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What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

vitalik.ca

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Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#71

Post by worksonmine »

JohnFen wrote: post #67
xvector wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of use cases require proof of personhood. Voting, for one. Anti-spam as another. And most use cases in which you're required to present an ID.

I don't think voting is a great use case for this. Surely, if you're concerned about fraud in voting, simply being able to prove the voter is a person is insufficient. It wouldn't stop double-voting, etc. Anti-spam? That seems like shooting mosquitos with missiles. And I doubt it would be that effective at spam prevention. Spammers will just start paying tons of actual people to vet the messages as coming from real p…

> It wouldn't stop double-voting

Why not? One vote per human is trivial. Just read the last entry before the poll closes. Solved. That's how we do it today, with paper ballots.

> We already have ID for that

While modern IDs have biometrics they aren't usually validated as such. Just a quick glance is more common. It can be circumvented and fake/borrowed IDs are common.

> UBI is a thing that at least in the US -- is but a vague dream, not anything that's realistically going to happen anytime soon

Only because of lack of understanding and FUD. I agree that the US has a long way to go but in Europe where we have working welfare system UBI would save billions in administration costs. We already have it but with strings and hoops. I don't think a country where an ambulance ride costs a monthly salary should serve as an example to that argument. That's like claiming police is worthless because -- at least in Saudi Arabia -- is but a vague dream, since they're so easily bribed.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#72

Post by eli »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16
eli wrote: post #2

It's rare to find a technology that's so creepy & exploitative, yet also so fundamentally without utility.

It’s been good for consolidating votes around a crypto crackdown, engaging the evangelical right and privacy-sensitive left in a focussed manner.

This conspiracy theory presumes WorldCoin becomes a big enough deal for anyone to even care.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#73

Post by xvector »

JohnFen wrote: post #68
xvector wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to take his word for it. He's a known expert re. cryptography and zero-knowledge proof technology. It's about as hard to take his word regarding zkp as it is to take a climate scientist's about climate change.

The thing about science is that it rejects the entire premise of taking anyone's word about anything.

That's only true in the case when you're willing to put in the effort to prove/disprove yourself, which the parent commenter is clearly unwilling to do.

Otherwise you're just ignoring someone that is objectively more knowledgeable than you, which is quite lame indeed.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#74

Post by xvector »

kstrauser wrote: post #63
xvector wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That begs the question, presuming that voting on a decentralized platform is good. A decentralized platform is verifiable and less prone to being rigged. All that's missing is proof of personhood. > Decentralized governance and decentralized UBI in general. Governance on decentralized platform can typically be approached via a few ways: - weighting votes by compute power - weighting votes by volume of ownership (eg…

> A decentralized platform is verifiable and less prone to being rigged. All that's missing is proof of personhood. That seems to be an extraordinary claim, and I'm skeptical that 1) it's true, and 2) that's all that's missing. In short, I've voted for many things in many contexts in the existing world. I don't think I've ever bumped into a problem with voting that any form of a decentralized platform would have impr…

> That seems to be an extraordinary claim, and I'm skeptical that 1) it's true, and 2) that's all that's missing.

Are you aware of how decentralized computers work? Every computation can be verified by every participant. It's objectively true that such a platform would be less prone to being rigged.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#75

Post by xvector »

JohnFen wrote: post #65
xvector wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the hash of an iris scan "sensitive biometric information," any more than a CCTV camera at your coffee shop, or the government minting your ID? It is a hash, for god's sake. It is more privacy preserving than the latter two, or any currently known proof-of-personhood currently in existence - while still accomplishing the goal of proof-of-personhood.

The hash is sensitive because it's a (reasonably) unique identifier that has been assigned to you. > any more than a CCTV camera at your coffee shop, or the government minting your ID? It's not, fundamentally, but that's not an argument in favor of things like this. The less of this sort of thing, the better. But a big difference is that my local coffee shop is, you know, local and not likely to be sharing the images…

The hash is less sensitive than literally any other proof of personhood currently in existence. Go ahead, try to name a proof of personhood that's more private than a hash.

