6 ms·
Here we go. CBDCs are next, and also national Digital IDs. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRSzNTp2ko https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRSzNTp2ko Real ID + needin
by EGreg 3y ago
Here we go. CBDCs are next, and also national Digital IDs. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRSzNTp2ko https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRSzNTp2ko
Real ID + needing it to browse anything on the Internet: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-encryption/214 https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en...
From what I see people on HN writing, by and large they downplay the risks of these as well as AI. Or alternately seem to suggest that CBDCs and national IDs are not coming, and that it’s a conspiracy theory. However, the “enshittification of Big Tech platforms” is already a fact, so they simply complain about it, but anytime solutions involving open source, decentralization, and utility tokens are introduced, they are violently voted down. So — since no solutions are welcomed, I guess many denizens of HN support hurtling toward extreme centralized control. After all, we’ll be able to complain about it once it’s in place, and that’s enough!
Edit: literally 5 seconds after I posted it, I received downvotes. Not fast enough for a human to read the message let alone explore the links. I wonder if it’s even automated by keyword now.
- solardev 3y agoI would love to see government IDs be available as a form of auth on the internet. It would open up the possibility of real-person communities with fewer bots and trolls. Similarly with digital payments, I'd much rather trust the government with that than some rando cryptobro of the week. There is nothing extreme about this. The government already does both functions in the analog world. It's about time they caught up digitally. Meanwhile some YouTuber screeching about some Bible quote... not a convincing start Edit: didn't downvote you btw, just don't agree that this is a bad thing
- WeylandYutani 3y agoI agree I'm more concerned about Silicon valley tech bros than my own government. I can vote for Parliament I can't vote for PayPal's board of directors.
- drivebyhooting 3y agoPayPal doesn’t have a military and doesn’t extract taxes from you though.
- lesuorac 3y agoPayPal might not but Apple/etc extract a 30% tax from everything you do through their stores.
- drivebyhooting 3y agoAgreed. But I can choose not to use it. I don’t buy things in the App Store nor do I use pay pal.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- solardev 3y agoThe military? When was the last time they turned on the citizens? I don't live in Tiananmen, thankfully. Meanwhile it's private companies that oppress most of us: private hospitals, private prisons, private insurances companies, private credit bureaus, private banks, private tech companies, private surveillance companies, private small arms manufacturers and dealers. It ain't the government that's crimping my freedoms. Taxes? So I get some roads and schools and parks and old people healthcare, and lose some to corruption. Better that than making Bezos and Zucky even richer.
- OGWhales 3y agoMy concern with digital payments is the elimination of cash. Having the ability to transfer value without it being monitored or blocked is an exceptionally useful property of paper money.
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoBut you might buy things the government doesn’t want you to have. Real meat? Nope. Religious texts? Nope.
- fatfingerd 3y agoWhich government is that? Even Russia values religious faith as a pillar for misinformation.
- solardev 3y agoChina, notably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#Anti-metaphysical_and_anti-theistic_thoughts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#Anti-metaphy... While not an outright ban on religion per se, there is continued state pressure against religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antireligious_campaigns_of_the_Chinese_Communist_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antireligious_campaigns_of_the...
- shwaj 3y agoOr participate in activities the government doesn’t want you to participate in. Canadian trucker protest? Nope.
- kube-system 3y agoAs long as the US continues to have large numbers of unbanked/underbanked, that isn't a possibility.
- digging 3y agoWell, it's still possible with barter goods, just a lot harder. Isn't there a cryptocurrency that's actually private too? (I know Bitcoin is not)
- niam 3y agoI don't trust the govt quite as much as you, but could see this being a useful govt function if the issuing body didn't maintain any record of when, where, or why an ID was used--and only acted to verify the authenticity of an ID.
- solardev 3y agoI don't know if it's really a matter of "trusting" the government, but of accepting that they already have access to most of my data anyway. Between credit cards, IP logs, subpoenas, national security letters, warrantless wiretapping, etc., they already know everything there is to know about me. What makes this tradeoff (of convenience vs privacy) acceptable to me is not that I trust the government, but that I already accept I have near-zero privacy right now, as it is. Making it slightly easier for them isn't a big deal. I'm not a very exciting person to begin with. And frankly I suspect that outside of techno-libertarian echo chambers, this is the case for most regular people. They just don't really care if the government knows about them. Not everyone has the same degree of desire/need for privacy.
