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Comment by nbzso | Hacker News Reader

Digital ID for everyone, here we go. Globally, right? Not for me do. Until there is no other option than this, I will refuse it.

If I am lucky I have 30-40 something years ahead of me, more is a bonus territory.

So I intend to live as a human being, not some database record "because of digitalization". If this means not to have smartphone or using computers in local networks, so be it.

Big F--- you for corporations and governments of the world for collaborating behind the scenes to move us to Minority Report reality. Apple the global leader in surveillance and government control. Who would guess? What is the new slogan Apple: You are living it wrong?

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> So I intend to live as a human being, not some database record

You are already a database record, so are you not currently living as a human being? Do my medical records prevent me from living as a human being? I have so many questions.

Centralized digital record. Closed source company. Third party unable to audit databases. There are so many answers.

This stays local to your device, it doesn't get sent to Apple...

…until it does.

I'm so excited for this. It's the end of my physical wallet.

Is there something concrete you're worried about or is it you just don't like giving big brother too much of your info?

> Is there something concrete you're worried about

A dead battery and a virus on my phone stealing all of my data, identity, and then time to get it straightened out again.

I lose my wallet (3 times) far more often than I get a virus on my phone (never).

And I forget my wallet (all the time) more often than my phone dies without a charger (maybe once every six months)

I'm not grandparent poster, but depending on who supplies and configures the ID reader, a digital system makes it easier to track people. E.g. if you show your ID at a liquor store, currently the cashier would just check your age and then forget about you. If s/he has a barcode scanner or an Apple ID scanner, then that scanner can log your visits. And your whereabouts can be tracked by following where your ID was scanned throughtout time.

In China, ID cards have RFID and they have to be scanned when entering a train station or airports (or the old town of Lhasa in Tibet), so a future government here might abuse a similar system to track you and maybe harass you by saying "You were in this area yesterday, there was $SOME_BAD_EVENT, what's your alibi?". China also implements long distance travel bans by refusing you entry to the train station/airport, e.g. if you have a bad "social score", which, I imagine would be ripe for abuse in a Trumpian regime. (Although the FBI already abused the no-fly list for the purposes of harassing individuals)

> your whereabouts can be tracked

Already are being tracked and bought and sold by third-parties without your knowledge.

So, just give up all our privacy?

Again, I'm not GP, who might be more paranoid about it.

And yes I have Google Maps Timeline active.

No, I was trying to make the point that the concerns are not theoretical, they are already occurring.

> If s/he has a barcode scanner or an Apple ID scanner, then that scanner can log your visits

This system actually lets you only supply your age to the reader and no other info, to avoid the tracking. In other discussions of this, I've learned that many shops and bars in the US already optically scan IDs to verify them digitally (not trusting staff to verify security features), so this is actually an improvement on privacy compared to before.

So that means trusting software and hardware will always adhere perfectly to advertised specifications. Sounds air tight.

Can someone explain the huge net gain in conveinence you get from not carrying a wallet?

I know if I drop my wallet, the cards inside will still work. They won't be out-of-service-area or forgot to be charged.

The wallet also caters to many use cases the phone will never support. That can be high-tech stuff like some obscure closed-loop fare card or keycard system that isn't NFC-compatible, or the paper punch card from the local burrito place.

And it lets me carry cash, which is still less of a production number for plenty of informal payments-- I'm not walking through a Apple Pay/Zelle/PayPal transaction at a yard sale.

Maybe it's because I'm fat and wear loose fitting clothes-- having a wallet in my pocket is not a huge frustration.

Probably not what you were going for, but an entirely digital wallet would substantially reduce the ‘pain in the ass’ factor of getting robbed.

You say this as if having a physical wallet doesn't also have huge downsides in exchange for being physical.

If you drop your wallet and lose it, someone has access to everything you have and any accounts tied to anything in your wallet. If you lose your phone, they get nothing.

If you have a physical card and it's been worn down, it will fail to scan. That's never an issue with digital cards.

Physical wallets have physical limits to how much they can carry without being a giant lump in your clothing. Digital wallets stay the same size no matter what you put in them.

Physical wallets are limited to what you put in them. If you forget a punch card, boarding pass, or ticket, you have no recourse. Digital wallets never lose anything and always have ways to retrieve the passes or cards within them.

We could go on and on but both options have advantages and disadvantages...

I am preserving your and some other (more explicit) heavily-downvoted comments here that paint a disturbingly prophetic picture of where things are going to go. We know what's happening to our freedoms and what the future will look like. Too bad there's not enough of us to fight back.

>> Too bad there’s not enough of us to fight back.

I don’t think so. You can see glimmers of hope in people who refuse to buy into propaganda every day if you go looking for it. Just today, for example, Project Veritas successfully got a California high school teacher fired for literally trying to convert his students to communists.

There are lots of people doing horrible things with tech, and programmers willing to write the shit code that executes on those desires, but all of that comes from the desire for more money and power. It has always been the case that smart humans with drive chase money and power, but it often only takes a small handful of people to bring change to even the worst tyranny. Don’t lose hope for freedom, friend.

The rise of authoritarianism isn't a left vs right issue, unfortunately --- same with things like right to repair and such issues of ownership; there's no one big side that's for or against.

I really think this has more to do with giving people the ability to get rid of their physical wallet and therefore more people using apple pay.

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