Guardian

Full Title or Meme

Guardians are recognized by sovereign governments as Authorized to take actions to protect people or property that cannot be left to themselves or their owners to protect.

Context

In the context of identity management the guardian accepts responsibility for an Identifier or User Private Information that is owned by some Subject.

Related Terms

• Delegate - where the guardian is identified independently of the subject (aka acts in openID)
• Impersonation - where the guardian takes on the identity of the subject (supposedly this is illegal in openID, but it is very hard to detect.)
• Agent - where the guardian is some other process. While this is like delegation, typically the agent is only identified in the transport protocol and not in the application.
• Client - in the sense that the Subject has delegated some limited authority to the client who can then access only to those subject's assets granted by the subject.