I think Diaspora has the best description of a valid digital identity. But I still kept thinking I’d never trust my existence to the polis/state keeping my private key private.
In Diaspora if someone steals your private cert then they become you or are at least indistinguishable to everyone else from you. I’ve never seen a super solid way to prevent this when everyone and everything is digital.
They skipped this in Altered Carbon and it was just a “rule.”
Memorizing a GUID wouldn’t work because someone could read it from your memory.
Stephenson did this well, I think, in Dodge with the PURDAH as it was an AI trained on every characteristic of an individual through their life so it was impossible to fake. Still hand waving, but logically consistent hand waving for an id that spans consciousness transferring from biology to digital.
In Diaspora if someone steals your private cert then they become you or are at least indistinguishable to everyone else from you. I’ve never seen a super solid way to prevent this when everyone and everything is digital.