11 ms·

How so? In Sweden we have digital ID and it's great! Super practical and I struggle to think of how it would be used to spy on citizens, given that it has the s

• gxs 11mo ago
  That’s sort of how all this type of policy is pushed through Convenience - what you’re describing is convenience It’s totally fine if you prioritize that over everything else, but my only thought here is that everyone should be crystal clear in what they are trading off for convenience It’s convenient for the government too, tk have a single identifier to thread a persons entire life We are, sadly, well beyond any expectation of privacy, but we should at least be aware of it and try to not make it worse
  • amarant 11mo ago
    Again,I struggle to think of how it'd be used gather any data not already available. Yes it's selling point is convenience. Convenience is good. In this particular case I disagree that there's a price in privacy. At least currently, and the way the Swedish electronic ID is implemented, I don't see it. With other variations there might be problems of course, though I'd worry more about someone messing up the security of it rather than privacy
    • zug_zug 11mo ago
      I used to think like that. Now in my country we have a president who would use that to deport or target political opponents, track people who criticize Israel, etc. You can never put the genie back in the bottle and you never know who will be in charge in 20 years
      • amarant 11mo ago
        Yeah but the US was never a full democracy. Part of the problem with the US is that the president has way too much power to begin with. If trump was elected prime minister of Sweden, he wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff he's done.
        • bigstrat2003 11mo ago
          The president isn't supposed to have that much power in the US either. The federal government in general wasn't supposed to have much power; power is supposed to be reserved to the states except for specific scenarios enumerated in our constitution. Unfortunately, a century of blatantly illegal power grabs by the federal government, combined with Congress (which should've acted as a check upon the president) willingly giving their power over to the president, we are in a pretty bad spot. However, if it happened to us it could happen to any country. At the end of the day the constitution of a nation is only meaningful to the extent that people will actually enforce it.
        • refurb 11mo ago
          The President doesn't have that much power in the US. Head of the executive, yes, but that's it. And what has he done? Enforced immigration laws according to written law? Reorganized the executive branch? He can't pass any laws by himself. The judiciary can overturn his executive orders.
          • zug_zug 11mo ago
            How about stacked the supreme court with sycophants (at least one of which has been caught taking bribes) whereby allowing his gross violations of the law to be tolerated on appeal to the supreme court (legal eagle has a great video on this). And then bullied executive who dare disagree with him (e.g. jan 6 commission, and his first impeachment) and even perform completely baseless criminal investigations that (e.g. against Comey) that are so ill-advised that he has to appoint unqualified prosecutors to even file these claims because no serious one would stand for it. He now wields enough scary-factor that even though we have handwritten proof of his involvement with Eepstein that his own party is too cowardly to impeach him or even release the files (the same party that freaked out about Clinton getting a blowjob now afraid to go after a pedophile, and one who flirts with the idea of pardoning Maxwell and moved her to a minimum security facility)
    • hexbin010 11mo ago
      I struggle to see how it's a good thing for Sweden. I disagree convenience is a good thing. We can all play "I struggle to see" and throw out weak arguments but it does not advance the topic
      • amarant 11mo ago
        You still haven't presented even a weak argument for how it infringes on privacy. You just said "privacy" and pretended that's an argument
        • ahoka 11mo ago
          There’s not a lot of privacy ins Sweden anyway. Way too much private stuff is public and continuously scraped by private companies. For those who don’t know: by just looking up a name, you can find a persons birthday, address, who also lives there. Oh and the person’s salary is public too. Ridiculous.
          • amarant 11mo ago
            I think it's awesome! Try lying about your wealth during an election in Sweden! Did trump's tax filings ever get published by the way? I recall there was a lot of outcry for them during the last election cycle........
        • hexbin010 11mo ago
          > You still haven't presented even a weak argument for how it infringes on privacy. NB I was calling out your weak arguments. I wasn't attempting to do something that isn't my job ;) For countries introducing digital ID etc, it's for the advocates to present a strong argument and evidence how it will respect privacy, how it will remain secure etc beyond "trust us bro" and "I can't see how it wouldn't be secure"
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• komali2 11mo ago
  > Like sure you could in theory see every document I've ever signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but you could probably glean most of that if you had a warrant for the banks servers anyway, so it's not really a new capability. It's a single point of failure. Digital ID servers on creation because as valuable to compromise as value_of_bank_hack*bank_count plus whatever other services are rolled in. Furthermore now only one warrant is needed, or one illegal executive order. Take the USA as a live example - legal protections aren't actually real, a government official with enough political power can just do whatever they want while the courts struggle to keep up, and then just ignore court orders. If your identity is spread out in many different ways, at least then there's more friction to compromise. Just because one bank capitulates doesn't mean the actor immediately has health information on you, for example. Just because the unemployment office capitulates doesn't mean the actor has your financial records.
