[pranau]

I get that Google is very powerful and it lives off of our data and I get how this may be construed as an attack on our privacy but the amount of misinformation and conspiracy theories I am seeing on this thread is appalling. First, Google is just implementing an electronic ID standard that will work as a replacement for traditional paper ID cards. They are also working on a mechanism to display the ID card even when the phone doesn't have enough power to boot.

I don't get the concerns about it being mandatory because you can't expect everyone to have the same set of IDs and besides it's just a convenience feature like storing our membership cards or our emergency contact information in a wallet.

There is justifiable concern over the privacy aspect as we don't know if the IDs are stored locally on the device or if it's synced to the cloud. It will be troubling if it's the latter but criticising Google about this even before the feature has been finalized and released seems perplexing to me.