Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
> 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? If you were stupid enough to attach the PIN codes to the card then you're liable for anything done with it by law. Dispute process is trough the court system. > so I certainly wasn't trying to be "holier-than-thou" in some kind of nationalist cheerleading. Then I take back my pa…
Regardless of the stupidity, that's still a pretty poor outcome. I assume the same applies if you were shoulder surfed, or you're an early victim of a newly discovered security bug? Or if you're kidnapped and forced to perform a transaction? It's kind of ridiculous to be made to have an item that creates essentially unbounded liability for you. This is exactly what I mean about "identity theft" morphing to be considered a real thing. This is commercially expedient, but utterly unjustifiable to those caught on the other side of it.
> It is already being done - national ID as loyalty program. Though it is not considered an issue because both card payments and loyalty programs already have all the same information
So you're saying there's no technical aspect that prevents stores from obtaining your identity? That's an outright failure. I've personally moved back to strictly paying cash for groceries [0], so this would certainly not be a welcome development for me.
> There's also the national and EU privacy laws that give one the right to be forgotten.
This is kind of the crux in that you're essentially trusting national laws to police the companies' use of the identifiers, and reign in their worst abuses. This is basically a non-starter in the US - industries basically buy the laws they want, and do whatever they like behind closed doors.
And sure, maybe we'll get to a future where GDPR-style anti-surveillance rights come to the US, are found to be workable, are enforced, actually enter into our culture, and further augmented with laws making it illegal to collect national identifiers in the first place (for anything but a narrow list of purposes) - only then would it make sense to discuss strengthening identifiers. Until then, it carries heavy downsides to the individual person.
[0] For the sale prices, ask the cashier to swipe the store card, enter a random phone number, or periodically sign up for new discount nyms with junk information. Which is all only possible because stores don't clamp down too hard, because requesting eg SSN would scare people away.