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EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

juraj.bednar.io

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Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#51

Post by consp »

lodovic wrote: post #42
grey-area wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why they would bother with physical tokens nor would they be popular - things like passports are really quite expensive to manage and largely unecessary these days. An app or identity on people’s phone might be a good stopgap. However I suspect biometric methods of id verification will render carrying anything redundant long term. The databases for digital id already exist, they’re just not fully utilised…

I doubt everyone will still be carrying phones as we know them in a decade, so we might indeed be headed for a future where governments keep giant databases of biometric information. Works OK if you trust your government to handle that properly and not abuse it in the future. The real headache is crossing borders, where your details end up in the hands of a foreign state.

> so we might indeed be headed for a future where governments keep giant databases of biometric information

Don't want to wake you from that nice dream but that ship has sailed quite a while back, at least here in the EU.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#52

Post by choo-t »

delusional wrote: post #43
choo-t wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you equaling mass surveillance to a doctor keeping track of your health for diagnostic accuracy purpose ? Concerning the railway example, they only need to store how much I owe them, not my travels. Storing travel history on their end is already surveillance. Data keeping purpose and consents are what make something surveillance or not. Forcing every citizen to use ID to access the web is surveillance plain and s…

> Are you equaling mass surveillance to a doctor keeping track of your health for diagnostic accuracy purpose ? No, I am legitimately asking to clarify your position, hence why I assumed you wouldn't call that surveillance. The point was for us to agree that the right to correct data is a meaningful and useful right to have. Once we've clarified that, the rest of the arguments comes down on the separation of "surveil…

> Are in tension with one another. Clause 1 opens up for the idea that there exists valid "non-surveillance" record keeping, and that the distinction of such record keeping from surveillance requires determination of consent and purpose. Clause 2 then foregoes that determination and just presupposes the argument.

"Forcing" highlights the lack of consent, the distinction is still present.

> In the current legal framework, government derives it's unilateral consent from the vote. If the law passes in a democratic system, then it is, by that very process, a consensual and valid purpose.

Absolutely not. Being voted in a parliament doesn't mean citizens consented to it.

Simple example: compulsory military enrollment vs voluntary military enrollment. Only one of them derive from consent, even if both derive from a law discussed in parliament.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#53

Post by phillc73 »

shevy-java wrote: post #40
grey-area wrote: post #23

Digital ids are inevitable in my view, just as digital currency has become inescapable because it is more convenient and efficient, these ids will be issued and things like paper proofs of identity will fall away over time. Physical tokens like bank cards and driving licenses are neither necessary nor a good solution in a networked world. Our focus therefore should be controlling what governments can do with them - f…

I don't see it as inevitable at any stage. Why would it be necessary? Why is access to information tied to a digital id suddenly? Also, where is digital currency inscapable? I can not pay with a bank note suddenly? > Physical tokens like bank cards and driving licenses are neither necessary nor a good solution in a networked world. I see absolutely nothing wrong with physical tokens. You could reason that this or tha…

> I can not pay with a bank note suddenly?

In some places you cannot. I was in London post-COVID and there were a bunch of tourist things, like a riverboat on the Thames, where you could only pay with a card. Went to a craft cider bar out in the countryside and again, they didn’t accept cash. Personally, I think businesses should be forced to accept all legal tender, which means cash stays as a first class payment method, but that’s not how it is in many places.

On the other hand, in Austria there are many places that are cash only, especially small restaurants in the countryside or community sporting events with coffee bars.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#54

Post by graemep »

grey-area wrote: post #23

Digital ids are inevitable in my view, just as digital currency has become inescapable because it is more convenient and efficient, these ids will be issued and things like paper proofs of identity will fall away over time. Physical tokens like bank cards and driving licenses are neither necessary nor a good solution in a networked world. Our focus therefore should be controlling what governments can do with them - f…

> just as we should disallow removing citizenship.

However lots of countries do allow removing citizenship In the UK it is a political decision too. Lots of countries allow locking people out of other things (e.g. freezing bank accounts). I therefore doubt we an effectively prevent this.

I do not see the problem with physical tokens. They are simple, do not create a single point of failure (if I lose my phone I still have my cards and cash), robust to network and systems failures. What is the drawback? Having to carry a few cards?

