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Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

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11–20 of 215 posts

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#11
post #3

This article is written from an anarcho-socialist perspective so it may not be that persuasive to many people. In the US we don't have any official government digital ID but instead various data brokers are providing it... with no real oversight. If the people of the UK reject government digital ID they may get Palantir digital ID instead. It's not clear to me which is worse, the government playing by its own rules o…

It's definitely clear to me which is worse, the private digital ID. At least we have some checks and balances for the government, however ineffective.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#12
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany it unfortunately failed abysmal. Most digital ids stopped working after like 6 months of introduction of the system...

What? It works great when it’s supported. It’s just that there still aren’t enough public or private places supporting it.

Not my experience unfortunately

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#13
post #3

This article is written from an anarcho-socialist perspective so it may not be that persuasive to many people. In the US we don't have any official government digital ID but instead various data brokers are providing it... with no real oversight. If the people of the UK reject government digital ID they may get Palantir digital ID instead. It's not clear to me which is worse, the government playing by its own rules o…

'the government playing by its own rules' generally means they change the rules, often arbitrarily, when some new crisis demands a 'solution'.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#15
post #10
post #2

I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something. An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE pro…

I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable. To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal. Perfect enforcement leads to an ossifie…

This is the part of the argument I don’t get. A digital ID system like the one in NL is basically just a login system. It’s oauth for public services, not too different from “sign in with Google”. How does that lead to perfect law enforcement? Like, how does it prevent homosexuals from kissing?

I don't mean this dismissively. I assume there is a series of steps that make sense that I’m not seeing.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#16
post #5

I hate these fluff pieces that use "Digital ID" as some nebulous thing that represents everything from a social credit system to a mandatory id card to a location tracking device injected the spine of every citizen. Why is there suddenly so much talk about vague implementations of Digital ID? Is it because of the UK proposals? No one seems to know exactly what that amounts to either - but importantly it seems to be n…

TFA talks about how pervasive Digital ID (no quotes) systems are in everyday life, with multiple examples, feels very concrete and not at all vague.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#17
post #2

I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something. An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE pro…

Does Decode project overlaps with Solid project (Sir Tim Berners Lee's project with similar objective)?

P.S. Thanks for sharing Decode, it looks good, I will be diving deeper into it this weekend. TIA.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#18
post #7
post #2

I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something. An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE pro…

In Germany it unfortunately failed abysmal. Most digital ids stopped working after like 6 months of introduction of the system...

I think in Germany, such efforts are doomed to fail (or were at least doomed to fail when we lived in Germany) because Germany is reluctant to connect different government administrations due to historical baggage (SS, Stasi, etc).

We have had DigiD in The Netherlands since 2004 (at least that's when it got its current name) and it's glorious. Everything from requesting a new passport, logging to your tax administration, registering as a company, making an appointment for Corona vaccination to doing declarations with your insurance company is done with DigiD. The authentication flow is super-smooth and quick.

I know there are risks to having one central account (slightly mitigated by support for 2FA and scanning your ID card/passport/driver's license NFC as another factor). But it makes dealing with the government so much easier. We lived in Germany and it was a total disaster in comparison.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#19
post #2

I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something. An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE pro…

Same in Denmark.

It acts as a SSO for Banks, library, 2fa for debit card, hospital websites, all kinds of government services.

Makes it easy, because you don't need a new or different account.

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