December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

Same selves?

Identification of identity:a social perspective

from a legal-philosophical point of view

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

What is identity?What is identification?

• identification in terms of correlations

• presumes comparability

• identification as ipse

• uniqueness in sense of incomparability

sameness selfhood

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

sameness

• verification• authentification• comparison with

template/profile in(1)central database(2)on chip

• chains of id’s

3rd person perspective

selfhood

• embodied• situated• relational• fuzzy• underdetermined• performative

1st person perspective

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

Technology is neither good nor bad,

nor is it neutral

Kevin Kranzberg

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

If self-identity is:

• interactional;• under permanent (re)construction;• shifting in time and between different

(role-)sets;• embodied;• experiencing the world through artefacts

(technologies like eyeglasses or cars)

• than identification based on sameness (instrumented by id-technologies) co-produces identity in the sense of selfhood, while at the same time selfhood co-produces sameness-id.

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

• Latour’s production of hybrids: • co-production of humans and non-humans

• Roger Clarke’s digital persona• (digital biography via continuous data-traces

and data-tracing• (profiles: correlated humans

• relation to the concept of legal persona

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

• The legal and political concept of subject (persona) is constitutive for democracy and rule of law.

• If rule of law safeguards the constitution of a system that allows a minority to become majority, while the majority rules,

• than this implies facilitating and protecting the underdeterminacy of the identity of subjects.

• Need to rethink identity in information society especially the distinction and the relation between sameness-id and selfhood-id

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

• As to the definition of identity and identification, a suggestion to create room for:

• the distinction between selfhood-id and sameness-id

• acknowledgement of co-production, hybrids, profiles

• the underdeterminate character of selfhood-id (freedom) in combination with the need for determination of the sameness-id (certainty, security)

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

de Hert/Gutwirth• selfhood/sameness

• legal tools of opacity• limits to power• shields• protection of autonomy• prohibitions

• example: privacy protection

• facilitation & protection of selfhood, by means of sameness (legal and technological)

• sameness/selfhood

• legal tools of transparency• channeling of power• accountability and

controlability of power

• example: data protection

• facilitation & protection of selfhood, by means of sameness (legal and technological)

December 2, 2003 WP2 kick-off meeting

definition identifiabilityinspired by the work done by Marit Hansen and her

group and comments of D-O Jaquet Chiffelle

• Identifiability (in sense of sameness/correlations) is the possibility of being individualized (detected) within a set of subjects, the identifiability-set.

• An identity (in sense of sameness/correlations) is any subset of correlations that render an individual detectable within a set of individuals, the identifiability-set

• Now take fuzzy-set logic into account and you come very close to identifiability in the sense of selfhood.

• Identifiability (in sense selfhood) is interactional, performative and underdetermined