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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Bruce Schneier and Davi Ottenheimer have co-authored an essay about the essential nature of data integrity [schneier.com] in the future of the WWW. (There is an alternative link to the essay published in the Communications of the ACM [acm.org] hosted at the ACM's digital library.) The ability to verify the origin of data and that it has remained unchanged and unmanipulated is becoming increasingly important. Basically they call for a verifiable chain of trust for data production and usage.

The risks of deploying AI without proper integrity control measures are severe and often underappreciated. When AI systems operate without sufficient security measures to handle corrupted or manipulated data, they can produce subtly flawed outputs that appear valid on the surface. The failures can cascade through interconnected systems, amplifying errors and biases. Without proper integrity controls, an AI system might train on polluted data, make decisions based on misleading assumptions, or have outputs altered without detection. The results of this can range from degraded performance to catastrophic failures.

We see four areas where integrity is paramount in this Web 3.0 world. The first is granular access, which allows users and organizations to maintain precise control over who can access and modify what information and for what purposes. The second is authentication—much more nuanced than the simple “Who are you?” authentication mechanisms of today—which ensures that data access is properly verified and authorized at every step. The third is transparent data ownership, which allows data owners to know when and how their data is used and creates an auditable trail of data providence. Finally, the fourth is access standardization: common interfaces and protocols that enable consistent data access while maintaining security.

Although they focus on the ability to prove the origin of data, an obvious risk is that the chain of trust becomes a chain of surveillance. In some ways this essay overlaps with a few of the topics brought up in Bruce Schneier's 2016 post on thoughts about integrity and availability threats [soylentnews.org].

Previously:
(2025) 10 Years on After 'Data and Goliath' Warned of Data Collection [soylentnews.org]
(2025) Biggest Privacy Erosion in 10 Years? On Google's Policy Change Towards Fingerprinting [soylentnews.org]
(2023) Snowden Ten Years Later - Schneier on Security [soylentnews.org]
(2014) If You Read Boing Boing or Linux Journal, The NSA is Watching You [soylentnews.org]
... and more

Original Submission