  • noduerme 11mo ago
    I think a lot of people in the US are clinging to the hope that this type of friction, along with judicial decisions, will cause the process of removing our legal protections to stall out. I'm not optimistic that this is the case, because the party currently driving the federal incursion on private and state-held data is the one that until recently was opposed to things like national ID. Anything can be done in the name of protecting people from N, if you can get a majority to be afraid of N.
    • immibis 11mo ago
      Does the letter N stand for Democrats...?
      • dylan604 11mo ago
        No
    • pfannkuchen 11mo ago
      I don’t really get why people seem convinced that the government is removing protections for all citizens under a smokescreen of illegal immigration handling, as opposed to taking limited and temporary measures to deal with an unusual situation. My current interpretation is that they are fear mongering about violence because they are actually way more racist than they admit publicly, and might want to remove more people than they were letting on initially. So okay you can definitely disagree with that, and how you feel about it can definitely be influenced by how much you feel threatened (personally or network) and that’s valid. But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do we think that the borders were opened intentionally to fabricate this “crisis”? If not, it would be such a huge coincidence, because there are a zillion reasons to be concerned about the demographic situation without needing to use it as a smokescreen, what are the odds that this problem organically appeared and then they happen to be able to take advantage of it? Note that I’m not asserting that the borders weren’t opened intentionally to fabricate this problem to which they can react with a “solution”, that sounds exactly like something a government would do. I just don’t hear anyone saying that out loud, at least, and having personal network or moral values or whatever threatened and reacting to that just seems a lot more likely to me as a reason why people feel like the world is ending.
• da_chicken 11mo ago
  Sweden's population is only around 11 million people, and you're geographically concentrated in the southern mainland provinces or near Stockholm. Both of those make thing a lot more practical to manage and make it a lot harder to abuse because you don't have the scale to make profit as attractive, or the distance to make oversight more difficult. You're also relatively culturally similar. It doesn't seem like those should matter so much, but it really does make everything about democracy easier. Things get much weirder when the population isn't so low or isn't relatively concentrated.
  • amarant 11mo ago
    I mean, I can do all my voting, tax filings, etc. etc. All the way from Mexico, with no issues. You're right that most of that must of the Swedish population resides in the south, but, as someone who grew up in Northern Sweden, it's not like we're marginalised or anything, not really.
• lazylizard 11mo ago
  the singaporean "singpass" has been an amazing convenience. at this point its like why is any company still asking you to fill in personal particulars on forms? they should ask for access to singpass and you just authorize them. you apply to or for anything.. and they just give you the option of authorizing via singpass.. and you use your passkey-like singpass app to authorize it... and its done! you go to hospital and they need your medical records? singpass you go to university and they need your academic history? singpass you apply for bank loan? insurance? license? food handling permit? singpass
  • lotsofpulp 11mo ago
    In the absence of a government solution like Singpass, the US and others will end up with an Apple/Alphabet solution.
  • mitthrowaway2 11mo ago
    Doesn't this mean that it's not only your hospital that sees your medical records, but... everyone who would otherwise only need your name and telephone number? Or is there some way to restrict which party gets which data?
    • Gigablah 11mo ago
      There’s data scoping per request: https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/getting-started/pre-requisites-for-onboarding https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/getting-started/... https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/data-catalog-myinfo/catalog https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/data-catalog-myi... As part of the flow you’ll be shown the list of data that’s being requested.
    • broeng 11mo ago
      I don't think any of the national id services I've heard of stores all your data in a centralized place. Usually the national id service only provides identification to the service providers that request it. Each service provider (like, your bank, hospital, pension provider) will store their own data as they've always done, they just use the service to identify you.
• ynab6 11mo ago
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  • ridiculous_leke 11mo ago
    Probably the same amount ISI spends on anti-Modi propaganda peddlers.
• AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
  Yeah that’s a nightmare for privacy if someone decides to use it against you.
  • amarant 11mo ago
    HOW would this hypothetical person use it against you? It's a driver's licence infringing on my privacy too? Cause they're mostly the same, at least the way they're implemented in Sweden
    • bootsmann 11mo ago
      Note that the drivers license is actually worse because you cannot scope what information you present to the requester.
    • AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
      How many ways can you slice a cake? The point is that the more identifiable information that the monopoly on violence has the easier it is for something, anything really, to be used against you should your tribal affiliation conflict with the ruling party. This is like politics 101
      • dvdkon 11mo ago
        At least where I live, there's no extra information being gathered. The only difference is that I no longer have to physically go somewhere to deal with that information, because I can sign in to government services online. Information that was previously in paper form and scattered across various bureaus is now being digitised and centralised, but that's orthogonal to "digital ID"!
        • AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
          Centralized consolidation of PII IS THE RISK
          • 11mo ago
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• Saline9515 11mo ago
  "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.
  • eru 11mo ago
    In the US (approximately) everyone has a social security number and a driver's license. In practice, those are equivalent to universal ID, just more annoying to use in everyday life.
    • Saline9515 11mo ago
      Digital ID is also an identification system, social security number isn't. For instance you can't ID people on porn sites using it.
      • dvdkon 11mo ago
        You can't ID people on porn sites with what's implemented in most European countries either. I feel like what you mean by "digital ID" is very different to what others mean.
        • rockskon 11mo ago
          How come not? I typically hear of some scammy Zero-Knowledge Proof promising the world and delivering either an easy-to-pass-around identifier or something readily able to be mapped back to you as a person.
          • dvdkon 11mo ago
            I feel like we're talking about completely different things. What's currently implemented in various EU countries is basically OAuth, where user attributes are verified by the state. Being able to map that account back to a specific person isn't a bug, but the whole reason for the system's existence. Here's a marketing page for a WIP pan-EU project to implement this kind of digital ID: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-society/european-digital-identity_en https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-soci... There are also various plans for age-verification schemes that should (partially) preserve anonymity, but those aren't implemented and it's not what people mean by "digital ID".
• bouncycastle 11mo ago
  For now you may need a warrant. However, after just a simple law change, it will all be available without a warrant. I'm not saying there will be a law change, only saying that it brings us one step closer to data.
• guyomes 11mo ago
  The best implementation I know of digital ID is the one in Estonia. It comes with a data tracker, such that each citizen can see who exactly has been looking at their data [1]. [1]: https://e-estonia.com/digital-id-protecting-against-surveillance/ https://e-estonia.com/digital-id-protecting-against-surveill...
  • wiz21c 11mo ago
    Done more or less like that in Belgium too. Basically, if any civil servant look at your data, this is recorded in the "Banque Carrefour de la Sécurité Sociale". Your eid is used to authentify/authorize you on various state web site (which is OK)
    • satyamkapoor 11mo ago
      Have been using this service in Belgium and it really helps you gain trust. Ofcourse no one knows if there is still a back door
      • ekianjo 11mo ago
        You should totally assume by default that there is a backdoor. Makes no sense whatsoever for the authorities to grant themselves less power.
  • kube-system 11mo ago
    US credit reports also show you who is looking at them. Does visibility really matter when mandatory participation is normalized as a part of functioning in society?
• p1dda 11mo ago
  BankID isn't what they are proposing. Not in any way shape or form. Try learning about a topic before you make stupid comments like that.
  • nephihaha 11mo ago
    Oh, that will come. It all comes from the same mentality.
  • BDPW 11mo ago
    What is so fundamentally different about DID proposed in the UK or the US then? I read through some of the documents about it and the data scoping that will be available, which isn't with something like BankID seem to be the only difference. What am I missing here?
• yehat 11mo ago
  Sweet how the OP is about something that exactly corresponds to what EU wants badly too - chat control - but you decide to talk about Digital ID. OK wait a bit more, then your beautiful DID will start making more sense.
  • jeltz 11mo ago
    It was nephihaha who started talking about digital IDs.
  • nephihaha 11mo ago
    It all amounts to the same thing, the use of tech to control the public.
