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What LOE (Level of Effort) would it take to replace our current SSN with a public/private key system? More than just a massive bureaucratic shift and public ree

What LOE (Level of Effort) would it take to replace our current SSN with a public/private key system? More than just a massive bureaucratic shift and public reeducation movement? Could we have a memorizable public key and still have any meaningful level of security?

convolvatron 9y ago
while we're throwing ideas around, how about just keeping a log of loans and payments rather than trusting some agency to come with with a composite 'score' based on...what exactly? that way, I can decide how much I care about your 2 missed car loan payments 5 years ago and your disputed dry cleaning bill myself when offering you terms.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  They aggregate "events" reported by various creditors. Miss a utility bill and it goes to the centralized databases. That's why you so often need to provide SSN to activate services with post-paid debts.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > how about just keeping a log of loans and payments Why does my landlord need to know how much my student payments were ten years ago? Or what sort of car I drove then, and how long it took me to pay it off? Or that I once owed money to deplorable-sex-dungeon.com, or whatever other arbitrary thing they find offensive?
  - convolvatron 9y ago
    As someone who is always on the receiving side of this nonsense (I have no credit, never take on any debt and have always paid my bills), I'm completely with you. if I were* a creditor, I'd find it pretty valuable to know if a prospective lender was a deadbeat. just trying to find a middle ground here. my score is awful because I never borrow any money. i think that should be qualitatively different to a potential creditor than someone who doesn't pay their bills. for some number of years that meant traveling (car rentals, hotels) was a huge effort. getting leases on apartments was easier because of references. a mortgage was possible in the seedy 2000s, but not any longer.
  - PKop 9y ago
    Because it's a good proxy for knowing whether you will make your lease payments
  - Malician 9y ago
    A landlord is taking a tremendous risk by letting you rent. Things renters can and will do include not pay rent, incurring several months (or worse) while being evicted, trashing the house.. if they behave badly or just can't quite keep up with timely payments and you have to rollover to a new renter that is pretty expensive, too. This isn't to say credit scores are perfect, but they are so effective a predictor of conscientiousness, insurance companies rely on them to predict someone's likelihood of a car accident - on average, they work.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      I'm not arguing against credit scores, I'm arguing against my landlord being able to see a detailed history of my non-cash purchases.
      - colejohnson66 9y ago
        They wouldn’t see your credit card transactions; They’d see your credit card payment history. Big difference.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    That landlord is allowing you to move into her property and if you decide not to pay your bills (or to airBnB the place out for drug parties) said landlord will be out of pocket somewhere around 6 months of rent (eviction takes a long time) plus legal fees and repairs.
  - zo1 9y ago
    Those are all instances that can be abstracted behind random account names: Account 1,2,3,4,5. And amounts as simply "payments" into an ongoing credit account. Sure, could I deduce that $1200 a month is for your rent? And that $250 is your student debt repayment because you've been paying it for 10 years? Anywho, there are different ways to present your credibility as a debt repayor without leaking too much. Not that I'd mind giving out detailed information, as long as they ask my permission first.
- bdonlan 9y ago
  This is actually how it works. The lender gets to pick the scoring model they want to used based on the raw data provided by the credit bureaus. The credit scores you see on e.g. creditkarma are just one of the many models in use; they're all pretty similar in practice, but vary by a few points depending on what they emphasize.
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    Is that why when I was applying for financing while leasing a car, my score was a bit lower than what Credit Karma was showing me?
    - selectodude 9y ago
      Credit Karma is always about 20-40 points higher than your real score, in my experience.
    - astura 9y ago
      Yes, different algorithms. Credit Karma shows you VantageScore 3 and car lenders usually use FICO 8.
lathiat 9y ago
If you want to consider this sort of thing I would suggest looking at something like Apple iMessage for inspiration (and iCloud in general) Apple is trying very had to do proper public-private key crypto, in a way where not even they have access to the keys, but that is also convenient for the user. There's a reason, for example (this is the best example) you have to approve new iCloud Keychain devices from an existing device. Because that device re-encrypts the database with the private key of the new device. Even that can cause problems as once someone forgets their password they may not be able to recover that keychain and by proxy other services. There are some trade-offs including an iCloud recovery key that is protected by HSMs that Apple Have with the complete inability to update their firmware - but that has other trade-offs such as they can't fix any bugs on those devices, etc. I won't fully detail further I would suggest doing your own reading. You may also wish to look at FIDO, in a sort of related unrelated way.
EvanAnderson 9y ago
A friend of mine suggested that the US Postal Service is in a great place to "pivot" into offering digital "trust" services by leveraging their ability to offer a somewhat credible authentication of an individual based on ones ability to receive physical mail.
- newman8r 9y ago
  interesting idea - and if you don't have a permanent residence you could just stop by a post office. Seems like they have the right infrastructure and are presently in need of a new business model.
- kylecordes 9y ago
  Perhaps; but the Postal Service currently operates at a near zero level of security for residential mail. Both incoming and outgoing mails said outside in an unlocked box (for many of us) that can be easily accessed by any passerby. If (even) more of the contents of those boxes became valuable for easy impersonation and theft, the motivation for people to rummage would increase, and we would all likely pay a cost both in convenience and dollars for ordinary mail use.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    True. But that will still protect you from a kid in Russia.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Both incoming and outgoing mails said outside in an unlocked box (for many of us) that can be easily accessed by any passerby. Yeah, but get caught messing with mail and you can get royally screwed. I don't know of any other country where the Postal Service has its own cops with arrest powers, seems to be a pretty powerful deterrent.
