Memdeklaro - Self declaration of identity (https://memdeklaro.org/) empowers people to self-declare their own identity, without third parties, surveillance or censorship. Aiming to present an alternative to the exclusionary state monopoly on identity, Memdeklaro is accessible to everyone, and is a non-government and non-corporate project, similar to Garry Davis’s World Passport and Digitalcourage’s ID with self-chosen data. Memdeklaro’s self declaration generator, ebook, presentation and webpage are in the public domain: https://github.com/memdeklaro
I’m totally digging the sentiment, but I struggle to understand the practical aspects. What use is this ID, if realistically no institution is gonna accept it? What’s stopping me from claiming that i’m Marie Skłodowska-Curie? How can I trust that someone presenting me with such an ID is a freedom-loving stateless refugee, and not a criminal faking their identity?
Okay, i found a use case 😉 Where I live, you can get anonymous STI testing, and at the reception they identify you by first name and date of birth that you filled out online – but since it’s communicated verbally, everyone in the waiting room can hear.
That’s where Memdeklaro could come in: they already trust whatever name and DoB you give them verbally, so they might just as well trust a piece of plastic that’s conveniently available in your wallet.
This seems like a solution looking for a problem.
How can I or the people around me trust this when it’s licensed under unlicense?
If governments and companies decide to adopt this I feel like only then will this become a real useful tool.
As it is currently, it’s an interesting idea that needs a bit more development time on the initial concept or pitch.
Why is no license a red flag? Other than failing to protect future developments from trivial enshittification and takeover, anyways…
Companies don’t like legally-questionable (in their mind at least) licenses. If you look at the people who use this license, it’s mostly very small personal projects.
That’s orthogonal to why it is bad. Many licenses are “legally questionable” for closed corporations to use.
