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Should have it where your social security is a public key and government has your private key. You're given a device that has your private key to confirm things

Should have it where your social security is a public key and government has your private key. You're given a device that has your private key to confirm things but you don't know it directly. Public key is used in replace of discussi security number. If your public key gets compromised the government blacklists it and gives you a new one. This is just a knee-jerk thought and I'm sure it can be improved, but I believe asymmetric keys are the solution.

mikestew 5y ago
If your public key gets compromised... Do you mean private key? Or am I about to have a TIL moment? Because your public key is, well, public so I wonder what a compromise of that would look like.
discardable_dan 5y ago
Nah, one-time pad with government verification for third parties. Keep it rolling.
t0mbstone 5y ago
You have it totally backwards. Public keys are called public keys because they are intended to be public. You should be able to freely advertise a public key on a billboard. On the other hand, you can't really expect the average citizen to properly curate a private key, and a private key also doesn't work for verification purposes. I think the problem would be easily solved without encryption or keys by using the social security number in combination with a user-selected PIN number. Any time you apply for credit somewhere, you should have to provide the social and a PIN. There should also be an easy way to generate single-use PIN numbers that can be used when applying for credit. They already have a lot of the infrastructure for doing this. You can already put a credit freeze on your social security number and protect the credit freeze with a PIN, for example. Whenever I am applying for credit, I simply "thaw" out my social security number for a couple of days. This works pretty well, but it's a hassle because you have to do it for all three agencies. It also suffers from the problem that my credit could get compromised if I left it thawed out too long.

mikestew 5y ago

If your public key gets compromised... Do you mean private key? Or am I about to have a TIL moment? Because your public key is, well, public so I wonder what a compromise of that would look like.

discardable_dan 5y ago

Nah, one-time pad with government verification for third parties. Keep it rolling.

t0mbstone 5y ago

You have it totally backwards. Public keys are called public keys because they are intended to be public. You should be able to freely advertise a public key on a billboard. On the other hand, you can't really expect the average citizen to properly curate a private key, and a private key also doesn't work for verification purposes. I think the problem would be easily solved without encryption or keys by using the social security number in combination with a user-selected PIN number. Any time you apply for credit somewhere, you should have to provide the social and a PIN. There should also be an easy way to generate single-use PIN numbers that can be used when applying for credit. They already have a lot of the infrastructure for doing this. You can already put a credit freeze on your social security number and protect the credit freeze with a PIN, for example. Whenever I am applying for credit, I simply "thaw" out my social security number for a couple of days. This works pretty well, but it's a hassle because you have to do it for all three agencies. It also suffers from the problem that my credit could get compromised if I left it thawed out too long.