11 ms·

As well as the Estonia eID system works (aside from that time it got hacked[0] and that other time they leaked all the photos[1]) and how well a digital (non-go

• mothballed 1y ago
  Many of the former colonies of the UK have chosen to secede from the UK. Is there any chance England might too?
  • dijit 1y ago
    No, English people still somehow tie their identity to the UK Government somehow. Scotland will not be granted another independence vote for at least 15 years, despite the last one being build upon a house of lies and nobody knows anything about what the Welsh think. I do think we’re witnessing the collapse of the UK, but more like a Roman Empire collapse - as in it’s happening over decades. Dying with a whimper, not a bang.
    • Bender 1y ago
      Scotland needs to reinstate their king and conquer England to right the wrongs.
      • wizzwizz4 1y ago
        That already happened: James VI of Scotland inherited the English (and Irish) throne. There's a pedantic sense in which the current English king is actually the Scottish king, not the other way around (although stronger pedantry would say the Hanoverian succession is sufficient to prove that whole line of reasoning a load of tosh). What would restoring the Scottish monarchy mean to you?
        • Bender 1y ago
          What would restoring the Scottish monarchy mean to you? Fully reclaim Scotland's historical sovereignty, create a clear and distinct break with the rest of the United Kingdom and breaking English narratives. My first act as king would be to build hundreds of underground nuclear and geothermal power plants, sever all connections to England, build massive data-centers and under ground cities to wait out WWIII. I would also build a giant rollar coaster than spans the entire country, under ground with trippy visual effects and stops at numerous malls, coffee shops and other amusement destinations. I would run under ground fiber to every location on earth as well as high speed transport tubes, 90% of which would arrive at secret locations around the world. One never knows where the Scots will appear. I would fund all of this pissing away the gold and gems using the wealth of the English crown. Every home would have free 400gb/s IPv6 internet. Oh and I would purchase and relocate every private military contractor from the USA into Scotland. My military would be entirely private and for-profit. We would fund our operations by siphoning processed fuel, oil and other resouces from other nations pipes via our underground tunnels. Immigration policy will be an app that only citizens of Scotland may utilize to swipe left or right on applicants. The app may also be used to eject existing people. That's Q1. Q2 through Q4 would be extending the borders of the nation to include the entire land mass under every ocean and growing the population to 10 billion from weekend orgies.
          • lifeisstillgood 1y ago
            I see your cunning plan - post on HN this week, get hired to write Nigel Farage’s next manifesto the week after. The swipe left or right on immigration requests is a vote winner ! Simon Cowell can host it weekly…
    • AlecSchueler 1y ago
      Northern Ireland also exists!
      • dijit 1y ago
        Sorry, just like every politician and mainland company: I forgot about Northern Ireland :(
    • ifwinterco 1y ago
      If I had to guess I would think it would collapse more like the USSR, from the centre, with the english withdrawing their support for a british state that no longer serves their interests
• dalke 1y ago
  The Swedish non-government system (BankID) doesn't work well for me. My Swedish identity must not be dependent on the permission of a US company nor the US government, while BankID requires both. So far my BankID boycott is over a year old, and my resolve grows as I read more of the news.
  • dijit 1y ago
    Ask your bank for a pin machine, you can get a chip and pin machine to solve BankID challenges. The machine itself is likely manufactured in China, but it’s of no consequence. You wouldn’t be able to communicate with me if you didn’t use chinese products at all.
    • dalke 1y ago
      You mean Bank-id på kort? https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank-id#Bank-id_på_kort https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank-id#Bank-id_på_kort says it only supports MS Windows and MacOS, not Linux. Fundamentally though, that doesn't change the fact that the US can order a Swedish bank to either freeze access to a customer or the bank can no longer do business in the US.
  • earthnail 1y ago
    I once had my bank close my account because of a mistake they made (I can provide the background but it’s just a facepalming story). That meant my Bank ID was closed down, too. I asked for an appointment with the bank to resolve it but was told I can only get an appointment with Bank ID. It was outrageous. Obviously none of the other services worked either. Luckily I still had a British and a German credit card that I used for payments (since I lived in both those countries before). In the end I opened an account with another bank and moved on. Although I did try, furiously, for two weeks to get my old bank to admit their mistake and rectify it. No chance. If they had admitted it it would’ve meant they would have broken financial regulation, and obviously you don’t admit to that if you don’t have to. Bank ID is great when it works and brutal when it doesn’t. I actually don’t have a better proposal for a system since it works quite well in most cases, but just wanted to share my bad experience on it too.
• raesene9 1y ago
  The thing is, to me, the powers of the government to require more identification for different things is orthogonal to the idea of digital ID. We already have to identify ourselves in a variety of circumstances (e.g. mortgages, bank accounts, voting, using "adult" websites etc), and the gov. can get the information from various third parties on demand already. Implementing those requirements didn't depend on there being a digital ID system. Instead we have a hodge podge of bad requirements (like "wet" signatures on specific documents, using of non-UK based private providers etc). Implementing a digital ID system could reduce inequalities (for example, people who don't have passports and driver's licenses have more difficulties in some circumstances) and also reduce dependencies on non-UK orgs who may not do that well with privacy. That's not to say there aren't risks of course, but other European countries seem to have managed to implement these systems without becoming totalitarian police states :)
  • Arch-TK 1y ago
    Reduce dependencies on non-UK orgs by increasing dependencies on Google and Apple ... which are ... hold on a minute...
    • raesene9 1y ago
      TBH the mobile duopoly isn't a problem specific to the UK gov, and plenty of the systems already in use which have a mobile component already have that dependency, so I don't think it really gets any worse if you had a digital ID. Indeed if done with physical smart card + reader, it would reduce the requirement for mobile devices, allowing for people unhappy with their presence to avoid them :)
      • Arch-TK 1y ago
        I currently live in the UK, and I am not significantly restricted from anything (banking, ISAs, investments, healthcare, etc) for refusing to use a Google approved build of Android. Moreover, I actually on principle refuse to make myself dependant on my phone for these things, which means that (at a small convenience cost) I don't have any banking apps, or investment apps, or healthcare apps, or whatever). My phone is strictly a general computing device and I on principle only permit a technology into my life if it doesn't impose special restrictions on the hardware/software it works with. So if the UK government creates a digital ID app which only runs on a phone and which potentially only runs on google/apple approved phone (this is e.g. the requirement imposed by google pay), then that would be unprecedented.
• scrlk 1y ago
  > They have proven over and over and over, that at every opportunity presented they will increase their own authority. I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism. This has been a slow 111 year project. See the opening of A. J. P. Taylor's English History 1914–1945: > Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. > All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman’s food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World War was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.
  • seabass-labrax 1y ago
    I think even 111 years is being too cautious. One only needs to look as far as the numerous vagrancy laws in England to see how a citizen might be prevented from living "where he liked and as he liked". Persecution of minorities including 'witches', Gypsies and Jews has been a continual theme. England has had banned books, even banned translations of the Holy Bible. The Edwardian era was a very unusual period of liberality, I'll agree. But at least in that quote, Taylor is making some strange omissions that I hardly think are accidental: for a start, where is the mention of women's suffrage, introduced for the first time ever after the Great War?
• Etheryte 1y ago
  Having a vulnerability is very different to getting hacked though. To date, there hasn't been a single breach of Estonia's ID system itself as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong? And that's saying something given the adversary is Russia. Reading through your link, the leaked pictures incident was a separate external service that's not tied to the ID system itself.
  • Avamander 1y ago
    You're basically correct. But it's also a weird thing to refute in the first place? How do you hack a "passport" or your "social security card"? Artisanal elliptic curves from Russia and extremely deep corruption in most branches of the government? Most human-related problems around bootstrapping one's identity still remain the same and have to be solved. Electronic identity or not. (Also see the XKCD about the "wrench attack") But a proper ID system gives a nation the opportunity to rely on elliptic curve cryptography and an EAL4+ SmartCard or SIM. Not on a pinky promise about identity based on knowing some number, some face pics or having a gas bill. Verizon could still leak your hypothetical future e-SSN. But then it wouldn't be sufficient for identity theft or impersonating you in some places. That's not what would be an "identity" any more.
    • Etheryte 1y ago
      Estonia's digital ID system is used for everything you could do with an ID and a signature in person. You can vote in elections, log in to your bank and send money, sign binding agreements, and so on. Hacking the system would mean you could, as a simple example, win elections, empty out retirement funds, and many other grim outcomes. This isn't about any one person, if you hacked the system, you could do that to the country as a whole, every single person.
      • Avamander 1y ago
        How is it truly different to any other ID system(s) though. What unique usable possibility is provided to this hypothetical attacker and how many are taken away? The only thing it actually differs in is scale, like you described. But scale does not mean an inherent vulnerability that can be practically exploited. If you're however able to make everyone ignore the noise of some massive attack then you already don't need to bother with any of it anyways. If you can attack the foundation of the system, like elliptic cryptography then every bank and retirement fund on earth is in danger. Much bigger fish to fry.
• skeletal88 1y ago
  Our system in Estonia works well. I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. Some have explained it with a lack of trust between citizens and the country. But without such digital id it is impossible to have such digital government services as we have here. The government services need to verify and autheticate the citizen, so they only access their own data and not someone who has the same name and birth date by accident. I don't see how such a system gives the government more powers. It already has all the data on its citizens, but it is spread out, fragmented, stored with multiple conflicting versions, maybe some of it is stored in databases where no one cares about security, etc.
  • dijit 1y ago
    Just like Britons can’t imagine Estonia, I know you can’t imagine Britain. In the UK there’s a bunch of government and company databases, and coalescing them isn’t just hard, in some cases it’s not even possible. You can ask a company for specific details on a person, and they can make a “reasonable effort” to get the data. But if they mishandle the request (maybe your name has accents?) then the government gets no information. The easier it gets, the easier it can be for them to excercise power over you, and right now there’s sufficient reason to be worried about that. The current government is liberally using the fascistic powers that the previous government created.
  • Fade_Dance 1y ago
    In the US we use a short number written on a paper card - social security numbers. It's a huge source of compromised security on every level from government services to corporate to personal data security.
    • mulmen 1y ago
      The US does not have a national ID. SSN was overloaded to fill the gap because “everyone has one”.
  • reorder9695 1y ago
    The UK government has justified this with reducing the amount of illegal workers. To work legally currently you need an NI number, this is not an improvement on that system other than requiring everyone to have a phone (probably with safetynet checks to ensure it can't be running a custom rom). I personally do not trust the government one little bit and am sure they'll find some way to abuse this, as they have just about everything else they do at this point. This possibly sounds far fetched, but why couldn't they ask for GPS permissions on the app then use it to quickly find out who was at a pro Palestine protest for example given their recent penchant for arresting protesters? They have given us no reason to believe things will improve with it's introduction, and have given us plenty of reasons to believe it will be abused. It's almost perfect for that, "install our software on the device you have most places you go, or you can't earn a living anymore".
• surfingdino 1y ago
  Estonia (and now Ukraine) have worked on being able to do a "backup" of the country and a "restore" elsewhere if needed. (I am oversimplifying, but contingency plans have been part of the overall design that eID is a part of.) The UK doesn't have such designs and contingencies in place. The private sector is no better, every year there are major security breaches. It is premature to stick Digital ID onto a rickety network of badly secured databases.
• protocolture 1y ago
  >I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism. The UK is largely in conversation with Australia and Canada on this stuff. Australia test benched a lot of the laws the UK later adopted, even cribbing the terminology directly. Not surprisingly we have our own Digital ID in formation, and we have an Internet ID system in the pipeline mirroring the one in the UK. I think the take away should be that you cant really engineer a system where theres a single country with "Freedom", as Freedom is considered relative to other countries. A declining tide drops all boats.
• corimaith 1y ago
  >I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism. Have you ever been to Asia or South America or really the rest of the world? A digital ID is a pretty mundane. If you're complaining about "authoritarianism", if the government really wants to get you they will get you. Place more faith or care in the plurality of your political systems instead.
• basisword 1y ago
  >> I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism. Come on. You really think the UK has moved further towards authoritarianism in recent years than the US?
  • RobotToaster 1y ago
    It's a close competition, but the US seems to have a trump card.
• belorn 1y ago
  To expand a bit on Scandinavia, let me describe my 5 different but equal valid identification systems that I personally own that is valid to use in order to identify myself towards the government, two (mostly) digital and three physical with digital parts. I got one passport with bio metric data and chips in it. One national ID card with bio metric data and chip in it. One driving license card without bio metric data and I don't know if there is a chip or not inside. Then I got two digital eid systems, bank id and freya. The bank id is initially created by using a physical device that the bank provides, and the other one is created with a smart phone to scan the passport in combination with face recognition. I can't really say if the multiple digital eid systems give the government an increase in authority, through its hard to say. Mostly it just messy to carry so many different identification systems that basically do the same thing. The current discussion that I see in Sweden mostly focus on turning the physical cards into digital.
• pkaodev 1y ago
  Swedish ID system seems pretty great. Never had any of my family there complain about it, and it just seems to make a lot of life easier. The issue I see with the UK's plan is it that so far everything the government is talking about is how it will stop illegal working, and that just seems like a reaction to reform's recent rise in polls. That by itself seems like a waste, because people working cash in hand surely won't be bothered by this new requirement. I think it should go further so it actually becomes useful. Things like having people's benefit status accessible at pharmacies to prevent people simply saying "I don't pay for my prescription" (still blows my mind this is a thing). What has the UK done to make you think it is becoming one of the most authoritarian advanced economies?
• floam 1y ago
  Worse than the US? I’m honestly curious how the two are seen from the outside.
• jesterson 1y ago
  > I really do not trust the UK government. They have proven over and over and over, that at every opportunity presented they will increase their own authority. I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism. You can safely replace the UK with any other government and it will stand. Likely the UK one just desperately trying to push dividing issues in order to distract from what really matters to the UK citizens. Or they are just inherently stupid and just do what they are told. Its unfortunate what the UK governance degenerated into.
• phatfish 1y ago
  I'd love to know how this "march towards authoritarianism" actually manifests in the real world. Not just in the head space of podcast grifters and privacy nuts. I've lived in the UK my whole life. Multiple other countries have liberated themselves and then returned to authoritarian governments within my lifetime. Strangely this hasn't happened in the UK, plenty of people trying to wish it into existence though.
  • dijit 1y ago
    An average of 30 people a day are arrested for offending people over the internet (according to the Mirror) The government regularly unpersons disagreeable people. I really wish it wasn’t happening, as it stands I am not going to move back.
    • phatfish 1y ago
      The hate speech laws are just badly written for the online age, which is a problem but they are not going to result in the fall of democracy. They are catching what would normally be bigoted comments someone makes to their mates down the pub (or maybe in their WhatsApp group) and because it was posted to the world on Twitter it counts as inciting violence. The police obviously can't investigate all potential infringements so now they have to pick and choose what they do enforce. And inevitably the ones with the most noise get their attention. The people that do get caught up in this said something nasty they should have kept to themselves. Not something to be arrested for in most cases, but it's not an attack on free speech either. Just a badly constructed law. Not really sure what "regularly unpersons disagreeable people" means. Shamima Begum is the only one I can think of recently. She got made an example of so a load of copy cats didn't go and join ISIS whose goal is to destroy the western nonbelievers (including the UK). Unfortunate to be made the example I suppose, but it is not a regular occurrence.
• dyauspitr 1y ago
  > I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism. Are you familiar with what is happening in the US? Personally a digital ID is a far cry from troops on the ground in major cities and government backed militias detaining people without probable cause.