[silversmith]

In Latvia we've had digital id for close to 20 years. Banks mostly use their own auth, some rely on digital id. No travel service has ever wanted me to use digital id, let alone any other kind of shopping. What we use it for is access to government resources, and signing digital documents. I trust this system WAY more than whatever some company comes up with.

[petre]

> No travel service has ever wanted me to use digital id, let alone any other kind of shopping

Yup, until they are regulated to do so in case you buy booze, porn, metal detectors, crossbows or who knows what else. And until silversmith tries to dodge the draft but he accidentaly bought some booze woth his gov eID to party with friends.

[vrganj]

What's stopping anyone from requiring a passport scan right now?

[bluebarbet]

This is an interesting and hopeful datapoint.

[abc123abc123]

No limitations during corona? Remember travelling through your neighbour during corona and was treated worse than a ww2 jew in germany due to not having the authoritarian corona passport.

This is what our every day will be like, when the state has internalized the enormous power of a 100% controlled digital ID. Bye, bye, freedom of thought.

[Muromec]

>was treated worse than a ww2 jew in germany due to not having the authoritarian corona passport.

If you were to be treated worse than a jew in ww2 germany, you would not be writing about it here.

[silversmith]

You are most likely referring to the EU covid certificate. It functioned as a proof of vaccination or recent negative test, and yeah, that was required for travel at one point. And even then the verification end was `(code: string) -> valid: boolean` function, no personal data was accessible at validation point. It used the digital ID as SSO for accessing your records, so you could save / print the verification code, usually in form of a qr code. I know all this, because I'm friends with people that worked on the Latvian part of the system, and we spent long chat sessions discussing how to best do it in the least privacy-intrusive way.

If you were from outside EU, I fully believe the experience was subpar. 99% or more of verifications went through the EU system, and if you showed up with different kind of documentation, the people tasked with verification "at the edge" might not even know if it was valid form of proof.

Overall, I struggle with being outraged by the concept of digital ID. It's just a digital form of "show me your passport please". We have had physical national ID (mandatory from certain age!) for as long as I can remember myself. The state knows I exist. If a madman gets put in charge, lack of unified digital ID is not going to prevent airport style passport gates being erected around the booze stand.

[Muromec]

I think what is happening is a rather philosophical rejection of the mere idea that the government should affect ones life in any way for any reason. Somehow all the laws that existed before are below the baseline, so they kinda fine, but the new things -- those cause outrage.

Then comes this post-hoc rationalization about how it will inevitably be abused, Jews in Nazi Germany, apartheid and chips under the skin.