Hacker News Reader

Comment by frutiger | Hacker News Reader

> I feel strongly that any future digital travel credentials that are offered by governments should be able to operate entirely offline

How offline is the current system today, where officers swipe/scan our paper passports into a machine?

View on HN

With the current system, the passport chip can be validated offline if you have the CAs cached. If your computer is completely dead, you can look at the documents under a UV light and verify authenticity the old fashioned way. You could definitely design something that was verifiable offline using phones, but you’d be harder pressed to have it verifiable without any tech whatsoever.

Exactly this when I said in another comment I want both. The old physical protection of UV light and verify authenticity the old fashioned way. It doesn't even need a stamp but a physical thing that prove my identity I can own. Not another number in the system.

This is the same thing I am against a cashless society where the society no longer accept physical cash. And in 2012, and later 2014 when Apple Pay was introduced all the way to 2017, 99% of HN were in support of getting rid of physical cash.

Paper has no downtime.

In times of disaster, the people welding paper along with the people who can trade on their street cred, familiar friends, family, will get stuff, do necessary business.

Everyone else will be essentially panhandling.

Mind you, not a damn thing wrong with panhandling. That is not a crime.

My point is to avoid having to do that where possible and practical.

but that is not my problem

my passport has been through a washing machine accidentally and i can still present it in the remotest of countries no matter the internet or whatever, and it works

in the US, yes they are switching to face recognition and often they barely even look at the passport anymore. I enjoy the convenience of that, but i don't wish to share this data with all the countries in the world, nor to be on the hook for having a connected device everywhere in the world for basic movements.

You may not wish to share it, but it's a simple choice:if those countries want that data, you'll either share it or be refused entry. Passports are only a small part of that, regardless of what data is stored on them. The US for example requires you to provide fingerprints and submit to a face scan, that then get permananetly stored (for non-citizens). They also require you to submit to a phone and laptop search if the TSA agent believes it's necessary. You are of course free to refuse all of this, and go back to the country you were coming from.

So having digital vs physical passports opens no new avenues of private data sharing with regimes you might not trust: they already have a right to demand any kind of data they want about you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com