- niam 3y agoI also fit into that camp of un-interesting people you're describing, but I'd say the intersections between privacy and law are a bit more underhanded and dangerous than the intersections between privacy and corporations. In legal circles, for example, there's the refrain that you should never share unnecessary information with police, even if you're well intentioned and have nothing to hide, because innocence isn't a preclusion from being royally fucked in court. It's true that "the government" as a homogenous blob has mountains of information on you, but I guess I'm not so eager to dissolve what few helpful divisions within that blob exist. On the whole though I agree that my information existing somewhere in that blob isn't the hugest deal.
- barkerja 3y ago> I would love to see government IDs be available as a form of auth on the internet This kind of already exists: https://login.gov https://login.gov I have to use this to login to the VA.
- rootusrootus 3y agoIt'd certainly be interesting if they opened it up so third-parties could use it for authentication.
- drivebyhooting 3y agoIt’s not even been 100 years and people already forgot.
- solardev 3y agoUS history isn't my forte. Can you elaborate?
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoHe's talking about those yellow stars Jews had to wear in Nazi Germany. Please tell me you at least remember what happened after that.
- didntcheck 3y ago> I would love to see government IDs be available as a form of auth on the internet. It would open up the possibility of real-person communities with fewer bots and trolls. And reintroduce all the chilling effects of knowing everything you say is on a permanent record linked to your name. I know the government wouldn't be running the sites, but they'd have activity metadata, and data breaches could be correlated to work out who the "opaque" ID refers to (perhaps it would be possible to mitigate that by having the IdP identify users to the site as a hash combining the site and the user. Not sure). There are a few types of companies that may have a genuine reason for requiring government auth, but generally we should not make it easy for Facebook or Google to require it A community with fewer bots and trolls should be accomplished with moderation, and not just allowing a firehose of signups
- solardev 3y agoCan't we have both? Ideally, the government login/auth would be an opt-in for sites where anonymity isn't important. Facebook, for example, already has a real-name policy but still has fake accounts. Moderation alone isn't sufficient; it's hard to keep up with the number of bad actors. Limiting signups to verified humans, and possibly validating their nationality, can help with that IRT to bots and foreign agents. It's important that the mechanism be opt-in, though, and yeah, metadata would be a problem. But realistically it's just a matter of degree... they already have access to all of that metadata today with just a subpoena or national security letter. Centralizing the login would make it easier for them to collect it, but also make it easier to audit via government mechanisms (FOIAs, etc.) compared to the opacity of private companies (which are under zero obligation to reveal how things are stored).
- JohnFen 3y ago> It would open up the possibility of real-person communities with fewer bots and trolls. I would be 100% unwilling to engage with public online communities if I had to reveal my real-world identity to do so.
- solardev 3y agoAnd that's OK. I'm sure there would still be anonymous forums, the 4chans and reddits of the world and such. But this would enable real-identity communities that we don't currently have, useful for things like public comments and discussions for local news (god, those newspaper comment sections are horrible right now), government requests for comments (like when they're starting a new development or changing land use or whatever), things like a public version of Nextdoor/Yelp/etc. The hope is not that it would kill anonymity altogether, but that it would create some alternative communities linked to real-world identities, and maybe that would help people behave better, with real-world decorum, in those specific identities. Yeah, some people would never sign up for those... and maybe that's OK, as long as the remaining community is more civil and thoughtful?
- JohnFen 3y ago> maybe that would help people behave better, with real-world decorum, in those specific identities I don't think that would be the result, really, because when sites do have real identity requirements, it doesn't increase civility much, if any. I think it's the absence of a physical presence that makes people feel OK with being less civil. Emotionally, it doesn't feel like you're talking with real people. But I don't know.
- solardev 3y agoYou might be right about that, sadly.
- carlosjobim 3y ago> Meanwhile some YouTuber screeching about some Bible quote Why do you lie when it takes 1 second to verify the facts? I wasn't interested, but clicked on the video and the man is talking in a calm and collected manner, not even close to "screeching". Or is it always "screeching" when somebody says something you disagree with?
