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Comment by Lukas_Skywalker | Hacker News Reader

I agree that it can be useful, but I fear that in the future, we will have many more online platforms that require an ID than we currently do.

In the past, things like age verification required users to upload a scan or photo, and someone had to verify it. Because that was too much work for the platform operators, they didn't do it (or only with the banner "Are you over 18?").

With the e-ID instead, this will be much simpler to implement. And I expect it to become much more widespread in the future.

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Even though I am for the eID I do share your worry but I don‘t think it‘s hopeless. Both politically and socially there are avenues to combat such over-identification. Still, most uses will probably more private than sharing copies of your ID so I am not sure what the gain for companies will be as it might just limit the customer base without much data gained. That does not seem in the interest of those companies. It‘s easier for the government to enforce certain checks, which is also not ideal but still there are avenues to fight this if it happens.

Quite a few actually do require ID-scan-through-email (which is horrible). Or, they simply delegate to a third party video ident service, often in another country (because cheaper).

How exactly is the status quo not much worse than "I give you a cryptographic hash proving that I am over 18, but nothing else, and without the state knowing that this transaction happened"?

The status quo is that companies which are required by law to have this information (banks, telecommunication providers etc) do require an ID scan (and often video identification as well).

All the others don't really care and just let you register with whatever name and birthdate you want, because the ID scan method is too cumbersome and expensive to them.

I expect those to move to eID, effectively requiring people to have an eID, with no way to provide false information.

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