Hacker News Reader

Comment by oneoff786 | Hacker News Reader

Well that would be a felony to start. Which is more noteworthy than just against terms of service.

If McDonald's required showing your driver's license to pick up your order, would it be a felony to show a fake license and pick up an order? You're not lying to a government organisation. You're just obscuring your identity to a private corporation. I fail to see how that can be any more than unethical.

Showing a false driver's license in the U.S. is usually a crime (though not often a felony by itself) regardless of circumstance; e.g. Texas law: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._transp._code_section_...

Note that a "Class A misdeamenor" in Texas is punishable by a $4,000 fine and/or 1 year in jail.

Is that going to happen because you used it to pick up a food order? Probably not, but stranger things have happened...

No it would not. And it would not be a felony to show one to Facebook either. But the question was about generating new IDs with AI. That is a felony.

Can you explain how an AI-generated fake ID for a fake social media account constitutes a felony? On what grounds exactly? Facebook despite attempting to normalize the handing over of government-issued identification to an advertising platform, is not a government entity.

I don't know enough about your legal system to be sure, but just as an option, wouldn't it be possible that the mere act of creating a my fake ID could become a felony, if it isn't already?

Just like the act of defacing your currency is illegal, even if you don't pay with that money.

For me, the safest verification is what I had to do for my first email address in Germany, which is that the postman comes to your house and verifies that you are who you claim to be. Alternatively, and pretty much equally secure, our passports include the option of digitally verifying your identity at home. However, I'm not willing to do either that for Facebook, the last option is probably not possible with US passports, and the first option would be rather expensive.

I have 3 distinct pieces of ID. Both my ID card and my passport should theoretically be usable to verify my identity online. We also have a digital only[0] tool at our disposal. It’s insane to me that we still don’t have a reliable way to verify an identity online.

[0] https://www.spid.gov.it/en/

Generating the ID is. The Facebook part is irrelevant.

You are not generating a real physical ID but a representation of an ID, a jpeg. Nor would you be using that representation of an ID to identify and actual person for something that legally requires proof of ID like purchasing alcohol, opening a bank account or driving a car. The sole context for this representation is for a fake persona that exists solely on a social media service.

While it is true that using a fake ID to commit other crimes is generally more serious and is the more common case, producing an image of a fake ID is still recognized as a felony.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com