    - stevekemp 9y ago
      There have been stories in the UK new recently, alleging postal delivery-workers were stealing and selling credit-cards from their deliveries. For example: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/revealed-crooked-birmingham-postmen-being-13561626 http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/revealed-...
u801e 9y ago
The signed public key could be included on the social security card and passport. The corresponding private key would need to be secured by a memorable passphrase and backups stored in a secure location under your control.
- JorgeGT 9y ago
  This is what we do in Spain, but with the national ID card. Only detail is that there is no backup, if you forget the passphrase you go to the police station and use your fingerprint in a machine that will reset your pass.
mjevans 9y ago
I'd like to extend the 'DMV' / existing government licencing system with a standard digital signature (PKI); which would be applied to the OpenPGP / X.509 / etc public key you provide asserting "I own this" in a standard key-party manor (send the signature encrypted so that only the private key can decode it). It would also be useful if you could provide multiple keys and associate them with one or more databases: 'full identity' (public listing with name) or key ages (probably 18, 21, and whatever social security/etc ages are). The latter thing would allow for sites that require 'adult' access without forcing them to request credit cards (not always of age) or personal ID. It might not even be part of the standard flow, but merely as part of establishing an adult is involved if there's a dispute. PS: 'adult' also implies 'able to sign contract' (such as accept Terms of Service). Financial sites would obviously require the full legal name key.
- viraptor 9y ago
  To actually provide a system for everyone, you'd need more than DMV, or another specialised department. Not everyone needs a driving license and not everyone can get one. This is likely to apply to other agencies in a similar way.
  - tonyztan 9y ago
    State DMVs usually offer ID cards for those who don't or can't drive.
    - viraptor 9y ago
      That's pretty cool. Didn't know that.
bdonlan 9y ago
An elliptic curve key is probably memorizable (a 256-bit number essentially) but is not quantum-resistant. For quantum-resistant schemes you might be able to memorize a 256-bit seed for a key generation algorithm. You can look at bitcoin "brain wallets" as precedent - they basically translate these random seeds into a memorizable phrase. That being said, people are unlikely to bother memorizing a 256-bit key, and even if they do they'll just type it into a shady form in a phishing email anyway. Better to just put it on a smartcard chip - it's proven technology that's been rolled out in other nations already.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> What LOE (Level of Effort) would it take to replace our current SSN with a public/private key system? More than just a massive bureaucratic shift and public reeducation movement? You are thinking about this from the wrong direction. The problem isn't that the government hasn't provided a PKI, the problem is that social security numbers are being used for identification. This was a serious fear when social security was originally created. For many years social security cards had the words "not for identification" printed on them. They contain no biometric data, not even a picture. Their purpose is not identification. So the solution is obvious. Actually prohibit social security numbers from being used for identification. Don't allow creditors to even ask for them. Then people will figure something else out on their own. Instead of a credit reporting agency existing at all, new credit applications could ask for your account numbers at existing creditors and then the new creditor can get your credit history directly from them. It would be straight forward to automate this -- and even require you to prove that you're the account holder by presenting your card from the other bank (or signing into its website if online). There is no need for a national identification system. Having a bad one was the original problem. Replacing it with some differently bad one is no better.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  > This was a serious fear when social security was originally created. For many years social security cards had the words "not for identification" printed on them. They contain no biometric data, not even a picture. Their purpose is not identification. That's still printed on them. > Then people will figure something else out on their own. Instead of a credit reporting agency existing at all, new credit applications could ask for your account numbers at existing creditors and then the new creditor can get your credit history directly from them. It would be straight forward to automate this -- and even require you to prove that you're the account holder by presenting your card from the other bank (or signing into its website if online). > There is no need for a national identification system. This seems like wishful thinking to me.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > This seems like wishful thinking to me. The correct answer is correct regardless of who wants it to be.
tmaly 9y ago
How would this system work with people with say dementia who could not recall their key?
PeterisP 9y ago
Having a public/private key system doesn't solve the key problems of identity, namely, a link between your public key and you, and ensuring that it's not easy to create new alternate identities. Having a digital signature by a private key is a decent way to ensure that you are linked to the public key, if the recipient knows the identity of the public key, and the private key is hard to copy (i.e. not memorizable, not something you type in to a bunch of potentially compromised computers). One way to do this is like Estonia's e-ID, which includes such a private key in the gov't issued photo ID; but having such an ID in the first place seems anathema in US.
andruby 9y ago
We have something like this in Belgium with our eID cards. AFAIK the chip has a public/private key. I use a PIN code to unlock the private key and I can create signatures with it to prove my identity. Websites can actually use this for proper citizen authentication (and non-repudiation). The integration has UX bugs, but at the end of the day, I am very happy that we have something much more secure than a US SSN.

