[kstrauser]

So eyeless people have to jump through extra hurdles that the rest of us don't have to. The Worldcoin grand misvision is that their terrible World ID would be required to get government benefits, and yet makes it harder for some of the people who most need them to get them.

[nickff]

I don't 'believe in' or support Worldcoin, but I don't think it's realistic to expect any one verification system will serve everyone who needs/wants any given service. Government ID, and even governments themselves don't serve everyone in need.

[kstrauser]

They're talking about using it for things like government benefits.

The moment they opened that can of worms, they're on the hook for making it serve, at the minimum, everyone that the current government mechanisms serve.

I'm using eyeless people as an example here, because it's the obvious case of people who can't possibly use Worldcoin even if they wanted to. The direct implication today is that blind people would lose their benefits under Worldcoin. If that's not true, then either.

1. Government doesn't actually need Worldcoin's ideas as much as Worldcoin hopes they do.

2. There are workarounds that don't require Worldcoin, in which case let's just use those in the first place.

[nickff]

Again, I'm not a Worldcoin supporter, but...

'Blind' is a much larger category than 'eyeless', and I think you're making the implicit assumption that the government's current identity verification methods work much better than they really do. Just look at the HN post yesterday about the woman whose identity was stolen and used to import 'counterfeit' goods. Worldcoin's system may not be perfect, but having it as an option might have helped in a case like that.

[TremendousJudge]

Isn't this system supposed to be better than government ID? If it has the same disadvantages, why would anybody use it?

[nickff]

Again, I am not a Worldcoin booster, but I also didn't say it had the same disadvantages. Everything has trade-offs, and Worldcoin has definite advantages against using a small piece of plastic with a bad 2D picture on it.

[TremendousJudge]

A government ID is a lot more than that. I have an official ID card that has:

- A bunch of personal identifying data including a unique number (which is as much of a secret as my name or my date of birth)

- A bunch of old-timey security stuff like thumbprint and signature

- An RFID chip containing all this info, ICAO 9303 compliant

- A PIN protected certificate that I can use to sign documents digitally

- Several security measures to make falsifying it very hard

Everybody who lives in this country has one of these, and these features are not uncommon for ID cards to have in other countries. It also has the full backing of the state, which means that if I lose it I can easily get a new one, and is very illegal for somebody to use it to impersonate me, or to create a false one.

I'm not sure what advantages I or my fellow citizens would gain by moving to a distributed system in charge of some foreign capitalists who have never even been to this country.

[d-cc]

Id imagine fingerprints will probably be sufficient no? Surely there are other biological identifiers that will serve as a functional replacement?

[kstrauser]

Maybe, but who knows? The Worldcoin people are making this a problem, so it's up to them to fix it without increasing the burden on people who can't use it as-it.

[MichaelZuo]

When did this become a worldwide standard?

There are many cases where those making a problem never fixed anything. In fact too many cases throughout history to enumerate.