MVP and the story of twins

This story may have a funny ending (dependening upon your sense of humor) or an absolute disaster of me losing one or more linkedIn contacts but hey — here it is….

Some of you know my transitioning to Digitial Trust and also a lot of work we are putting for ADI Association in bringing together a lot of security focussed folks for Human Digital Identities. It is all very interesting but tech stuff later, this is just a conversational discussion which I thought I could share.

Please note that there are hyper-hyper-hyper sensitivities attached with this conversation and its almost like top-top-top secret. (oooohhh I am soo scared)

Context: We are tring to achieve a unique digital identity for a human or IoT device.

(Zoom call)

Them: Can’t do it.

Me: Why do you say so?

Them: If there are two twins, you cannot separate their identities?

Me: We can take thier biometric hash. It should be unique.

Them: You cannot take any biometric data.

Me: Why not?

Them: PII

Me: hmm…its the “hash” not the exact biometric ….

Them: No

Me: SSN ? DL?

Them: No

Me: Date of Birth?

Them: You don’t understand twins. If two twins are born in the same town, same place — — — ANNND , their parents decide to name them SAME (lets say Patrick Sunday) — — the Hash would be the same.

Me: (in my mind) How retarded are the parents? Why would anyone name their two kids with the same First Name — let alone Twins ?

Me: (pretending) …. yeah … totally makes sense…. we should discuss this in the next meeting.

Me: (IM) WTF

Me: (to Team) — they liked our idea. Lets proceed with our MVP.

All is good in paradise.