• nephihaha 11mo ago
  The problem isn't where digital ID starts, it's where it ends. It will start by being benign enough, and end with the ability to cut off dissidents in an instant. I'm aware that some Swedes are already getting microchipped. If you want to be branded and tracked by the state, that is your choice... Don't force it on the rest of us.
  • oblio 11mo ago
    > I'm aware that some Swedes are already getting microchipped. Source?
    • nephihaha 11mo ago
      This from Newsweek in 2022 about Sweden. https://www.newsweek.com/people-get-microchips-implanted-that-include-vaccine-records-amid-new-covid-restrictions-1655916 https://www.newsweek.com/people-get-microchips-implanted-tha... "In 2017, a railway company in Sweden began allowing travelers to load their ticket information onto the microchips implanted in their bodies, according to BBC News. Railway conductors were then able to use smartphones to detect the chip and confirm the travelers' tickets."
      • vablings 11mo ago
        This has nothing to do with the "state microchipping people" this is biohackers loading NFC train tickets onto a chip they chose to have implanted? The level of intellectual dishonesty is gross. You don't have to have an NFC chip and even if you did how would that be any more of a UUID than a LIDAR scan of your face?
      • oblio 11mo ago
        Buddy, you're talking about 4000 VOLUNTEERS in a country of 11 million people (0.04%). We can probably find more crack addicts in Sweden... Let put the brakes on these slippery slopes, otherwise we'll be afraid of our own shadows soon. Scepticism is fine, paranoia isn't.
        • 11mo ago
• inglor_cz 11mo ago
  In CZ, we have a so-far-somewhat-nonintrusive digital identity that is mostly used to access government services. Yet we already had an interesting situation which shows just how complicated trust is. Sberbank, the Russian bank, was slated to issue digital identity certifications in March 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Sberbank got booted out of the country before actually gaining that capability. What if it was March 2021 instead? How would we treat signatures on documents verified by Sberbank a day before the invasion etc.? What if the content of that document was really suspicious? Etc.
• mananonhn 11mo ago
  You're comparing a developed, mature nation to a developing one? Good one! Let's try doing this in middle east too!
• greenavocado 11mo ago
  Your digital id is great until your leadership decides you need to be conscripted and sent to their meat grinder and the penalty for failing to appear for your death sentence is being cut off from food and water because everything is linked. The idea of all these digital documents is never a problem until you go through the exercise of figuring out what it will all be used for (controlling you).
  • jack_tripper 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • greenavocado 11mo ago
      You missed the people that took what they could in cash and ran for the border
      • jack_tripper 11mo ago
        I didn't miss anything. Lone deserters spread out, are more tricky and resource intensive to catch in the wilderness of mountainous border areas with rough terrain, than in flat densely populated areas like city or village streets that can be easily patrolled by vans.
    • eitland 11mo ago
      1. This is a wild exaggeration: There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian streets. 2. Why single out Ukraine here? Isn't this what any country does with people who don't appear for the draft? (Unless they can pay a doctor to diagnose them with bone spurs or something?)
      • jack_tripper 11mo ago
        > 1. There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian streets. With the right papers clearing them of draft obligations, sure. >2. Why single out Ukraine here? Because this is the best example right now that everyone knows and can somewhat relate to. Unless you happen to know any other western country currently doing this.
• abc123abc123 11mo ago
  Yes, it is the single most popular vector for scammers to fleece old people. Great! Add to that, that your identity is controlled by banks, not the government, and that banks can terminate you without any due process, and complaining can take weeks if not months, and there is no guaranteed positive outcome. No thank you, I'll take no ID over ID any day, and at worst, a physical plastic card over a bullsh*t digital solution that is used to lock you out off society. Sweden is really the worst possible approach, is authoritarian, and hands over the power to the banks controlling the digital ID system.
  • lifestyleguru 11mo ago
    Banks and fintechs turned really brazen with triggering invasive AML/KYC requests without any legal basis, even more invasive than tax offices. Nonchalantly freezing and locking funds and accounts. They oftentimes require the latest version of smartphone app working only on recent smartphones. I don't want my digital identity to depend on them.
  • amarant 11mo ago
    Since you're talking about scams, let's look at some statistics: https://www.statista.com/chart/33872/estimated-average-losses-due-to-scam-activity-per-victim/ https://www.statista.com/chart/33872/estimated-average-losse... I believe you'll find that no ID, which is the American approach, is, in actual fact, worse than digital ID. Also, authoritarian? You're not forced to use BankID, what are you even on about?
