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Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

I would /really/ like for national ID numbers to be public, and usable //as// 'addresses' for sent items. The owner of such a national ID address could update their preferred physical location (preferably also have different delivery locations and instructions for mail / packages / 'legal documents'). Maybe even electronic delivery addresses as well.

I think the best way of preventing abuse for such a system would be to include a lookup fee for it's use (part of normal postage for mailed items).

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In Denmark we have electronic national ID with one-time tokens on a small piece of paper.

You can use for: government interaction, banks, utilities, health records, and lots of other things.

They also made a digital secure mailbox, where you can receive PDFs from government, banks, utilities, doctors, etc. You can also send replies.

It sucks that all of this is point-and-click web apps without a standardized API. I'm sure other countries have similar things, but most implementations are probably snowflakes.

Whereas email is universally integrated everywhere, it's not trusted for personal sensitive information.

I hope one day secure webauthn and secure email will replace all these snowflakes. But as much as I hate to admit it, the non-standard walked gardens does do a better job, with higher security than the old paper world ever did.

I don't know what it's worth in terms of security, but it's really convenient. And Danish bureaucracy is the smoothest I've seen yet.

> They also made a digital secure mailbox, where you can receive PDFs from government, banks, utilities, doctors, etc. You can also send replies.

Does that mean one has to constantly monitor this mailbox and is liable if something is left unanswered?

Yes! This sucks... You can get text or email notifications.

Like I said, I hate these systems with passion, but as much as I hate to admit it they are more secure than paper ever was. Probably also more convenient, as things moving fast compared to snailmail.

Portugal has the same, though it's optional. And you can login with your national ID card, which is a smartcard. And for bills, you can pay them through the site.

Yes, it's absolutely a snowflake as well, but considering the low amount of messages, I'm not sure that's much of a problem.

National IDs? Lookup fees? Yikes. I like the idea, but your proposed implementation needs some work.

Let's just do what we do with DNS and let anyone register a globally unique identifier. When USPS or FedEx or whomever wants to deliver to that address, they just perform a lookup to find the physical address to deliver to. You could create different identifiers for the different sorts of things you want delivered, and if you start to get a lot of spam you could just delete it and create a new one.

And what prevents your neighbor from changing the address that the GUID points to? How does USPS or FedEx know that the person trying to edit the GUID's address is the person who owns the GUID?

The reason why it needs to be handled through national ID numbers is because ultimately, national governments are today's identity arbiters, and they do the best job of verifying identity. They're not perfect, but they're the best body for the task, and strong, verifiable identity is the foundation upon which all other security is built.

What prevents me from changing the IP that a domain points to? The registrar of that domain won't let me log in and change it without the correct username and password. No national IDs needed, or involved in any way.

Sweden has a national ID system, your address is centrally managed at the tax office, so you can get bills/invoices and the only thing a company needs is your national ID (which is your date of birth + 4 numbers)

There are downsides in my opinion, like that my address/date of birth/age/living status is /very/ public.

Googling my name brings you to: https://www.hitta.se/jan+martin+harris+harasym/malm%C3%B6/pe...

This would be fine if it was optional for people who wanted to be included in a national ID system. As an American living under the ever-growing surveillance network being constructed and expanded by corporate and government agencies of every type, a national ID number is not something that appeals to me in any way, even if it slightly reduces the small chance that I'll be a victim of some sort of fraud.

Let's be realistic here, in terms of surveillance and privacy we already have a national ID system for everyone who is an American citizen. People already use SSNs for an ID, your credit card transactions, bank records, and phone calls are already linked to you. If it's opt-in only then it'll never see significant adoption. You can't require e.g. banks to use some secure identification system without also requiring citizens to use that secure identification system.

How would this possibly increase the already-complete surveillance of everything you do? They already know who you are, where you live, every cent you spend and where, every site you visit, every email/call/sms you do, and it's all tied back to you.

I'm genuinely curious how Americans think a national ID number would practically increase any surveillance?

To me it sounds like a win for consumers. You no longer give your home address out to every single website that requires an address, or every time you buy something online. You can update your address in 1 place when you move, and don't have to fuss around with redirects and missed mail/packages.

I'm very open to being shown what I'm missing though, as it's a hot debate lately and I just don't get it.

>How would this possibly increase the already-complete surveillance of everything you do? They already know who you are, where you live, every cent you spend and where, every site you visit, every email/call/sms you do, and it's all tied back to you.

This is simply false. I choose not to carry a smartphone, I pay with cash for virtually everything, no "social media", I often use a VPN. There are many people who voluntarily give away all of their personal data to corporations - and there are many (though far fewer) of us who don't.

I.e. indirect addressing -- a la computer memory.

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