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Could you please expand how any of the findings, or any attempts at digital ID are about surveillance and totalitarianism? Your post, as it is now, is brandishi

Could you please expand how any of the findings, or any attempts at digital ID are about surveillance and totalitarianism? Your post, as it is now, is brandishing big and scary words based on flimsy assumptions and without any real backup.

motohagiography 3y ago
I worked on digital identity schemes that used similar protocols to these a decade ago, and they were technologies in search of a use case because the vendors and project sponsors just wanted a mandate to implement controls nobody wanted. They're called domestic passports and a gesundheitpasses and the 20th century was defined by the regimes who implemented them. Identity and cryptography are areas where technologists cannot avoid moral culpability for their design and implementation decisions. This area is as real as it gets. Those big scary words are technical terms of art in political science (defined by Arendt), and people who actually work in privacy and identity to ensure these technologies are not exploited by governments to abuse citizens, are engaged in the real work of governance. Part of that is demonstrating how even governments are bound by the laws of math and accountable to reason. I also understand how smaller words could be more broadly persuasive.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago
  Still no explanations, and now you're belittling people who want an explanation and relying on your supposed authority on the matter.
- mariusor 3y ago
  Digital identity is the key for scaling democracy up, decreasing bureaucracy and integrating the act of being a citizen in day to day life, instead of being a chore that everyone complains about. It could allow for abuse for sure, but what technology doesn't. Assuming bad faith ab-initio and using those exact "terms of art" give out very strong vibes of conspiracy theories and sovereign citizen fetishes.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    > Digital identity is the key for scaling democracy up unintended consequences are the topic at hand right? In all the world's countries, which shows "democracy scaling up" ? The single largest country is called China, they use Digital ID for scaling.
    - mariusor 3y ago
      No, the topic at hand is a cryptographer finding vulnerabilities in a communication protocol and the originating body incorporating the findings (hopefully) in their fixes. And since it's about France, what does that have to do with China? Good technology can be used badly by bad people, I don't know if China does that, but I imagine that's what you mean to imply. Vague assertions like yours are not exactly supporting evidence.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Many EU countries, and the EU itself (with eIDAS) are rolling out digital identity schemes as well. I'm able to communicate with most government agencies of one European country digitally, as a result – definitely beats having to take a 10-hour flight or to at least find a printer and mail envelopes back and forth across the Atlantic, containing "physical signatures" that no company or government can realistically validate anyway.
    - phatfish 3y ago
      China is a democracy? That's news to me.
      - mistrial9 3y ago
        is it not obvious that China is not a Democracy? the point in the comment is that Digital Identity does not scale Democracy in that case, the largest case in the world.
mistrial9 3y ago
> flimsy assumptions and without any real backup saying this does not make it true -- volumes of political science are written on the topic of public identity. The perfect world where every instrument is applied fairly and in no other way, does not exist. A quick knowledge of modern investigation systems by law and tax authorities will be evidence of the alternate uses of this tech. Details on these topics could easily fill a book.
- mariusor 3y ago
  I don't have the knowledge of those volumes of political science and modern investigation systems where electronic identity can be applied to greater negative effect. That's why I was asking for more concrete examples instead of hand waving.
  - pookha 3y ago
    Really? Seems self evident to me...The entire point of binding an employee or user to a certificate, PIN and an x509 PKI system has always been for authorization and tracking. No hand waiving required. For instance, Militaries around the world use these cards to grant access to internal systems and to track and monitor the activities of the insiders within these sensitive systems. Seeing this creeping into the general public is creeptastic.
    - mariusor 3y ago
      I agree that the capability might be present, but you forget how strong a stance the EU countries have for PII. A government that would abuse an identity mechanism would immediately be public knowledge and receive universal opprobrium inside the union and most likely outside of it too.
- lxgr 3y ago
  The parent comment is does not talk about the political desirability of public identity, but rather makes (largely baseless as far as I can tell, unlike the article) claims about the technical security of one particular scheme. > The perfect world where every instrument is applied fairly and in no other way, does not exist. True – yet the absence of a government-provided system often means that inferior means of identity verification will have to be used by people and businesses. (Have you ever opened a bank account or credit card in the US?) That's why we get absurd private initiatives like Worldcoin that seem every bit as dystopian as some of the more poorly implemented government-based ID schemes.