convolvatron 9y ago

while we're throwing ideas around, how about just keeping a log of loans and payments rather than trusting some agency to come with with a composite 'score' based on...what exactly? that way, I can decide how much I care about your 2 missed car loan payments 5 years ago and your disputed dry cleaning bill myself when offering you terms.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
They aggregate "events" reported by various creditors. Miss a utility bill and it goes to the centralized databases. That's why you so often need to provide SSN to activate services with post-paid debts.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> how about just keeping a log of loans and payments Why does my landlord need to know how much my student payments were ten years ago? Or what sort of car I drove then, and how long it took me to pay it off? Or that I once owed money to deplorable-sex-dungeon.com, or whatever other arbitrary thing they find offensive?
- convolvatron 9y ago
  As someone who is always on the receiving side of this nonsense (I have no credit, never take on any debt and have always paid my bills), I'm completely with you. if I were* a creditor, I'd find it pretty valuable to know if a prospective lender was a deadbeat. just trying to find a middle ground here. my score is awful because I never borrow any money. i think that should be qualitatively different to a potential creditor than someone who doesn't pay their bills. for some number of years that meant traveling (car rentals, hotels) was a huge effort. getting leases on apartments was easier because of references. a mortgage was possible in the seedy 2000s, but not any longer.
- PKop 9y ago
  Because it's a good proxy for knowing whether you will make your lease payments
- Malician 9y ago
  A landlord is taking a tremendous risk by letting you rent. Things renters can and will do include not pay rent, incurring several months (or worse) while being evicted, trashing the house.. if they behave badly or just can't quite keep up with timely payments and you have to rollover to a new renter that is pretty expensive, too. This isn't to say credit scores are perfect, but they are so effective a predictor of conscientiousness, insurance companies rely on them to predict someone's likelihood of a car accident - on average, they work.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I'm not arguing against credit scores, I'm arguing against my landlord being able to see a detailed history of my non-cash purchases.
    - colejohnson66 9y ago
      They wouldn’t see your credit card transactions; They’d see your credit card payment history. Big difference.
- djrogers 9y ago
  That landlord is allowing you to move into her property and if you decide not to pay your bills (or to airBnB the place out for drug parties) said landlord will be out of pocket somewhere around 6 months of rent (eviction takes a long time) plus legal fees and repairs.
- zo1 9y ago
  Those are all instances that can be abstracted behind random account names: Account 1,2,3,4,5. And amounts as simply "payments" into an ongoing credit account. Sure, could I deduce that $1200 a month is for your rent? And that $250 is your student debt repayment because you've been paying it for 10 years? Anywho, there are different ways to present your credibility as a debt repayor without leaking too much. Not that I'd mind giving out detailed information, as long as they ask my permission first.
bdonlan 9y ago
This is actually how it works. The lender gets to pick the scoring model they want to used based on the raw data provided by the credit bureaus. The credit scores you see on e.g. creditkarma are just one of the many models in use; they're all pretty similar in practice, but vary by a few points depending on what they emphasize.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  Is that why when I was applying for financing while leasing a car, my score was a bit lower than what Credit Karma was showing me?
  - selectodude 9y ago
    Credit Karma is always about 20-40 points higher than your real score, in my experience.
  - astura 9y ago
    Yes, different algorithms. Credit Karma shows you VantageScore 3 and car lenders usually use FICO 8.

