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Comment by lazylizard | Hacker News Reader

the singaporean "singpass" has been an amazing convenience. at this point its like why is any company still asking you to fill in personal particulars on forms? they should ask for access to singpass and you just authorize them.

you apply to or for anything.. and they just give you the option of authorizing via singpass.. and you use your passkey-like singpass app to authorize it... and its done!

you go to hospital and they need your medical records? singpass

you go to university and they need your academic history? singpass

you apply for bank loan? insurance? license? food handling permit? singpass

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In the absence of a government solution like Singpass, the US and others will end up with an Apple/Alphabet solution.

Doesn't this mean that it's not only your hospital that sees your medical records, but... everyone who would otherwise only need your name and telephone number?

Or is there some way to restrict which party gets which data?

I don't think any of the national id services I've heard of stores all your data in a centralized place. Usually the national id service only provides identification to the service providers that request it. Each service provider (like, your bank, hospital, pension provider) will store their own data as they've always done, they just use the service to identify you.

There’s data scoping per request:

https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/getting-started/...

https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/data-catalog-myi...

As part of the flow you’ll be shown the list of data that’s being requested.

In Finland there is centralized database of all medical records. Which makes information transfer simpler. There is ofc risk of untheorized access. But for that reason legal system exists. You get audit trail and then can prosecute or fire those who accessed information unnecessarily.

It is trade-off, but probably lot more accountable than paper records in big hospitals.

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