motohagiography 3y ago

I worked on digital identity schemes that used similar protocols to these a decade ago, and they were technologies in search of a use case because the vendors and project sponsors just wanted a mandate to implement controls nobody wanted. They're called domestic passports and a gesundheitpasses and the 20th century was defined by the regimes who implemented them. Identity and cryptography are areas where technologists cannot avoid moral culpability for their design and implementation decisions. This area is as real as it gets. Those big scary words are technical terms of art in political science (defined by Arendt), and people who actually work in privacy and identity to ensure these technologies are not exploited by governments to abuse citizens, are engaged in the real work of governance. Part of that is demonstrating how even governments are bound by the laws of math and accountable to reason. I also understand how smaller words could be more broadly persuasive.

uxp8u61q 3y ago
Still no explanations, and now you're belittling people who want an explanation and relying on your supposed authority on the matter.
mariusor 3y ago
Digital identity is the key for scaling democracy up, decreasing bureaucracy and integrating the act of being a citizen in day to day life, instead of being a chore that everyone complains about. It could allow for abuse for sure, but what technology doesn't. Assuming bad faith ab-initio and using those exact "terms of art" give out very strong vibes of conspiracy theories and sovereign citizen fetishes.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > Digital identity is the key for scaling democracy up unintended consequences are the topic at hand right? In all the world's countries, which shows "democracy scaling up" ? The single largest country is called China, they use Digital ID for scaling.
  - mariusor 3y ago
    No, the topic at hand is a cryptographer finding vulnerabilities in a communication protocol and the originating body incorporating the findings (hopefully) in their fixes. And since it's about France, what does that have to do with China? Good technology can be used badly by bad people, I don't know if China does that, but I imagine that's what you mean to imply. Vague assertions like yours are not exactly supporting evidence.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Many EU countries, and the EU itself (with eIDAS) are rolling out digital identity schemes as well. I'm able to communicate with most government agencies of one European country digitally, as a result – definitely beats having to take a 10-hour flight or to at least find a printer and mail envelopes back and forth across the Atlantic, containing "physical signatures" that no company or government can realistically validate anyway.
  - phatfish 3y ago
    China is a democracy? That's news to me.
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      is it not obvious that China is not a Democracy? the point in the comment is that Digital Identity does not scale Democracy in that case, the largest case in the world.

mistrial9 3y ago

> flimsy assumptions and without any real backup saying this does not make it true -- volumes of political science are written on the topic of public identity. The perfect world where every instrument is applied fairly and in no other way, does not exist. A quick knowledge of modern investigation systems by law and tax authorities will be evidence of the alternate uses of this tech. Details on these topics could easily fill a book.

mariusor 3y ago
I don't have the knowledge of those volumes of political science and modern investigation systems where electronic identity can be applied to greater negative effect. That's why I was asking for more concrete examples instead of hand waving.
- pookha 3y ago
  Really? Seems self evident to me...The entire point of binding an employee or user to a certificate, PIN and an x509 PKI system has always been for authorization and tracking. No hand waiving required. For instance, Militaries around the world use these cards to grant access to internal systems and to track and monitor the activities of the insiders within these sensitive systems. Seeing this creeping into the general public is creeptastic.
  - mariusor 3y ago
    I agree that the capability might be present, but you forget how strong a stance the EU countries have for PII. A government that would abuse an identity mechanism would immediately be public knowledge and receive universal opprobrium inside the union and most likely outside of it too.
lxgr 3y ago
The parent comment is does not talk about the political desirability of public identity, but rather makes (largely baseless as far as I can tell, unlike the article) claims about the technical security of one particular scheme. > The perfect world where every instrument is applied fairly and in no other way, does not exist. True – yet the absence of a government-provided system often means that inferior means of identity verification will have to be used by people and businesses. (Have you ever opened a bank account or credit card in the US?) That's why we get absurd private initiatives like Worldcoin that seem every bit as dystopian as some of the more poorly implemented government-based ID schemes.