As a hacker and engineer I've been interested in identity and privacy since the dawn of the Internet and the online services it's enabled. For the past year I've been helping to build and open source The @ Platform, which inverts the usual model by giving everybody (and every thing) their own place to store data and control who (and what) has access to it. This talk will give an overview of the platform and its underlying protocol, and illustrate how it can be used to build privacy preserving apps and Internet connected things. It will also cover how the platform can be self hosted on devices like the Raspberry Pi, and how people can get involved in the open source community growing around it.

1. What if apps logged into you,
instead of you logging into apps?
EMFcamp - June 2022

2. © 2022 - The @ Company | atsign.dev
A brief introduction
Engineer, The @ Company
2018 EMFcamp attendee
Co-host, Tech Debt Burndown Podcast
Cloud Editor, InfoQ
Blogger blog.thestateofme.com
Links to socials etc. at chris.swanz.net
@cpswan

3. © 2022 - The @ Company | atsign.dev
Agenda
● How things are
● How things can be
● The IoT angle
● Inside the pipes
● You probably have questions…?
● Getting involved

4. How things are

5. Internet Architecture so far
5
Your work data
Your travel data
Your social data
Your shopping data
Your banking data
You

6. Image: Cryteria; John Lodder; Denis Defreyne, CC BY, modified by Cory Doctorow

7. https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/

8. https://haveibeenpwned.com/

9. How things can be

10. Flipping the model
10
Your work apps
Your travel apps
Your social apps
Your shopping apps
Your banking apps
You
YOUR
DATA
● Apps don’t own data
- people own data
● You don’t log into apps
- apps log into you
● No more
○ duplicate data
○ out of date data
○ surveillance
○ usernames
○ passwords

11. 11
The @platform - a change in architecture
● Everyone/everything has a unique
@sign
● All apps are peer-to-peer
● Microservers can be hosted anywhere
● Everything is open source
● Everything is end-to-end encrypted
@tina_she @colin
Only the namespace is centralized - much like DNS
A simple open source platform and protocol - no blockchain necessary!

12. @mosphere Pro - Encrypted File
Transfer

13. @wavi - Weblet Maker

14. @buzz - Real-Time Connections

15. The IoT angle

16. IoT flipped too

17. ● No passwords
● No VPN/firewall
● Outbound only
● Only one open port
● No administration
● Device generates its
own keys
● Device to application
encryption
@sign @sign
@microservice
Today’s IoT Architecture
IoT flipped with the @platform

18. The @platform in action
@tina_she
@doctor
@personaltrainer
@monitor A complete development
platform that
● Protects devices
● Protects data
● Routes data
Data has both routing and
attributes
● Time to live
● Time to borne/die
● Revoke
All data
Heart rate/
oxygen
activity
data
Heart rate/
oxygen
glucose
data

19. Ssh! No ports

20. Inside the pipes

21. Protocol before
Platform

26. You probably have questions…?

27. How do we make money?
Now
● Sell custom @signs
● Host microservers (secondaries)
Future
● Offers not ads - monetizing the base with true
permission-based sales
● Advanced tools/tech

28. Who else is doing this?
● Solid (the Tim Berners-Lee thing)
○ Personal Online Data Store (PODS)
● Mydex
○ Personal Data Store
● Lots of Blockchain based attempts

29. Getting involved

30. A global, inclusive dev community

31. atsign.dev

32. pub.dev

33. Contributions welcome
https://github.com/atsign-foundation

34. Time to wrap up

35. © 2022 - The @ Company | atsign.dev
Review
● Things are not great - many security & privacy issues
● Things can be better, by flipping the existing model
● For things as well as for people
● Tech stack is simple and developer friendly
○ We’ll go where demand takes us
● You probably have questions…?
○ Hopefully I’ve anticipated with some answers
● We’re here because you’re the people we want building
stuff with us

36. Questions?
36

37. Contact
Chris Swan
chris@atsign.com
@cpswan