[AJ007]

While acknowledging identity verification is problematic and bordering an unsolved problem, that really is a horrible precedent for someone to be required to own an electronic device that rapidly falls in to obsolescence to perform basic activities.

In the more extreme sense, the complexity and security hurdles really make this something only the largest multi-billion dollar corporations could do. European countries really seem to do a good job of re-enforcing existing American monopolies while hamstringing their own economy and the freedom of the internet as a whole. I don't know if this is intentional (regulatory capture) or just based on a very superstitious understanding of computer science and mathematics (see the recent encryption debacles.)

Apple has gotten a free pass for security & privacy, so far, by mostly producing secure(ish) devices, at least relative to the competition and give the never solved problem of keeping an always-on always-connected device that can receive messages from anyone in the world secure. However, as Apple's only remaining growth area is advertising their privacy reputation is going to diminish. Apple's leadership over the next decade or two will determine just how quickly that erodes. Definitely not a company I would want to be reliant on ID verification.

[shepherdjerred]

> to be required to own an electronic device that rapidly falls in to obsolescence to perform basic activities.

I bought an iPhone 11 Pro in 2019. I paid Apple $40 for a battery replacement last year. My phone continues to work well, and I'm going to keep it until it breaks.

Apple still pushes updates for the iPhone 8 which was released in 2017, so I expected to get at least two or three more years of life out my iPhone.

[CubsFan1060]

I believe this is just based on: https://www.iso.org/standard/69084.html

Some information: https://www.ul.com/sites/g/files/qbfpbp251/files/2021-08/mDL...

I've never tried it, but there's an implementation here: https://github.com/walt-id/waltid-identity/tree/main/waltid-...

From: https://walt.id

I don't think Apple did anything magical here, and from what I can tell there's no lock in. You could load your ID to any number of places for this verification, it's not just locked to Apple.

[jimz]

The key part is that it's a private company offering something that is opt-in. If the federal government mandated it, it's almost certainly a 10th Amendment violation (via commandeering). It would also effectively make the currently de facto second class citizenship of those who entered without inspection including DACA recipients into de jure second class citizens and under current law, for life. It would fall squarely into the small part of the opinion landscape in the US where both the right and the left would have reasons to hate it.

[CubsFan1060]

I'm not sure there's any reason to mandate that exact solution.

It seems more likely that they would mandate age verification. This would be one way the government could support to do that. There's no reason PornHub couldn't support this, or other methods (or just one or the other). I think the law would say "a site has to verify the age of the user", not "everyone who wants to look at porn has to have age verification via a smart phone".