• gclawes 11mo ago
  It's not really that a digital ID can be used to spy on people (governments can already do this to a pretty large degree without needing spyware). It's that it's a permission system that can be instantly updated and centrally managed by people that have legal authority to spy on you. If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the government (the guys that are watching most things you do already), and you need your digital ID to do most commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel, etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to do any of those commercial interactions (or even other things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel papers" for driving out of state). And it doesn't even have to be in response to criminal actions. You too too many trips this year? Well, you've used up your CO2 budget as a citizen, have fun not buying CO2-intensive food (meat). Said something racist online? Well we certainly can't let a person like you buy a car now, can we? And yes, things like credit cards and credit scores are centrally managed to a degree, and Visa/Mastercard can deny transactions for somewhat-arbitrary reasons (they're actually fairly legally limited in how they can do this, it's not totally arbitrary). But these things are not tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year), whereas states can (or can invent the legal authority to) tie a digital ID into everything.
  • myrmidon 11mo ago
    I completely agree with your main point, but the state supervised CO2 budget strikes me as a bad example; I see no real way to prevent companies and citizens from "externalizing costs" in the form of environmental damage except by regulation that restricts (historically, we did not get rid of leaded gas by gentle admonishment either).
  • mcdonje 11mo ago
    I was with you until your 3rd paragraph. Why are you carrying water for climate change accelerationists and racists? The examples don't even make sense historically. Haven't you noticed that most governments are failing to decarbonize, and government force against citizens is usually against the left?
    • Y_Y 11mo ago
• brador 11mo ago
  Swedish police use Palantirs gotham software. Your data is in.
• victorbjorklund 11mo ago
  There are downsides with it since you are at the mercy of the corporation that owns the Swedish Digital ID. ny services trying to use this Swedish digital ID who these banks don't like can be cut off at any point and you are not allowed to provide alternative logins so it's only allowed to use digital ID if you use it.
  • ninalanyon 11mo ago
    > you are not allowed to provide alternative logins I can't speak for Sweden but that is not true in Norway where we also use BankID (I'm not sur but I think it originated in Norway).
    • victorbjorklund 11mo ago
      It's true for Sweden and Norway. BankID is owned by the banks in both countries. Both charge money from sites and orgs that use it.
  • amarant 11mo ago
    If course I'm allowed to use alternative logins. And besides, there are at least 2 generally accepted digital ID solutions in Sweden. BankID is older and more popular, but there's also Freja (I had to open the tax authorities login page to remember the name of this one) that's accepted in most places. There have been 0 incidents of any of the hysterical hypotheticals y'all are on about actually happening, maybe it's time for a reality check?
• ninalanyon 11mo ago
  But Sweden has not so far required that you install state owned spy ware on your devices. BankID is very convenient, I use it all the time here in Norway but, at least theoretically, it is a private initiative of the banks and not the state. It is not compulsory to have BankID.
• jgerrish 11mo ago
  > I struggle to think of how it would be used to spy on citizens Hacker News has a unique user base. Professional Software Engineers, many of whom are Senior or Principal or Staff in level. Leaders and Managers and Architects. I think, anytime we design a new system, we need to carefully think about how it can be used and what can go wrong. Not just with the current owners and users of that system, but future users and owners too. Discrimination is one of those areas where identity management can go wrong. Discrimination and deliberate but undetectable Denial of Service "bugs" that always seem to hit the same types of users in the legs. And getting evidence of wrongdoing like that takes years. It's nothing to an institution, but a lifetime to an individual. Sometimes there aren't even recordings or logs of individuals trying to ensure service and legal contracts are upheld. And again, the legal process is nothing for a large institution but soul crushing for an individual. And the solution always seems to be more institutional power, not individual power. That kind of education in Engineering Ethics is common nowadays in University and College. A lot of us who grew up self-educated in the early days or specialized in other schools may have missed out on those lessons early in our career. And a person who goes through a Brazil-esque nightmare like that comes out at the end with a broken reputation. And always whispers and subtext floating around even after justice. And there may be technically sophisticated intelligence services that can detect that kind of subtle tampering. But it's not the responsibility of other country's intelligence services to protect citizens of countries other than theie own. Going through that I can say strength wouldn't be enough.