- delfinom 3y agoNational IDs in the US are never coming because the evangelical base of the GOP literally oppose it for being the "mark of the beast". >Here we go. CBDCs are next, and also national Digital IDs No, this is a long term replacement for ACH, a function that the Federal Reserve was already carrying out.
- solardev 3y agoWe already use social security numbers for everything (insurance, credit, etc.). It's pretty much a national ID, just a shitty one.
- pessimizer 3y agoThe way they got SSNs through is by promising that it would be illegal to use them for identification. The only remnant of that is that it (still?) remains illegal to refuse services to people who refuse to give their social security numbers, although if you do it you'll break customer service.
- DANmode 3y ago> it (still?) remains illegal to refuse services to people who refuse to give their social security numbers I'd love to read this, for anyone more familiar with the legislation/where to find it.
- solardev 3y ago"Can I see your social security card, please? The one that says 'Not to be used for identification' on it?" lol
- dboreham 3y agoUSG has issued national ID documents for more than 200 years. They're called passports.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
- ksey3 3y agoIn this case CBDCs (the interest bearing kind) actually have the potential of disintermediating banks. Or atleast reducing credit/liquidity risk. Grandma's savings/deposits arent going to evaporate the next time a bank collapses. Cause her CBDCs are going to be sitting in her wallet.
- compsciphd 3y agoif they are interest bearing, there will always be some risk involved by definition....
- ahtihn 3y ago> Grandma's savings/deposits arent going to evaporate the next time a bank collapses. That's already the case.
- striking 3y agoI've already read this comment before, just written a different way. I promise you I'm not a robot, I just disagree.
- ktosobcy 3y agoUS attitude towards national IDs is amusing, lol
- anigbrowl 3y agoIt's also wildly inconsistent. The same political factions (vs individuals) that complain about Real ID also complain endlessly about fake ID. They complain about illegal voting, but also support the drive to withdraw their states from ERIC, which has done a good job in detecting illegal voting. Basically they're sometimes against solutions because their complaints infrastructure generates a reliable stream of political and financial capital from the credulous.
- rootusrootus 3y ago[Lightly] amusing is thinking there is a singular attitude in the US towards national IDs. And we already have several forms of national ID anyway.
- ktosobcy 3y agoWell yeah, generalisation is awful, but it has it gist here :-)
- digging 3y agoComically, the primary national ID we use is one specifically designed not to be a national ID. The secondary "national" IDs most of us use are simply state IDs or driver's licenses. They're not in a federal database, but I don't understand how that's meaningfully different. It's still a big government tracking system.
- DANmode 3y agoIt was, but curiously, they've removed the related verbiage from new issuances. They used to carry a disclaimer: FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES • NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION
- anigbrowl 3y agoIt was obvious from the first line that your post was going to be axe-grindey conspiracy fodder. It's not us, it's you and your and tightly closed epistemological loops.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> CBDCs are next Nobody has seriously discussed a CBDC for months in the U.S. FedNow is the American financial system catching up to the 1990s. It has nothing to do with crypto beyond the cursory.
- DANmode 3y agoFedNow is the system that will give the USD some or all of the troublesome properties of a CBDC. I can't begin to parse your comment.
- rafram 3y agoRight now, you hold your money digitally with a bank. The bank holds its money digitally with the Fed. If your bank caught fire, the bank and its insurers would be responsible for getting you your money back. A CBDC would mean cutting out the bank - you would hold your money digitally with the Fed, and the Fed would be liable for it. FedNow creates a ledger that allows two banks holding their money digitally with the Fed make an instant transfer. You never become a direct customer of the Fed, but your bank and the bank of the person you're exchanging money with - both already Fed customers - have a quicker way to record the transfer. The only relation between FedNow and a CBDC is that the Fed is involved, and, like, computers, I guess? Other than that, their mechanisms and effects have very little in common.
- CameronNemo 3y agoPowell seriously discussed CBDC in his recent testimony to congress. He mentioned it was far off.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Powell seriously discussed CBDC in his recent testimony to congress. He mentioned it was far off It isn't being seriously discussed for implementation. The working groups are disbanded. The Fed won't write it off--they shouldn't. But CBDCs are as proximate as postal banking.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoIt's kind of strange that in other threads HNers will lament the end of the nerd internet and how everything is corporatized and 1984 wasn't a manual, and then here they downvote you.