National ID Debate

Humans! We rely on nation states for root identity - social security numbers and birth certificates in the US - which are then used to get further identification credentials, eg drivers licenses, mailing addresses, passports, etc. These are easily defrauded, lots of mistakes are made, and are dependent on the nation’s government for support and reliability. Imagine those systems required no government bureaucracy, couldn’t be revoked, proved you were a human, etc. Wouldn’t that be a benefit?

Exactly. We need a free national ID card - like the vast majority of countries in the world.https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2017/07/national-ids-aroun...

do we need government backed id? is there no other solution?

You’re default fucked anyway current state based on this anecdote. Broadly speaking, government should make it as straightforward as possible to obtain a legitimate government credential from an equity perspective for a variety of lifetime identity needs (and about 1% of the US population has no government ID). Out of 200 countries, 170 have a national ID system.<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/voting-rights-national-id-card/

I don't understand the problem. How is this different from all other identifiers, physical or digital, that most goverments already have?

Someone, somewhere, in US government needs to push for the same system Estonia uses for their national ID card.https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id-card/

If you're worried about surveillance you should probably know governments already have your data right now... they issue your passports/ids/etc...This is to just allow you to sign in to other parties with your government ID if needed. (instead of other parties asking you for passport/ID for compliance/KYC)

The vast majority of people who look at my driver's license are not the working for the government. The vast majority of people who use any identity are not the government. The government simply provides a form of verification because we have nothing better. They will punish you if you counterfeit a piece of physical identity, so this discourages counterfeits. A trust-based cryptographic network could conceivably serve part of that purpose, by making explicit and immediately verifiable the

A government ID is a lot more than that. I have an official ID card that has:- A bunch of personal identifying data including a unique number (which is as much of a secret as my name or my date of birth)- A bunch of old-timey security stuff like thumbprint and signature- An RFID chip containing all this info, ICAO 9303 compliant- A PIN protected certificate that I can use to sign documents digitally- Several security measures to make falsifying it very hardEverybody who lives i

I'm with you, it's sadly the nature of the beast. Think about the federal government alone: DoD military ID, veteran's ID, passport, social security card, etc. are all separate organizations with different scopes. It's madness.