Following this
cognitive transition, an infant or child becomes able to establish symbolic
references to other people; they begin to learn names and with this facility
comes the further ability to associate other salient information with that
name. In other words, we begin to establish our own assessment of the
experiential identity of persons we encounter within our lives. This forms a
second enrollment process; that for experiential identity. The two forms of
identity work hand in hand as a basis for trust within the informal or formal
policy infrastructures in which we live our lives. Most such infrastructures
have some passage event that signifies the completion of the act of enrollment.
Within some social groups, there may be a physiological basis for such an
event; for example, the achievement of puberty. At this point, boys become men
and girls become women. A variety of associated policies may well come into
play at this point. We view these as modifications to the authorization states
associated with specific differential identities and we’ll discuss these in
greater detail in the following sections.
So, within the
realm of the transcendent personal device, how do we begin the enrollment
process for the general population to be encompassed by the trust
infrastructure? Since our initial system is predicated upon conducting a
census, we might speculate on a process that begins with a large number of
census takers, each equipped with a transcendent personal device. Each device
could be tightly bound to its bearer through issuance within a secure facility.
For example, within the confines of a few, central census offices the
individual devices could be imprinted with the biometrics of their specific census
taker by simply having the bearer take a picture of her or his own iris
patterns and enter two thumbprints into the device while it is in a trusted issuance state under the control of a
census office supervisor. While in this state, the bearer’s biometrics could be
entered into the device’s secure core agent as part of an authority credential
that controls subsequent operation of the device and limits it to actions
enabled by the specific census taker. Only by subsequently providing the
correct bearer biometrics can the device be placed in an operational state.
Otherwise, the device is essentially a high-tech paperweight.
Now, we have a
collection of census takers, each in possession of a transcendent personal
device trusted by the census system. The primary purpose of these particular
devices is to acquire the biometric markers of people for the purpose of
counting them. Obviously, these transcendent personal devices may be useful for
much more than this simple task, but it’s important to note that they allow
this relatively simple task to be imbued with a great deal of trust. This
process of counting is highly resilient in the face of superfluous entry of
redundant biometrics. So, it is perfectly all right for census takers to
attempt to count the same person more than once. The transcendent personal
device simply accepts the entry of one or more biometrics and transmits them to
the census database that comprises an identity registry for the population. As
part of this enrollment operation, the census database performs an
identification process as we have previously defined it. It performs a
comparison of the new biometric images to all the biometric image sets
currently contained in the database. If there is no match, then the biometric
images are added to the database and the count of the total number of people in
the census is incremented by one. It then becomes the purpose of census takers
to encounter as many people as possible and to count them. The capture of
biometric images such as iris patterns or fingerprints is non-invasive. Hence,
the counting process itself requires no more than a few seconds to perform and
privacy can be protected, as there is no legal mandate at this time to
associate each person’s name with their biometric images. As the primary
facility for the count, the census database needs to ascertain that the
enrollment transcendent personal device is operating within the proper physical
confines of the census by obtaining an indication of physical location; perhaps
through a trusted GPS signal from the device. It can then tag each biometric
marker with a time-stamp and a location-stamp in order to establish the seminal
trust point of each differential identity. The differential identity registry
is now a repository of biometric markers that can establish differential
identities within the social
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