DataTrails

Public Attestation

Transparency through Public Attestation

Not everything needs to be kept secret.

Using the example of an image in a news report, the publisher needs everyone to be able to see the image but at the same time the viewers of the image want to know that it is genuine while the owner of the image will want to be credited. There needs to be a way for consumers of data to anonymously verify the data that they are consuming is genuine and also where it came from.

Public attestation allows you to attest information about data to the general public, without the need for the users of the information to log-in to your DataTrails account by using Public Assets.

Permissioned Assets can only be shared through the creation of Access Policies. Public Assets, however, may be shared with a Public URL that points to a read-only view of the Asset, similar to the link-based sharing you may have seen in file sharing services such as Google Drive or DropBox.

Any Events recorded against a Public Asset will also be public, and each Event will have a unique Public URL.

This means that following the link to a Public Asset or Public Event will allow read-only access to the Audit Trail, without the need to sign in to DataTrails.

Anyone with the Public URL can access and view the Audit Trail and verify the data but only those with access to the Permissioned URL can make the attestation about the data.

Note: For more detailed Asset creation instructions, visit Creating an Asset.

Creating a Publicly Attested Asset

Warning: Assets can only be made public at Asset Creation and cannot be made private afterwards. The Asset and all its Events will be publicly accessible forever.

  1. Create an Asset with your desired attributes and set it to public. See Creating an Asset for detailed instructions on this topic.

    Select Register Asset from the sidebar and fill in the desired details.
    Set the toggle next to Attest Publicly to ON.

    Asset Details

    Create a JSON file with your desired Asset details. Set keyword public to true.

    {
    "behaviours": ["RecordEvidence"],
    "attributes": {
        "arc_display_name": "Publicly Attested Asset",
        "arc_display_type": "Example",
        "arc_description": "This example asset is publicly attested, so anyone with the link can access its details without signing in to DataTrails."
    },
    "public": true
}

  2. Publish your Public Asset

    Click Register Asset to complete your Public Asset creation.

    Publish Your Asset

    Use the curl command to run your JSON file. See instructions for creating your BEARER_TOKEN_FILE here.

    curl -v -X POST \
    -H "@$HOME/.datatrails/bearer-token.txt" \
    -H "Content-type: application/json" \
    -d "@/path/to/jsonfile" \
    https://app.datatrails.ai/archivist/v2/assets

  3. Retrieve public link to share your Public Asset with others

    NOTE: A Public Asset may only be updated by the Tenancy that created it. Anyone viewing the Asset using the public link will have read-only access.

  4. The following screenshot shows the public view of the Asset when the public link is followed.

    Public View

Adding an Event to a Public Asset

NOTE: Any Events added to a Public Asset will also be public. Events may only be added by the tenancy that originally created the Public Asset.

  1. Create an Event with your desired attributes. See Creating an Event for detailed instructions

    Select Record Event from the Asset view and fill in the desired details. When finished, click Record Event at the bottom right of the pop-up.

    Event Details

    Create a JSON file with your desired Event details

    {
  "operation": "Record",
  "behaviour": "RecordEvidence",
  "event_attributes": {
    "arc_description": "Adding new information to public asset.",
    "arc_display_type": "Update",
    "Public Update": "New Information"
  }
}

    Use the curl command to run your JSON file. See instructions for creating your BEARER_TOKEN_FILE here

    curl -v -X POST \
    -H "@$HOME/.datatrails/bearer-token.txt" \
    -H "Content-type: application/json" \
    -d "@/path/to/jsonfile" \
    https://app.datatrails.ai/archivist/v2/assets/<asset-id>/events

  2. Your Event will be readable in the Event History tab when the link to the public view is followed. Click on the Event to see the details.

    Event Listed in Public View

  3. You may also retrieve a public URL to the Event itself, using the Assets API

← Instaproof
Identity and Access Management →