I worked on digital identity schemes that used similar protocols to these a decade ago, and they were technologies in search of a use case because the vendors and project sponsors just wanted a mandate to implement controls nobody wanted. They're called domestic passports and a gesundheitpasses and the 20th century was defined by the regimes who implemented them. Identity and cryptography are areas where technologists cannot avoid moral culpability for their design and implementation decisions. This area is as real as it gets.
Those big scary words are technical terms of art in political science (defined by Arendt), and people who actually work in privacy and identity to ensure these technologies are not exploited by governments to abuse citizens, are engaged in the real work of governance. Part of that is demonstrating how even governments are bound by the laws of math and accountable to reason. I also understand how smaller words could be more broadly persuasive.
Digital identity is the key for scaling democracy up, decreasing bureaucracy and integrating the act of being a citizen in day to day life, instead of being a chore that everyone complains about.
It could allow for abuse for sure, but what technology doesn't. Assuming bad faith ab-initio and using those exact "terms of art" give out very strong vibes of conspiracy theories and sovereign citizen fetishes.
> Digital identity is the key for scaling democracy up
unintended consequences are the topic at hand right? In all the world's countries, which shows "democracy scaling up" ? The single largest country is called China, they use Digital ID for scaling.
Many EU countries, and the EU itself (with eIDAS) are rolling out digital identity schemes as well.
I'm able to communicate with most government agencies of one European country digitally, as a result – definitely beats having to take a 10-hour flight or to at least find a printer and mail envelopes back and forth across the Atlantic, containing "physical signatures" that no company or government can realistically validate anyway.
No, the topic at hand is a cryptographer finding vulnerabilities in a communication protocol and the originating body incorporating the findings (hopefully) in their fixes.
And since it's about France, what does that have to do with China?
Good technology can be used badly by bad people, I don't know if China does that, but I imagine that's what you mean to imply. Vague assertions like yours are not exactly supporting evidence.
is it not obvious that China is not a Democracy? the point in the comment is that Digital Identity does not scale Democracy in that case, the largest case in the world.
Those big scary words are technical terms of art in political science (defined by Arendt), and people who actually work in privacy and identity to ensure these technologies are not exploited by governments to abuse citizens, are engaged in the real work of governance. Part of that is demonstrating how even governments are bound by the laws of math and accountable to reason. I also understand how smaller words could be more broadly persuasive.