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Most governments primarily don’t want stolen identity documents circulating without any time bounds, especially given that they often get used improperly these

by lxgr 1y ago

Most governments primarily don’t want stolen identity documents circulating without any time bounds, especially given that they often get used improperly these days (e.g. by allowing a photo/scan of somebody’s ID to constitute “authentication” without comparing the photo to a real person, which is a bizarre notion that’s getting more and more common).

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
Passports and license renewals are often for periods in the nature of 10 years. Is that meaningfully different from the self-invalidation already implied by an ID that claims you're 144 years old? The mean time between mass data breaches is certainly already less than the existing renewal interval. Meanwhile how does a stolen scan of an identity document become invalidated by requiring a renewal? The new document is identical and even contains the same ID number. The only difference is the date which anyone could trivially alter with a computer. For that matter the only thing they need from the stolen ID is the name and number, so even if you completely redesign the layout of the ID, someone with the old one can recreate a scan of the new layout using only the information on the old stolen one. The problem here is not that you need IDs to expire, it's that you need fools to stop trying to rely on a computer image of an ID to authenticate anything.
- lxgr 1y ago
  > The new document is identical and even contains the same ID number. Quite a few IDs contain a 2D barcode, and I believe at least some of these contain some offline-validateable signature over the basic data of the document, including the expiry date. That's not as trivial to forge. On top of that, document expiry does help a bit with people trying to use a lost/stolen ID of somebody they happen to look similar to, adds a forcing function to make people eventually upgrade to newer/more secure document standards etc.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > Quite a few IDs contain a 2D barcode, and I believe at least some of these contain some offline-validateable signature over the basic data of the document, including the expiry date. That's not as trivial to forge. Most government IDs don't have that, and it's still not clear what good it would be doing when data breaches happen on much shorter timescales than ID expirations. Who cares if they stop being able to use the ID after 10 years, when they can use them for 10 years and there will be another breach providing them with a new batch of IDs to use in a matter of days rather than years? > On top of that, document expiry does help a bit with people trying to use a lost/stolen ID of somebody they happen to look similar to That seems like an extremely narrow advantage. If they just need some ID that looks like them then they can just get another one from the batch of fresh ones. If they need the ID of a specific person, the government still isn't authenticating renewals, so wouldn't they just use the existing stolen ID and pay for a renewal in that case, in which case we're back the only thing happening being the government extracts money? Or no, in that case it's worse, because then they can submit a fresh picture of themselves to renew the ID which has someone else's name on it. > adds a forcing function to make people eventually upgrade to newer/more secure document standards etc. Which you already have because everybody eventually dies.

by lxgr 1y ago

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

Passports and license renewals are often for periods in the nature of 10 years. Is that meaningfully different from the self-invalidation already implied by an ID that claims you're 144 years old? The mean time between mass data breaches is certainly already less than the existing renewal interval. Meanwhile how does a stolen scan of an identity document become invalidated by requiring a renewal? The new document is identical and even contains the same ID number. The only difference is the date which anyone could trivially alter with a computer. For that matter the only thing they need from the stolen ID is the name and number, so even if you completely redesign the layout of the ID, someone with the old one can recreate a scan of the new layout using only the information on the old stolen one. The problem here is not that you need IDs to expire, it's that you need fools to stop trying to rely on a computer image of an ID to authenticate anything.

lxgr 1y ago
> The new document is identical and even contains the same ID number. Quite a few IDs contain a 2D barcode, and I believe at least some of these contain some offline-validateable signature over the basic data of the document, including the expiry date. That's not as trivial to forge. On top of that, document expiry does help a bit with people trying to use a lost/stolen ID of somebody they happen to look similar to, adds a forcing function to make people eventually upgrade to newer/more secure document standards etc.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > Quite a few IDs contain a 2D barcode, and I believe at least some of these contain some offline-validateable signature over the basic data of the document, including the expiry date. That's not as trivial to forge. Most government IDs don't have that, and it's still not clear what good it would be doing when data breaches happen on much shorter timescales than ID expirations. Who cares if they stop being able to use the ID after 10 years, when they can use them for 10 years and there will be another breach providing them with a new batch of IDs to use in a matter of days rather than years? > On top of that, document expiry does help a bit with people trying to use a lost/stolen ID of somebody they happen to look similar to That seems like an extremely narrow advantage. If they just need some ID that looks like them then they can just get another one from the batch of fresh ones. If they need the ID of a specific person, the government still isn't authenticating renewals, so wouldn't they just use the existing stolen ID and pay for a renewal in that case, in which case we're back the only thing happening being the government extracts money? Or no, in that case it's worse, because then they can submit a fresh picture of themselves to renew the ID which has someone else's name on it. > adds a forcing function to make people eventually upgrade to newer/more secure document standards etc. Which you already have because everybody eventually dies.