Hacker News Reader

Comment by rswail | Hacker News Reader

The main question to government is:

1. You already know who everyone is. By definition identification as an individual is by government.

2. Why is there not a system that allows a business or other service to ask for government identification that is encrypted and only visible to government, but that allows a business to ask for certain details, required for the operation of the business (eg confirmation of driving license, or age)?

3. Why is that evidence not provided directly, but as a confirmation from the government service ("Yes, this person is over 18", not "Yes, this person is 37")?

Governments need to protect the public, not allow businesses open slather on collecting PII.

View on HN

> Why is there not a system that allows a business or other service to ask for government identification that is encrypted and only visible to government, but that allows a business to ask for certain details, required for the operation of the business (eg confirmation of driving license, or age)?

Generally speaking, it's the narrative of a pushback on a "national id".

Many countries already have this place. Estonia has the Digital ID provided by government[0]. Nordic countries use BankID, which is a form of KYC that is backed by banks (you prove your identity to the bank, the bank issues a bank id - usually back by certificate[s], and you login with this to services[1][2]). Finland is the outlier, here, with their own service[3].

0 - https://e-estonia.com/service/estonian-e-identity/id-card/

1 - https://www.bankid.com/en/individuals/get-bankid

2 - https://bankid.no/en/how-to-get-bankid

3 - https://www.suomi.fi/instructions-and-support/identification...

Yes, which is part of a wider narrative in the US that insists everything must be privatized because the government cannot be trusted or is otherwise incompetent.

The irony I’ve always found in that statement is that while it’s true that the government can’t be trusted and is generally incompetent, it’s also true of private companies. So even though it’s a true statement at face value, it’s still not a good argument for privatization which is just trading one set of incompetent and corrupt people for another set of the same but with even less oversight.

https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE (Yes, Prime Minister)

This is exactly the way its being implemented in EU (Yes, this person is over 18").

European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet) framework established under the eIDAS 2.0 regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1183)

This is already present today in California Driver's licenses in your Apple Wallet (mDL).

When you scan your driver's license at a compatible reader, you're given a notice of what information is being requested and the ability to share it (or not).

It can also request some derived attribute (is this person above the age of 21?) instead of the actual data field itself.

Most of this is from ISO/IEC 18013-5

We can't do any of that because it is forward-thinking and doesn't involve clear-cutting a rainforest to make the stacks of paperwork that are otherwise required to fill out forms in triplicate, run everything through 17 different departments, and ensure an army of bereaucrats have something to do with their day.

One can argue, this would be an unintentional tracking of the population by government

One could argue that, but with a properly designed API, it could preserve anonymity while still providing businesses with the necessary validation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com