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Yes it's possible to do this. I wrote up a scheme for that years ago that I called "proof of passport". You can create anonymous identities tied to a hash of yo

Yes it's possible to do this. I wrote up a scheme for that years ago that I called "proof of passport". You can create anonymous identities tied to a hash of your epassport certificate using SGX enclaves and some careful protocol design. Needless to say, such ideas make some people very unhappy, although it can be done in a way that doesn't grant governments any new powers they don't already have. The most common objection is from Americans who make the same arguments they make about elections: some people don't have id of any kind and shouldn't be expected to get one. You can also of course buy identities from people who don't care, as a sibling comment says. But that's inevitable for any identity system where identities can be had cheaply.

xorcist 3y ago
> Americans who make the same arguments they make about elections What is that argument like, in practice? "I will not tell you who I am, but I demand to vote!" > that's inevitable for any identity system where identities can be had cheaply Therein lies the rub. Your system is the economic solution to the spam problem. You don't really care about the passport itself, all you want is to associate generating identity with a cost. A closely related solution to the same problem is to associate every identity in the system with a phone number, which also carries a cost to generate. Similar to what most tech giants do (helped on by external factors, but that's the basic argument). Then you cannot hand wave away any problems with that they are "inevitable for any system where identities are too cheap". Because the proposed solution is to associate identity with cost. If that cost is too small in practice, it is not a good solution.
MyFirstSass 3y ago
I think systems like yours could become extremely valuable sooner than people expect, as the alternative is effectively 100% noise. As others have mentioned, there are numerous ideological issues. However the alternative might be never encountering a real person online again. And if not applicable for the broader internet, then probably in smaller or even country-sized gated communities, where people will expect to interact with 'real humans. Also while IDs may be traded, the relatively small number of fake IDs compared to the infinite bots that can be created today is not even comparable.

xorcist 3y ago

> Americans who make the same arguments they make about elections What is that argument like, in practice? "I will not tell you who I am, but I demand to vote!" > that's inevitable for any identity system where identities can be had cheaply Therein lies the rub. Your system is the economic solution to the spam problem. You don't really care about the passport itself, all you want is to associate generating identity with a cost. A closely related solution to the same problem is to associate every identity in the system with a phone number, which also carries a cost to generate. Similar to what most tech giants do (helped on by external factors, but that's the basic argument). Then you cannot hand wave away any problems with that they are "inevitable for any system where identities are too cheap". Because the proposed solution is to associate identity with cost. If that cost is too small in practice, it is not a good solution.

MyFirstSass 3y ago

I think systems like yours could become extremely valuable sooner than people expect, as the alternative is effectively 100% noise. As others have mentioned, there are numerous ideological issues. However the alternative might be never encountering a real person online again. And if not applicable for the broader internet, then probably in smaller or even country-sized gated communities, where people will expect to interact with 'real humans. Also while IDs may be traded, the relatively small number of fake IDs compared to the infinite bots that can be created today is not even comparable.