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Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

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Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#131

Post by galangalalgol »

shantara wrote: post #57
azalemeth wrote: post #31

I'm a British expat with a Danish job. I really dislike MitID and the Danish centralised world of (very good) public services that come with it. Each person has a number, CPR, which effectively defines your life solely to the state. Visit a library, doctor, tax man, anything official, and your ID is recorded. Buy alcohol online, go grocery shopping, use your bank card -- and sign in with it. This undoubtedly makes th…

I have experienced the same privacy culture shock in Denmark. Generally, I think the people’s trust in their government is the greatest social asset of the danish society, as well as their biggest blind spot.

Is the trust naive? Have there been instances of a government violating that trust? Were they held accountable?

The US was a much higher trust society before repeated governments from opposing parties violated that trust with little or no consequences. This left people with no realistic competitive party that was trustworthy, and first past the poles elections ensures they only have to be slightly less despicable than their opponent. This also drives polarization.

Having a multiple party system with something approximating proportional representation, an independent press and judiciary, and a smaller population and land area all make a large difference. The US was the last nation to use first past the poles for something besides a house of commons that was ranked a democracy by vdem I think? Definitely the last one to be ranked a full democracy. The largest remaining population ranked as a full democracy is Japan, it doesn't look too likely to change from the outside. Germany is next in size and we'll see how that goes. SK was next and they passed a rough test so lets hope. Large populations are easier to polarize apparently? I wonder if that will hold true with social media eroding the rural urban ideological divide.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#132

Post by galangalalgol »

mrweasel wrote: post #99
shantara wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced the same privacy culture shock in Denmark. Generally, I think the people’s trust in their government is the greatest social asset of the danish society, as well as their biggest blind spot.

Last year, I think, I saw someone talk about trust in Danish society and how it works. As a Dane it's not something I really think about, but I their conclusions where at least interesting. In Denmark you're given implicit trust, that's the default. Trust is given, not earned. That poses a problem for people coming from the outside, because trust can be lost, but because it's something that was given to you, there's…

Can you explain the social contract? Is it explicit and people find loopholes, or is it based on intent and the spirit in which an action was taken?

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#133

Post by 0_____0 »

have_faith wrote: post #88
chii wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the "money you have" is just an int32 well, luckily, that's not how money is stored, but instead, they're transaction based. Aka, that number you have is a calculated value, not a stored, arbitrary value. Except...perhaps the central bank's, where they could really just generate that money as an arbitrary value to lend out to other banks. footnote: of course, your account balance is cached, so that it is not r…

Regular banks create new money all the time (loans). There’s no difference to the central bank conceptually as far as I understand, they both record debits/credits to accounts (double entry).

Ah yes, who needs the Federal Reserve when you have Kansas' own Emprise Bank.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#134

Post by VorpalWay »

lxgr wrote: post #95
progbits wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revocation lists can be distributed.

Yes, but they still originate somewhere, and if that source goes offline, you're still at risk of accepting stolen credentials.

Yes, but under the assumption that downtime is typically short (a few hours), that small risk seems better than a foreign nation state actor being able to block essential services like identifying with healthcare, or sending transactions.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#135

Post by Msurrow »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #106
azalemeth wrote: post #31

I'm a British expat with a Danish job. I really dislike MitID and the Danish centralised world of (very good) public services that come with it. Each person has a number, CPR, which effectively defines your life solely to the state. Visit a library, doctor, tax man, anything official, and your ID is recorded. Buy alcohol online, go grocery shopping, use your bank card -- and sign in with it. This undoubtedly makes th…

Italian living in Sweden, Malmö, and lived in the UK in the past. I don't get the obsession you Brits have against IDs, in Europe you are pretty much the only ones. But a lot of what you say resonates with my observations: - single point of failure: absolutely, but so is the "sign in with Google" or equivalent. It's just too convenient. I'd rather have a public service do it than a private company that can cut you ou…

> They would NEVER admit any failure in their society, no matter the hard evidence in front of their eyes.

That must be the swedes. Danes complain constantly, about everything.

