3 ms·

Eh, I think the issue is that because there's no central system, every institution that needs to verify identity latches onto systems that were never intended f

Eh, I think the issue is that because there's no central system, every institution that needs to verify identity latches onto systems that were never intended for that purpose (such as ssn). The use of a bunch of different systems means that it'd hard to do simple things like verify that an applicant is actually a living person or that the same persons info isn't being used across multiple counties, states etc... Obviously there are a number of potential pitfalls in any such system, but I have to believe that even a flawed system which was intentionally designed would be harder to exploit than a hodgepodge of 100 incidental systems.

nickff 5y ago
Won't any system as valuable as national ID be vulnerable to similar attacks as SSN? The problem seems to be that American ID is extremely valuable; it will suffer more attacks than almost any other national ID, just because of the sheer amount of money involved.
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  No, because a much better system could be designed if we planned on using it for id verification from the start. Some easy improvements even keeping a number based system would be: 1) don't assign ID numbers sequentially and based on location of birth 2) have consistent laws about who can collect these and liability for leaks (like hipaa) 3) allow them to be changed in cases of theft But we could actually do much better by using asymmetric cryptography.