lathiat 9y ago

If you want to consider this sort of thing I would suggest looking at something like Apple iMessage for inspiration (and iCloud in general) Apple is trying very had to do proper public-private key crypto, in a way where not even they have access to the keys, but that is also convenient for the user. There's a reason, for example (this is the best example) you have to approve new iCloud Keychain devices from an existing device. Because that device re-encrypts the database with the private key of the new device. Even that can cause problems as once someone forgets their password they may not be able to recover that keychain and by proxy other services. There are some trade-offs including an iCloud recovery key that is protected by HSMs that Apple Have with the complete inability to update their firmware - but that has other trade-offs such as they can't fix any bugs on those devices, etc. I won't fully detail further I would suggest doing your own reading. You may also wish to look at FIDO, in a sort of related unrelated way.

EvanAnderson 9y ago

A friend of mine suggested that the US Postal Service is in a great place to "pivot" into offering digital "trust" services by leveraging their ability to offer a somewhat credible authentication of an individual based on ones ability to receive physical mail.

newman8r 9y ago
interesting idea - and if you don't have a permanent residence you could just stop by a post office. Seems like they have the right infrastructure and are presently in need of a new business model.
kylecordes 9y ago
Perhaps; but the Postal Service currently operates at a near zero level of security for residential mail. Both incoming and outgoing mails said outside in an unlocked box (for many of us) that can be easily accessed by any passerby. If (even) more of the contents of those boxes became valuable for easy impersonation and theft, the motivation for people to rummage would increase, and we would all likely pay a cost both in convenience and dollars for ordinary mail use.
- cm2187 9y ago
  True. But that will still protect you from a kid in Russia.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Both incoming and outgoing mails said outside in an unlocked box (for many of us) that can be easily accessed by any passerby. Yeah, but get caught messing with mail and you can get royally screwed. I don't know of any other country where the Postal Service has its own cops with arrest powers, seems to be a pretty powerful deterrent.
  - stevekemp 9y ago
    There have been stories in the UK new recently, alleging postal delivery-workers were stealing and selling credit-cards from their deliveries. For example: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/revealed-crooked-birmingham-postmen-being-13561626 http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/revealed-...

u801e 9y ago

The signed public key could be included on the social security card and passport. The corresponding private key would need to be secured by a memorable passphrase and backups stored in a secure location under your control.

