Comment by fvrther | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fvrther | Hacker News Reader

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Hello, I live in Japan, the thing they don't tell in the article is the Japan Post Digital Address can be tied to the MyNumber system.

It's an official ID card you're required to update by law every time you move, and they plan to link the address of both systems. Meaning every time you update you address on your ID it will automatically propagate everywhere.

In Japan the MyNumber system is live since a few years and a single card can already be used:

* As driving license

* As a unified heath insurance card

* As a unified way to retrieve prescribed medications, lab results, vaccinations..

* For doing the taxes and receive pension

* As a foreigner residence card (very soon)

* For digital signing of official papers (as a way to replace the Hanko stamp culture, it's working but not yet widely used)

The digital ministry is also expected to unveil an Apple Wallet integration in a few months to avoid having to carry the card.

Is there a public-privete keypair associated with the MyNumber ID?

It's a PKI system, your card holds two certificate, one for authenticating that you unlock with a 4 number PIN and one for digital signing that you unlock using a 10 char password. It also has Sony's FeLiCa standard for NFC reading. You can also tie your own generated certificate to it but it seems quite complex and expensive to do so.

So, like, a public ss# tied to an address.

Exactly, but I'm not familiar with the American SS# system honestly

Its just a number assigned to every American person usually at birth nowadays. It is assigned the the Social Security Administration. It was designed as a Social Security account number, but is also used as a Tax Identification Number by the IRS. And a lot of places treat it like it is some super secret password, but it is just a number, and it is a number that everyone wants, and everyone and their dog- including multiple government agencies- has made publicly available, so now everyone and their dog and their dogs cousins dog has access to them, so it makes absolutely no sense why anyone would treat them as secret.

Thanks for the context!

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