RealMe authentication and any other e-citizen identities
Incorporating RealMe authentication could be useful in verifying the identities of users that sign up and wish to join groups - useful to organisations which require some form of security like that, even when using Loomio, in New Zealand especially.
Other nations may provide e-citizen identities too, and it would be great to have those options available as well. Estonia for instance.
Another reason for incorporating e-citizen identities is to verify proof of address and personhood, etc. and whether they are eligible for membership to a particular Loomio group.
In essence, Loomio could eventually become one stop go to place for any association to formally organise their members - Loomio would provide services of facilitating the organisation of the skeletal infrastructure of any group or association whatsoever.
There are some serious privacy issues we need to consider before we use or endorse RealMe. Thomas Beagles of Tech Liberty has written some articles about it which are well worth a read.
True, well, maybe that is an issue more at the govt end of policy. In any case, if govt decided they were keen to adopt the Loomio platform as a way to consult communities or put govt decision making more directly in the community's hands, then something like support for RealMe integration might become useful.
Not saying to endorse the current "RealMe", just that if it might be useful to choose as an alternative way to login with an "identity" - verified or not.
E.g. we already can use our Google & Facebook e-identity, Twitter is another common one, why not add additional support for people to use RealMe also if they so pleased.
- Uses: Say in a particular group anyone might apply to join, however if the group was purposed for "official citizen use", then only those members that have verified RealMe accounts would be able to vote on proposals or perhaps even the only ones contributing to discussion. All other members can only observe and speculate as if the deliberations are open to public scrutiny, unless and until they have added RealMe verification to their Loomio account then they can fully participate.
I think lots of us want a very secure, customizable, distributed, open source ID/ authentication system which operates across many platforms. I believe that fits well into the Open App Ecosystem modular software vision which you may or may not have heard of yet, @williamasiata . I'm not sure yet if anyone's working on a suitable authentication app-- any opinions about OneName here? Their front page currently indicates:
"Log in to apps and websites without a password
(coming soon)"
Tagging you @ahdinosaur in case you have any specific opinions or vision on this front.
An additional benefit of this, is if you wished to export a Loomio proposal in the form of a petition to a govt, then a number of the voters would have legally verified identities - therefore the petition would be pretty legit.