I've experienced this "solved problem" when visiting Germany during COVID. On every entrance to a mall there was somebody with a scanner device, and they only let you in if the scanner showed a green mark. I've been fully vaccinated (not EU) but my code didn't show a green mark on their scanner and I was promptly denied entry. The solution was to show them my German friend's code on my phone, this registered just fine, so I could enter anywhere.

So the whole "eID/CAs/ZKP/PKI" mumbo jumbo can be easily fooled by a gif file.

The only times I had to provide a scan of my passport was to cross a border:

    - get a VISA to be allowed to cross the border
    - send to the airline for my flight that will cross the border
    - show the real passport at the border

The difficulty for the US is people seem to be against a Federal Government ID. India doesn't seem to have this stigma and hence rural India can solve this problem.

IDs being required for voting is essentially a poll tax the way that it's argued for in the US. There's a minimum amount you have to spend to even get one that will expire in a certain amount of years.

That's also assuming you can get all the documents you need for the initial ID. If you don't already have all the essential documents you'll need multiple appointments at government facilities. The local social security office usually has just one location. Mine required time off from work because they were open from 10 till 4 four days a week. This was just part of the process to get an ID for a child when we only had a copy of a couple documents instead of the originals.

Getting an ID for my grandma who made the mistake of being born black in the rural South during Jim Crow was a year long process, since she didn't even have originals of most of the documents. It took that long and was handled by one of her children that was a lawyer. For her we were getting an ID so the family could take her traveling, years before it was turned into a political issue to disenfranchise people.

Nobody arguing for the ID laws ever argues for raising their taxes for an ID that all citizens are guaranteed with the supporting infrastructure. They're arguing for it because they know people they don't want to vote will have trouble getting one

It is a problem for millions of Americans: https://voteriders.org/article/who-doesnt-have-an-id-in-amer...

Systemic racism is very much a thing, and while perhaps not foundational in this particular issue, we see still see political fuckery that definitely targets by race: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/tarrant-count...

I don't mean the services I mean the governments.

Yes, you can. Either you can physically own the key on the physical device (i.e. Yubikey/Google Titan/HSM) or you can use software (KeepassXC, Bitwarden).

Most operating systems and browsers come with a sync mechanism that many people default to, but it's no more than that: the default.

As for account recovery, most websites have a way to recover your account when you lose your password, there's no reason why that wouldn't work for passkeys. Every website with passkey access I've used so far makes passkeys optional and forces you to set a password already. If they switch their default to passkeys and add a password as an optional step, nothing would change.

My passkey is synched with iCloud which has all hardened settings set to on, so if I switch devices (I have) its seamlessly. You can also export Passkeys is my understanding but I have not tried it.

When I'm on non-Apple I can scan a QR code on my phone and it will validate it the same way, using bluetooth to send enough info to the target computer to get me logged on.

My passkeys are in my self-hosted Vaultwarden. If I can't put them there, I don't use them.

It's not all sunshine and roses, though. Despite having Bitwarden set as the only passkey provider in my Android setup, the phone persistently only offers me Google. Which is empty, because as I said, I won't use one tied to things I can't control. Works great on desktops, though.

Passkeys can theoretically require you to be on hardware, I haven't found anything yet that requires that.

I think you can do passkeys wile having private key. When os has the private key its just more convenient way of doing passkey.

I don´t think I've ever come across a service that only used passkeys. Username/email + password + 2FA is usually the primary form of verification. There's usually a way to recover your account through email.

Well, that's at least a positive. I hope this means they are also forced to accept the weakest credential type, and that they can't require you to present the identity proof that the wallet also provides when verifying your age. Because if they are allowed to do that, then that is what will happen.

It's also impossible to use if you're an expat, and you get locked out of every Government online system that requires strong identification.

I think this is a bit of a non sequitur. The government will still be able to throw you in prison in either scenario. They will also be able to compel disclosure of your records in either scenario. So the difference is really just that in the scenario where apple verifies your identity there's an additional actor in the mix over who you have zero influence. It seems strictly worse.

Your digital identity would then be under the jurisdiction of the US government, who (despite talking a big game) are arguably worse for that same sort of behaviour.

If anyone has to have this type of control, better it be a local national government that you can in at least some small way influence.

I understand the sentiment, but your government you can actually fix by voting.

If Apple (or another large international company) suffers from decreasing margins, gets a new CEO and decides to turn the data it sits on into money there is absolutely nothing you can do, and you might in fact still stay a "forced" customer because of network effects (=> just consider whatsapp being an important communication channel in many places worldwide).

I think this attitude in general is often harmful; if your government sucks, fix the government instead of making yourself dependent on some quasi-monopolist private company.

> throw you in jail for expressing support for Palestine Action.

For those unfamiliar, you are, of course, allowed to peacefully protest in support of Palestine in the UK.

Palestine Action is a specific group that was controversially labelled as a terrorist group after they broke onto a runway and spray painted military planes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Action

It would be best for any such ID system to capture only the minimum data to fulfil their function. Pre-WW2 Dutch records also listed religion, which made it very easy for the Nazis to round up and murder them. Some examples from Kansas show that even recording sex/gender is risky - state law requires driving licenses to record the original sex/gender from the first birth certificate leading to trans women having an M sex/gender marker getting arrested and prosecuted for identity fraud.

LOL, no, not in this side thanks. Be it by giant transnational corp or centralized all powerful government, the ruin of the noosphere is equally awful.

France has always been chauvinist and nationalist.

The principle reason why the Netherlands joined the EU was to sabotage the French-German alliance- all the alarm bells went off in the 1950s.

This is news to me. Never knew you could do that... too late now.

Isn't it turn on by default?

As someone who spent years homeless off and on, I resent REAL ID discriminating against the unhoused, so I choose to use my privilege to reject it. I do not have or need REAL ID and my passport does not need a current residential address.

Haha, damn not enough caffeine this morning to parse correctly

In guessing you can't choose to opt out ?

your positional encoding vector seems a bit off :D

You guy don't have to show cock and balls to the military commission? It's a standard practice in post-Communist countries, including NATO ones.

But the government inherently has that data, as it comes from there. They're the ones issuing the IDs in the first place.

Theres no avoiding this, structurally. So the best thing you can do is not to introduce any additional points of failure.

> Are you sure? It’s really hard to differentiate nowadays

Case in point; I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not! :D

To where, the site requesting the verification? Now it is no longer zero knowledge.

add a different ID check to the MFA if that doesn't work, then add more MFA to that new ID check. Eventually it has to work, right?

It's definitely worth doing infinite security in order to avoid regulating social network algorithms, because