The U.S. Division of Homeland Safety’s (DHS) startup booster, the Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP), renewed its hunt for interoperable, blo
The U.S. Division of Homeland Safety’s (DHS) startup booster, the Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP), renewed its hunt for interoperable, blockchain-based anti-counterfeiting initiatives at a digital Trade Day on Tuesday.
SVIP officers supplied startups a recent batch of use circumstances – an alternative choice to Social Safety numbers; e-commerce, meals and pure gasoline provide chain traceability initiatives; and a vital employee license impressed by COVID-19 – plus the identical $800,000 in funding and potential to contract with the federal government that they’ve wooed first-time federal companions with previously.
Coming two years after SVIP first ventured into the realm of distributed applied sciences and forgeries and 4 years into the Division’s non-public sector blockchain efforts, the renewed name highlighted the extent to which this vigorous nook of DHS has courted and funded startups constructing blockchain options for a cupboard division desirous to deploy them.
“We’re within the enterprise of discovering world expertise to resolve our native issues,” mentioned Anil John, SVIP’s technical director on the occasion. “We’re not within the enterprise of doing science experiments.”
SVIP beforehand bankrolled Factom, Mavennet, SecureKey, Digital Bazaar and others’ respective efforts to construct DHS every part from data-securing Border Patrol digicam platforms to timber credential mechanisms. A part of the Science and Expertise Directorate, this system has handed out thousands and thousands in funding.
John, who is called the “Blockchain Guru” of DHS, challenged the digital occasion’s 300 contributors to pitch deployable instruments for the Privateness Workplace, U.S. Customs and Border Safety (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Companies (USCIS), the three DHS branches posing SVIP’s 5 new use circumstances.
Revamping the Social Safety quantity
Although the Silicon Valley Innovation Program usually focuses on funding options for inner DHS issues, its name on behalf of the DHS Privateness Workplace supplied startups the uncommon alternative to create a software that touches almost each particular person within the nation: an alternative choice to the Social Safety quantity (SSN).
“We’re not on the market to exchange SSN, we’re there to create one thing that folks can share backwards and forwards with out leaking [personally identifiable information],” mentioned David Linder, the senior director for Privateness Coverage and Oversight at DHS.
Such a software may handle some of the urgent however seemingly insurmountable privateness conundrums in American life. The SSN – the de-facto nationwide identification quantity and in addition a gateway to monetary companies, well being care and numerous different companies – is a extremely insecure means of demonstrating one’s identification.
The Privateness Workplace desires startups to give you an interoperable different that DHS can use internally. Certainly, a 2019 directive mandates that DHS part the quantity out.
However Linder advised startups that their options may, and will, preserve wider makes use of in thoughts.
“We really feel like an actual answer is that this working past DHS,” he mentioned. “We dont really feel that there’s a ton of worth” if it’s distinctive to DHS.
Important Employee Attestation
USCIS officers requested pitches that can let important DHS staff show their important standing. They need to make it simpler for these nonetheless touring, reporting to places of work and doing enterprise as important staff to indicate through credentials that they’re as important as they declare.
John used the U.S.-Canadian border, at present closed to every part however important journey and commerce, for example of why authorities companies wanted such an attestation system.
“Each their border companies companies and ours are having challenges on the border when somebody exhibits up and says ‘I’m a vital particular person conducting commerce that’s allowed by treaty or permission,’” he mentioned. “How do you form of attest that?”
However John and the USCIS officers had been fast to differentiate between this important employee license and the COVID-19 immunity passports that some governments and technologists have thought-about growing.
Learn extra: COVID-19 ‘Immunity Passport’ Unites 60 Companies on Self-Sovereign ID Mission
“We’re not on the lookout for immunity certificates, immunity passports, COVID credentials,” mentioned John Goodwin of USCIS.
Anil John, the SVIP technical director, mentioned the science merely doesn’t again up happening such a route.
“As COVID-19 is a type of illnesses that disproportionately targets susceptible populations, Black communities, our susceptible important staff on the frontlines, we’re very involved given the present lack of science across the immunity passport.”
Provide Chain Tracing
Startups may also pitch SVIP on provide chain traceability initiatives that handle drawback factors in meals security, e-commerce and pure gasoline.
Vincent Annunziato, director of CBP’s enterprise transformation division, advised attendees that his company desires to get rid of paper-based provide chains in favor of absolutely digitized methods…