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Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

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Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conveniently leaving out the fact that many liberal Democrats also don't want national ids because it might hurt illegal immigrants, prevent voter fraud, etc. I can't help but cringe whenever politically motivated people throw around talking points they heard on their favorite disinformation cable network. The reason why we don't have a proper national id card is primarily a result of state's rights vs fed ri…

At least in the conservative community where I grew up, the religious "mark-of-the-beast/new world order" narrative was the main anti-national ID narrative. I'd never heard the illegal immigrant angle before.

It's not a real thing. Nobody is pro voter fraud. Nobody is in favor of non US citizens voting in US elections.

They are against voter disinfranchisement. The problem is that the IDs can be made harder for some to get than others.

See momocasa's post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19879722

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your talking about "identity theft" as if it's an unquestionable concept demonstrates precisely why there is opposition to strengthening the technicals of identification. Every bit that makes identification stronger is yet another excuse for businesses to assert that it is infallible. Even currently, rather than banks simply admitting they were defrauded and thanking/compensating the innocent bystanders for helping t…

> they keep pushing this "identity theft" narrative to make it seem like the unlucky victims of bank's incompetence have some sort of intrinsic involvement! But how is it that it's not really a problem in Estonia, where we have strongly e-identity attached to a citizen. Or are you saying our banks, institutions, telecom and other companies are somehow more competent? You also have SSNs which is a government-mandated…

> But how is it that it's not really a problem in Estonia, where we have strongly e-identity attached to a citizen

I have no idea how your dispute process looks in Estonia. What happens if you lose your national ID card, don't realize it for a week, and someone has used it to do a bunch of things in your name? The sensible answer is that anything unauthorized should be rolled back or otherwise not attributed to you. This need is obvious when an "ID" is a plain 10 digit number. But when the average person can't imagine an ID being cloned because it's stored on a "smartcard", then it's a lot easier to sell responsibility as being on the person that lost their card.

> You also have SSNs which is a government-mandated ID system that keeps you as rows in a database. Stop the holier-than-thou please.

I only left off SSN next to license plate and driver's license number for brevity's sake. I was directly referencing ongoing problems here, so I certainly wasn't trying to be "holier-than-thou" in some kind of nationalist cheerleading. My point is that the existing ID systems that exist are being straight up abused (license plates -> ANPR, driver's license -> Retail Equation, SSN -> LexisNexis, for some of the most blatant abuses). The USian political philosophy discourages any sensible regulations that would reign this in, and that needs to be fixed before providing even more raw data for surveillance companies to build on.

In Estonia, how would you deal with a supermarket deciding to make it so that customers wanting a sale discount card have to link their national ID?

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#54
post #40
post #35

This is a terrible idea. The last thing I want is for an advertising company that makes its living off personal data that they gather about me to be able to reliably link that data to my real identity. I think that in general embedding legally-empowered digital IDs (in the form of certificates, not pictures of physical ID cards, mind you) in mobile phones is a good idea, but it ceases to be a good idea when your phon…

I would say, let Google develops the tech and figures out where are the blocking points, and then it could eventually become a standard and be implemented by other actors. About making the technology reliable and secure, I do trust Google more than my bank.

Banks are the worst but they are in the game for centuries and there are thousands of laws and jurisprudence for banks. And mark my words, laws will be too little, too late. We need to stop the "move fast and break things" now, we should put ethics side by side with "because we can" otherwise people will suffer the.consequences

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have a payments platform and app store that requires a linking, which is more than adequate for highly targeted advertising. I really think that civic engagement and petitioning law makers to protect our privacy is the main tool we have to get out of these impending messes.

You can use the app store without setting up payments.

[deleted]

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the conservative community where I grew up, the religious "mark-of-the-beast/new world order" narrative was the main anti-national ID narrative. I'd never heard the illegal immigrant angle before.

It's not a real thing. Nobody is pro voter fraud. Nobody is in favor of non US citizens voting in US elections. They are against voter disinfranchisement. The problem is that the IDs can be made harder for some to get than others. See momocasa's post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19879722

I think there probably are people that want to enfranchise mere residents.

It doesn't seem to be catastrophic for New Zealand, for instance.

There's a strong argument to be made that people participating in the economy and other parts of civic life deserve to have a voice in politics. It's convenient and popular to exclude them, that doesn't make it just.

(I phrase my first paragraph the way I do because I haven't thought about it much and don't have a real clear opinion 'bout it)

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have a payments platform and app store that requires a linking, which is more than adequate for highly targeted advertising. I really think that civic engagement and petitioning law makers to protect our privacy is the main tool we have to get out of these impending messes.

You can use the app store without setting up payments.

You can't use the app store meaningfully without setting up payments.

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very vocal minority that views any attempt by the government to make any ID proof that the New World Order exists. There's also a pretty decent sized part of the Evangelical movement that sees those IDs as potentially the literal "mark of the beast" from revelations. Additionally a part of the Republican strategy is to disenfranchise via selectively reducing access to valid existing IDs while cranking up vo…

> Additionally a part of the Republican strategy is to disenfranchise via selectively reducing access to valid existing IDs while cranking up voting requirements of those IDs. Can't the goverment provide the IDs to those who are less well off for free-of-charge?

Many states, if not all, provide a free non-drivers ID card.

Re: Google Is Bringing Electronic IDs to Android

#59

Completely off-topic: If you scroll down past the linked article and onto the next article, the URL automatically changes (from /google-is-bringing-electronic-ids-to-android to /cisco-open-sources-mindmeld-conversational-ai-platform ). I've never seen this type of behavior from a web page before.

Disable JS. I find the web is much nicer without it.
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