal requirements for supporting an AS that serves a single RO? If we identify those, then we'll be within the reasonable limits of our charter. I don't think there are many, if any.

 

Regarding what an individual would prefer in their lives, I'm guessing they would prefer a single AS, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal... They might also prefer a single login account in their lives -- but lots of people, faced with "social" federated login at yet another website/web app, still choose to create yet another local login instead because logging in with Facebook gives them a creepy feeling. Many of us at this table have worked hard to make a new reality possible, so that people could have the choice of logging in with a "trusted credential" of a certain type that wouldn't feel creepy but natural instead. And some of us are working on an even bolder vision, the choice of substituting a "third-party" outsourced service with a 100% trusted built/run one.


Eve Maler
ForgeRock Office of the CTO | VP Innovation & Emerging Technology
Cell +1 425.345.6756 <tel:%2B1%20425.345.6756>  | Skype: xmlgrrl | Twitter: @xmlgrrl
Join our ForgeRock.org OpenUMA <http://forgerock.org/openuma/>  community!

 

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