JorgeGT 9y ago
This is what we do in Spain, but with the national ID card. Only detail is that there is no backup, if you forget the passphrase you go to the police station and use your fingerprint in a machine that will reset your pass.

mjevans 9y ago

I'd like to extend the 'DMV' / existing government licencing system with a standard digital signature (PKI); which would be applied to the OpenPGP / X.509 / etc public key you provide asserting "I own this" in a standard key-party manor (send the signature encrypted so that only the private key can decode it). It would also be useful if you could provide multiple keys and associate them with one or more databases: 'full identity' (public listing with name) or key ages (probably 18, 21, and whatever social security/etc ages are). The latter thing would allow for sites that require 'adult' access without forcing them to request credit cards (not always of age) or personal ID. It might not even be part of the standard flow, but merely as part of establishing an adult is involved if there's a dispute. PS: 'adult' also implies 'able to sign contract' (such as accept Terms of Service). Financial sites would obviously require the full legal name key.

viraptor 9y ago
To actually provide a system for everyone, you'd need more than DMV, or another specialised department. Not everyone needs a driving license and not everyone can get one. This is likely to apply to other agencies in a similar way.
- tonyztan 9y ago
  State DMVs usually offer ID cards for those who don't or can't drive.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    That's pretty cool. Didn't know that.

bdonlan 9y ago

An elliptic curve key is probably memorizable (a 256-bit number essentially) but is not quantum-resistant. For quantum-resistant schemes you might be able to memorize a 256-bit seed for a key generation algorithm. You can look at bitcoin "brain wallets" as precedent - they basically translate these random seeds into a memorizable phrase. That being said, people are unlikely to bother memorizing a 256-bit key, and even if they do they'll just type it into a shady form in a phishing email anyway. Better to just put it on a smartcard chip - it's proven technology that's been rolled out in other nations already.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> What LOE (Level of Effort) would it take to replace our current SSN with a public/private key system? More than just a massive bureaucratic shift and public reeducation movement? You are thinking about this from the wrong direction. The problem isn't that the government hasn't provided a PKI, the problem is that social security numbers are being used for identification. This was a serious fear when social security was originally created. For many years social security cards had the words "not for identification" printed on them. They contain no biometric data, not even a picture. Their purpose is not identification. So the solution is obvious. Actually prohibit social security numbers from being used for identification. Don't allow creditors to even ask for them. Then people will figure something else out on their own. Instead of a credit reporting agency existing at all, new credit applications could ask for your account numbers at existing creditors and then the new creditor can get your credit history directly from them. It would be straight forward to automate this -- and even require you to prove that you're the account holder by presenting your card from the other bank (or signing into its website if online). There is no need for a national identification system. Having a bad one was the original problem. Replacing it with some differently bad one is no better.

emodendroket 9y ago
> This was a serious fear when social security was originally created. For many years social security cards had the words "not for identification" printed on them. They contain no biometric data, not even a picture. Their purpose is not identification. That's still printed on them. > Then people will figure something else out on their own. Instead of a credit reporting agency existing at all, new credit applications could ask for your account numbers at existing creditors and then the new creditor can get your credit history directly from them. It would be straight forward to automate this -- and even require you to prove that you're the account holder by presenting your card from the other bank (or signing into its website if online). > There is no need for a national identification system. This seems like wishful thinking to me.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > This seems like wishful thinking to me. The correct answer is correct regardless of who wants it to be.

tmaly 9y ago

How would this system work with people with say dementia who could not recall their key?

PeterisP 9y ago

Having a public/private key system doesn't solve the key problems of identity, namely, a link between your public key and you, and ensuring that it's not easy to create new alternate identities. Having a digital signature by a private key is a decent way to ensure that you are linked to the public key, if the recipient knows the identity of the public key, and the private key is hard to copy (i.e. not memorizable, not something you type in to a bunch of potentially compromised computers). One way to do this is like Estonia's e-ID, which includes such a private key in the gov't issued photo ID; but having such an ID in the first place seems anathema in US.

andruby 9y ago

We have something like this in Belgium with our eID cards. AFAIK the chip has a public/private key. I use a PIN code to unlock the private key and I can create signatures with it to prove my identity. Websites can actually use this for proper citizen authentication (and non-repudiation). The integration has UX bugs, but at the end of the day, I am very happy that we have something much more secure than a US SSN.