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#55

Post by phatfish »

mentalgear wrote: post #26

Not a fan, but unfortunately a "digital proof of citizenship" seems to inevitable due to the en-shitification of the internet, autocratic state actor's doctrines to destabilise free societies through disinformation that matches well with social media's en-rage-ment business model, and the more recent AI slopification / AI bots running wild. The question is whether citizens can build enough pressure for such verificat…

At the moment in the UK (where any mention of digital ID sends half the population mental) you have to email a whole raft of ID docs and personal data to estate agents, mortgage brokers, solicitors etc. to get an ID check done. Or use a private ID service that can have a cost associated and may not be any more secure than my passport scan sitting in someones M365 mailbox. You can't know.

I'd be happy to have a government service replace all that nonsense, where a one-time challenge code could verify my ID. There is now a UK.gov "One Login" authentication used by other government services that is essentially a digital ID as far as I can see. It just needs to be made mandatory for ID checks by law.

Such a service can also be used for age verification with the correct privacy controls in place, far better than all the dodgy age verification services that exist now.

Digital ID and age verification are going to be a part of the internet going forward. I'd rather have a government service that (in a functioning democracy) has accountability to the citizens that use it. ID verification is also a natural monopoly, so the government picks a winner anyway.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#56

Post by green7ea »

esperent wrote: post #48
Pooge wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Govts want to have control back By forcing us to go through devices completely controlled by US companies?

What are you referencing here?

Many of the proposed EU digital solutions require a Google or Apple verified phone. This makes escaping American companies difficult.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#57

Post by graemep »

Pooge wrote: post #47
mayama wrote: post #10

With the way elections changed after social media became big. Govts want to have control back, like they did before. And are increasingly curbing open internet with boogeyman CP or terrorists, new fear of mass AI CP. Ultimately we'll get 2nd hand version of great firewall and social credit system. Some "liberal democracies" already have root of such systems implemented.

> Govts want to have control back By forcing us to go through devices completely controlled by US companies?

Yes. Control of information and citizen's behaviour is a higher priority for them than sovereignty.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#58

Post by delusional »

harvey9 wrote: post #34
delusional wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is all data about you "surveillance". When your doctor produces a medical record after your visit, are they "surveilling" you? How about when the railway company stores your travels to bill you later? I'll assume your answer is no, and I that case surely you must see the value in that medical record being correct.

Since you are bringing a semantic argument you might like to know that your doctor does in fact surveil you, hence the term "public health surveillance"

I have never heard the term "public health surveillance" and it's hypothetical use has no bearing on my argument.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#59

Post by jeroenhd »

It's not a trojan horse, it's spelled out in the decision, debates, and legal texts to be the explicit goal. The age verification requirement was picked both as a means to prove the technology is sound and as a simple starting point for a full digital ID solution.

The EU already has some form of digital ID in fact, every government provides some kind of OIDC-like service tied to either smart cards or accounts that authenticate the user against a government. The digital wallet solution is an extension to that system that will allow foreign EU citizens to authenticate themselves more easily (eIDAS 2 already implemented an OIDC-like solution but implementation isn't automatic) as well as offer to store the (often mandatory to carry) ID on your phone.

The "what if you buy alcohol for your kids" sscenario of somone giving someone else their age verification tokens is tired and nonsensical. You can already do that in the real world. We accept that risk and, depending on the country, make it a crime in case they do catch you. It hasn't made liquor stores send someone along to see you drink your booze or watch you enjoy your porn mag.

Re: EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

#60

Post by bootsmann »

sunaookami wrote: post #49
kivle wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has more to do with digital verification for social media in a hope of killing bot accounts that are interfering in the public debate. Some of the biggest social media influencer accounts turns out to be Chinese/Russian bots trying to fuel hate/division our democracies, and with LLMs it is only getting worse. Some form of digital ID to verify social media account identities is probably the only hope left o…

>Some of the biggest social media influencer accounts turns out to be Chinese/Russian bots trying to fuel hate/division our democracies This is propaganda, none of those supposed networks exists or were successful in anything and when the media do show some supposed accounts they don't have a lot of views. Please stop falling for this, your democracy sucks because the politicians suck and the people want change so th…

Yes, obviously, the Romanian supreme court having to overturn and annul a presidential election due to Russian social media inference is entirely made up propaganda.
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