Edit: if you need examples.. DSB trains are slow/never on time/bad service/..; Post Nord takes WEEKS to get a letter out/too expensive. Well we switched to another provider now, Dao, so we’ll complain they are even worse! And complain why they are not doing it like in the good old days (see Post Nord); taxes are too high; public service is too bad/slow/low quality; too many cars in the city; never any parking space when I take MY car; the paid first child sick day is not enough we need at least a week (just for child sick days mind you, we need the 5 weeks paid vaca for relaxing on a Beach in Spain); btw our weather sucks; unacceptable that garbage collection service is not functioning during show storms; .. i can keep going all day

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#136

Post by winstonwinston »

Tehnix wrote: post #114

I see a few people here complaining about the idea of a central digital identity service. As a Dane, having lived in other countries, MitID is an insanely superior to anything I've ever tried. It simplifies so many touchpoints with the government, and is honestly such a good upgrade going from nothing -> physical NemID card with codes -> digital MitID (literally "My ID"). The only real disruption I'd say is if you ha…

> I see a few people here complaining about the idea of a central digital identity service.

Digital identity service is fine for gov services. It’s not OK as a hard requirement for anything else such as banking.

Digital ID in my country is down for about 7 days and counting. iOS app no longer opens after the recent update. I cannot pay tax without digital id app working but i can do banking and everything else.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#137

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

dijit wrote: post #58
azalemeth wrote: post #31

I'm a British expat with a Danish job. I really dislike MitID and the Danish centralised world of (very good) public services that come with it. Each person has a number, CPR, which effectively defines your life solely to the state. Visit a library, doctor, tax man, anything official, and your ID is recorded. Buy alcohol online, go grocery shopping, use your bank card -- and sign in with it. This undoubtedly makes th…

Also British, living across the bridge in Malmö, Sweden. I really like the centralised system, it makes navigating society surprisingly easy when compared to say, Germany or the UK. The difference is that I sort of trust the Swedish government, they've never really done anything to breach that trust - up to and including their handling of COVID (while controversial, they took the stance of individual liberty and a "c…

>incarcerating people for saying the phrase "we love bacon" at a construction site

You conveniently neglected to mention that it was the site where a _mosque_ was being constructed.

Changes things a bit.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#138

Post by dijit »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #137
dijit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also British, living across the bridge in Malmö, Sweden. I really like the centralised system, it makes navigating society surprisingly easy when compared to say, Germany or the UK. The difference is that I sort of trust the Swedish government, they've never really done anything to breach that trust - up to and including their handling of COVID (while controversial, they took the stance of individual liberty and a "c…

>incarcerating people for saying the phrase "we love bacon" at a construction site You conveniently neglected to mention that it was the site where a _mosque_ was being constructed. Changes things a bit.

You’re right, it’s totally acceptable to arrest someone for saying we love bacon at the vacant construction site of a potential mosque.

I’m sure the construction equipment was very unhappy.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#139

Post by Tehnix »

winstonwinston wrote: post #136
Tehnix wrote: post #114

I see a few people here complaining about the idea of a central digital identity service. As a Dane, having lived in other countries, MitID is an insanely superior to anything I've ever tried. It simplifies so many touchpoints with the government, and is honestly such a good upgrade going from nothing -> physical NemID card with codes -> digital MitID (literally "My ID"). The only real disruption I'd say is if you ha…

> I see a few people here complaining about the idea of a central digital identity service. Digital identity service is fine for gov services. It’s not OK as a hard requirement for anything else such as banking. Digital ID in my country is down for about 7 days and counting. iOS app no longer opens after the recent update. I cannot pay tax without digital id app working but i can do banking and everything else.

> It’s not OK as a hard requirement for anything else such as banking.

What’s the alternative that you think is okay for that then?

Certain businesses have regulatory requirements to know and verify your identity (banking, telco).

A UK poster gave an example of how they need to mail the bank a copy of their passport and other private information.

I’d certainly much prefer simply using a digital login solution as an alternative to that. They can verify I am who I say I am, without needing my passport which I would consider a much bigger privacy invasion to hand out.

Re: Tell HN: MitID, Denmark's digital ID, was down

#140

Post by BSDobelix »

avh02 wrote: post #126
BSDobelix wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>only the FAANG know how to keep websites up Really FAANG can stop a solar-storm? A war on infrastructure? Remember that your website not just needs running computers but energy too, and a net that brings that information to the peoples, and those peoples devices need power too. Just look at the Berlin outage where people had to go to hotpots with generators to load the phone: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/07/europ…

nah, i generally agree with you on single points of failure, i just don't agree that it would go on as long as 2 weeks. 24-48 hours i can believe, but at the absolute worst case I'd also expect anyone with minimal competence to have a plan to spin things up from the latest offsite backup somewhere else. (minimal competence is a big statement though). Even redundant setups can go down altogether from a fatfinger or au…

> hotspots != datacenters

A running data-center without a net or consumers is nothing worth.

>The original statement stands.

Well true, the Website runs but no one can access it.

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