It's ridiculous that you look at all of us being forced into a government-protected duopoly, and then say "Don't you dare force your decisions on us!" to anyone suggesting that this should not be the default. Rules for us, but not them.
Are you claiming that this is the only way of interacting with particular government services, with the other ways that existed before the app no longer being available? To make situation „dystopian“ this must be the case.
Because how do you make sure it's the user who does those modifications, willingly and well-informed? That it's not a malicious actor, not an user getting socially engineered or phished? Incredibly difficult compared to the current alternative.
If it's not a software root of trust that provides an attestable environment like Android or iOS. It's going to be a hardware root of trust that provides an attestable hardware environment, like SGX. I can predict no other practical avenue taken. Unless the orangutan really forces a demonstration on how untrustworthy these environments can be and a lot of money and effort is spent.
But yeah, the user could have a choice to this extent.
The world has gone absolutely mad, what the fuck am I even witnessing? It is quite literally becoming 1984 in front of my eyes, with people complying completely voluntarily and openly advocating for it, not even a threat of force to make it happen.
Demanding full control over something like an ID will fundamentally not happen. The same way you won't have full control over the way passports or paper bills are made.
Take for example the expectation that some poor fool's ID can't be cloned and reused by malicious actors - full control directly contradicts that. It will not and must not be possible.
If I am lashing out, it is because this is perhaps the most dangerous thing I've ever seen proposed, and it is deeply distressing how people are sleepwalking into it. To be honest, if I were German, I would probably just kill myself the day I was legally mandated by my government to register my identity with Google. That might sound hyperbolic, but I'm really not kidding. I have lived with privacy, anonymity, and freedom for all of my life. If the future of this world is one where the government and Google have complete control over every single thing you do, I'd rather die having lived a satisfying life than witness the horrors that are to come.
This is honestly not a good argument - it makes you sound desperate and puts in doubt your mental stability. I don't think you actually have mental problems, I just mean this this kind of argument comes off bad.
Also nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. You don't have to own a digital ID. It just makes things easier, because you can sign things over the internet, or present your phone instead of your plastic ID. Both things already have alternatives (qualified signatures and regular physical ID), so no immediate harm is being done.
Don't get me wrong, I am personally anti bigtech, I try to degoogle as much as possible, and I find the thought of my government coercing me to use google/apple duopoly repulsive. I dislike that, but using phones (instead of for example dedicated hardware) IS pragmatic, and you are not forced to do anything.
Sent from my pixel phone.
For now. In 5 years you will, there is not one doubt in my mind about that. We've been on a slippery slope for (at least) 40 years straight, every year is a loss of privacy rights compared to the last, there is not a single year that reversed the trend, not a single year where we paused and stayed where we were. Once digital ID is implemented everywhere, alternatives will be quickly phased out. It's straight downhill as governments and corporations take more and more advantage of technology to build a degree of surveillance that even dystopian science fiction writers couldn't imagine.
The government, the corporations, the data brokers each individual corp sells your data to to compile a unified profile, and anyone the data brokers are willing to sell to have an unbelievable amount of information on the average citizen. They know where you live, where you are at all times, where you work, every website you visit, every Google search you've ever made, everything you purchase, all of your acquaintances, when and for how long you call those acquaintances, the full contents of any conversations you have with those acquaintances, your interests, your hobbies, your political beliefs.
I have thus far managed, I believe, to avoid the worst of the surveillance, with a tremendous amount of effort and the sacrifice of an unbelievable amount of personal convenience. But every year I find myself losing access to more and more things that I am unable to do without compromising my privacy. If it gets as far as government-mandated Google ID in my country, I think it's completely rational to kill oneself rather than live like cattle. If there were a resistance movement, I would participate in that instead, but this is happening completely voluntarily. You people want this. There is no resistance. Fine, you can have your dystopia. But there is no reason I need to be part of it, and I don't think it's a sign of mental illness to opt out. I don't much believe in living for the sake of living, you should live if it brings you happiness/satisfaction/whatever and don't if it doesn't.
> Sent from my pixel phone
This contradiction is not even funny. Sent from my Librem 5.
Proof: things mostly work now without all the surveillance state shenanigans.
More proof: humans have lived full and fulfilling lives without "proving identity or age or citizenship to someone hundreds of kilometers away"
It's important enough that people do so without any eID, using methods both more invasive and less reliable. Gas bills, document photos, having to take videos and pictures of yourself.
Humans have lived in caves and died of preventable diseases, it doesn't mean it's a better way of living.
Can you please elaborate on that record?
As to the well-established track record of doing evil... gestures broadly everything? Google in particular has built an empire on stripping away people's privacy, and they regularly ruin people's livelihood by eg. shutting down Youtube accounts incorrectly with automated systems and no way of ever reaching a human for support unless you're famous enough to make it a PR issue. Apple is the same, just recently with a thread on HN lamenting that Apple was destroying their business because they revoked their dev license, or in other words, a private company unilaterally revoked the ability of a business to create mobile software for billions of devices. And now we want to give them control over our IDs? ????????????????????????
Worse still, for new mainstream devices that are believed to be safe the state sponsored actors will likely operate unpublished exploits, and will exploit the misplaced faith people and judiciary will put in device attestation. I dont think the very likeable people who worked on Pegasus found themselves respectable jobs - they are likely still selling that sophisticated crap to all authoritarian regimes.