You seem to be framing this as a reduction in privacy but it is quite the opposite.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#76

Post by kstrauser »

xvector wrote: post #74
kstrauser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A decentralized platform is verifiable and less prone to being rigged. All that's missing is proof of personhood. That seems to be an extraordinary claim, and I'm skeptical that 1) it's true, and 2) that's all that's missing. In short, I've voted for many things in many contexts in the existing world. I don't think I've ever bumped into a problem with voting that any form of a decentralized platform would have impr…

> That seems to be an extraordinary claim, and I'm skeptical that 1) it's true, and 2) that's all that's missing. Are you aware of how decentralized computers work? Every computation can be verified by every participant. It's objectively true that such a platform would be less prone to being rigged.

And completely horrible for anyone who values anonymous voting.

For instance, under no circumstances, ever, do I want it to be possible for guys with machine guys to show up at my door and "help" me verify that I voted "for the right person". Any proposal that would make that possible is a human rights disaster and can be dismissed.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#77

Post by monero-xmr »

eli wrote: post #70
monero-xmr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal, ebay, robinhood, vanguard, various crypto exchanges. I guess it's mostly financial stuff. But that's my most sensitive info.

Do you think that's because those companies need to verify personhood and this is the best solution? Or is there maybe something else at play?

It’s for AML / Know Your Customer which financial institutions need. But extend that to everything - I’d rather not reveal my phone number if all you want to know is that I have one verified.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#78

Post by xvector »

kstrauser wrote: post #76
xvector wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems to be an extraordinary claim, and I'm skeptical that 1) it's true, and 2) that's all that's missing. Are you aware of how decentralized computers work? Every computation can be verified by every participant. It's objectively true that such a platform would be less prone to being rigged.

And completely horrible for anyone who values anonymous voting. For instance, under no circumstances, ever, do I want it to be possible for guys with machine guys to show up at my door and "help" me verify that I voted "for the right person". Any proposal that would make that possible is a human rights disaster and can be dismissed.

What makes you think voting would be non-anonymous? Of course it could be anonymous.

Your understanding of cryptography as it related to decentralized systems seems to be limited, and you're reaching wildly misinformed conclusions. You have a strong opinion about decentralized systems being bad and haven't bothered to actually learn the area before making statements like this. Monero is an example of an anonymous decentralized system. There are plenty of anonymous decentralized systems and nothing precludes a system with proof of personhood also being anonymous.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#79

Post by kstrauser »

xvector wrote: post #78
kstrauser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And completely horrible for anyone who values anonymous voting. For instance, under no circumstances, ever, do I want it to be possible for guys with machine guys to show up at my door and "help" me verify that I voted "for the right person". Any proposal that would make that possible is a human rights disaster and can be dismissed.

What makes you think voting would be non-anonymous? Of course it could be anonymous. Your understanding of cryptography as it related to decentralized systems seems to be limited, and you're reaching wildly misinformed conclusions. You have a strong opinion about decentralized systems being bad and haven't bothered to actually learn the area before making statements like this. Monero is an example of an anonymous dec…

I understand very well how all this works. I just think it’s a bad idea.

You can’t have vote verification and anonymity at the same time. Either your vote goes into the anonymous, aggregated pool of all votes, or it’s possible for you to look yours up afterward to make sure it was recorded directly.

That latter option has fire real-world consequences, and any system that allows someone (and especially the people looking over their shoulder) to see their choices is dead on arrival.

The ability to verify votes after casting them isn’t just unneeded: it’s completely unwanted. It’s the sort of thing that gets people killed, and that’s not hyperbole.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#80

Post by potamic »

Mistletoe wrote: post #33
rqtwteye wrote: post #10

Buterin reminds me a little of string theorists in physics. There is a lot of intellect but they have chosen to chase something that doesn't produce anything really useful despite a ton of effort.

Ethereum may not be useful to you but it is very useful to me and many others. It will become even more useful in the future as people learn what happens when your money is centralized to one particular government, based on nothing at all, and just keeps getting printed more and more of. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement I think crypto solving this issue is definitel…

Wasn't ethereum rolled back at one point? How is that different to centralized control by one particular entity?
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