undefined | Better HN

0 pointsAnthonyMouse1y ago0 comments

> Democracies apparently have to be ignorant and easily exploited by criminals falsely claiming pensions and other benefits using easily forged identity papers.

How is centralized identity necessary or sufficient to solve this? If you have an ID card issued by e.g. your brokerage, it can use strong cryptography and be no easier to forge than any government ID. If you lost your card you could use any mechanism you could use in the event that you lose your government ID. Some of these methods have poor security properties but that's the same in both cases.

The only thing you get from centralization is non-consensual tracking.

0 comments

jiggawatts1y ago

> How is centralized identity necessary or sufficient to solve this?

To give you an idea of just how low the fruit is hanging, approximately 100K fake children "vanished" from Australia's welfare system when the government introduced a system where you had to list each dependent child's Tax File Number (TFN) to claim welfare benefits. (Prior to that, you just had to put down how many children you were claiming benefits for.)

If you can get ID papers from random brokerages, then how is the government to perform a simple uniqueness check across brokerages?

It always boils down to the same thing: Someone, somewhere has to have a table with a primary key on it.

AnthonyMouseOP1y ago

> To give you an idea of just how low the fruit is hanging, approximately 100K fake children "vanished" from Australia's welfare system when the government introduced a system where you had to list each dependent child's Tax File Number (TFN) to claim welfare benefits.

The assumption here is that they're all fake rather than there being a non-trivial number of people who don't understand how to fill out the new forms, or aren't willing to admit to an association with an out-of-wedlock child on an official form even though the child is real and actually being supported etc.

> If you can get ID papers from random brokerages, then how is the government to perform a simple uniqueness check across brokerages?

Nobody other than the brokerage uses the brokerage's ID. That's what decentralized is. Children typically wouldn't have an ID from a brokerage anyway. The welfare agency would provide recipients with its own IDs. How does it establish uniqueness for this? The same way as the institution issuing a Tax File Number.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse