This is not a call for fatalism. This is a call for trust infrastructure, trust anchors, and proven underlying identity and trust mechanisms.

What happens when you try to fake being an Estonian who holds a national ID card that utilizes cryptographic primitives? Along those same lines, this infrastructure is the very same needed for business to transact (think document/agreement execution, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, payment processing, real estate ownership record systems, etc).

If I can't prove who I am, that's a gap to be solved for by government (and many have already solved for this, it is a well worn path [1]). If you require me to attest to my identity, that's a regulatory, governance, and oversight issue. As glib as is sounds, fight misinformation/disinformation with trust (infra). Make trust the default, not the exception.

EDIT: Login.gov [2] provides authentication services for DHS' Global Entry. Why can we not use that to attest identity facts elsewhere? Why can't any citizen get a CAC [3] to use with this system? (I frequently see Login.gov is hiring for SREs, but no internal advocates/champions; why?) Why can I pay with Apple Pay but can't prove my identity without a paper birth certificate and social security card (or a passport if you're among the well heeled)?

</soapbox>

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... [2] https://login.gov [3] https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/

> Make trust the default, not the exception.

So the death of anonymity. I already hear the defenders of such a proposal: "If you don't want to give Facebook your federally issued ID then you still have the darkweb!" Followed by an endless stream of hit pieces equating everyone fleeing to non-privacy invasive platforms as nazis/pedos, and mobs of idiots demanding that infrastructure providers null-route wrong-thinkers.

Are you sure that really want a CAC? The OPM gave my biometrics and SSB to China, as well as every other military/gov employee. Except the CIA - the only one who managed to fight off the administrative record merge. If only they didn't draw so heavily from the veteran pool...

I'm not here to advocate either way for anonymity (two cents: providing privacy requires strong legislation and rigorous enforcement, Germany does well in this regard I think), simply improved trust infrastructure the country badly needs (which would be an efficient medium by which to improve trust online). No problems with my CAC, despite OPM's failure. Elect better legislators and improve working conditions for technologists in government if you want better security posture (which we should). There is a reason USDS has to hack the GS pay scale to get good people into positions of leverage.

Facebook already requires you to use a government issued ID to identify yourself if they question your profile [1]. Not a legal requirement, Facebook's requirement. Twitter also requires government ID to get a blue verified checkbox [2], or to report fraud.

TLDR: I will take a somewhat ineffective government, warts and all, with the understanding work is necessary to improve it over fatalism and apathy that brings about total dysfunction.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/help/159096464162185

[2] https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/twitter-ve...

> > Make trust the default, not the exception.

> I'm not here to advocate either way for anonymity

Is trust and anonymity somehow disconnected in your mind? Before you answer that, I'll point out that I didn't say pseudo-anonymity.

> No problems with my CAC, despite OPM's failure.

So you're either a post breach boot or you haven't yet noticed a personal impact. While I've never had the desire, due to the contents of my OPM file, I could never do any business in China under my own name without drawing a disruptive amount of attention. That may or may not be a problem in the future, nobody can say. But it can be said it should have never happened in the first place, as there was ample well reasoned warning and precedent. Anybody else remember the clipper chip? What about that "golden key" stupidity?

Whatever policy Facebook has at the moment is completely beside the point. What you are talking about would require the force of law. This proposal has been floated numerous times, tying online activity to a federally issued identifier.

> Elect better legislators...

lol

I hold contractor status, and I would never step foot in China (for obvious reasons). I think we see things fundamentally differently, and I wish you well.

I don't wish you ill, but I wish you and your ideas had no effect on me. Which is more to the point - you are focusing on the wrong part of the problem. Trust and disinformation isn't the problem, the problem is the second order effects. It would be easier to reduce the potential damage that useful idiots and victims of propaganda can do to everyone else, than it would be to pull off the impossible trust+anonymity+benevolentFed scheme.

Why should I trust the US government to assert who you are? Surely they make false passports for their spies all the time.

Why should I trust your Keybase proof? Because "they [Zoom now] say so"?

Those seeking to verify identities and personas are free to ignore whatever roots or trust chains they choose. Edge cases aside, the US government (in the case of your example) still holds and projects trust value (not sure how many US passports per day are used to validate citizenship, employment eligibility, and entry requirements at nation state borders, I assume it's quite a bit).

Trust is hard (there are entire industries around it), but the notion that it's impossible should not be entertained. It's a core component of modern civilization.

Trust is a difficult problem.

Geopolitical entities have been using the Internet to undermine trust in "the West," broadly speaking, for at least half a decade. Warfare has always included disinformation campaigns (they called it "propaganda"), but never has it been so viral.

I could at least envision a world where cryptographic identity is taken for granted. Think Keybase for publications. Sign articles to prove authenticity.

The cryptography involved is largely a solved problem. Software engineers did it with Keybase, and it's easy enough to use that people with very little cryptographic ability can prove who they are to the Internet (assuming they're an established identity with social accounts, or they have trustworthy people willing to vouch for their identity). But we'd need browsers/clients that have the ability to display proof status on messages, and it would have to be nearly as easy to use as existing clients like Twitter.

I hope we start building businesses that repair trust, rather than harm it. Making everyone distrust everything might benefit a few opportunistic parties in the short term, but in the long run everyone loses.

No, trust is a very easy problem. Online trust with people that you have not had any previous real life contact with is a hard problem. Which is why I still put a premium on meeting people irl.

I suppose it should be clear from context that I meant online, but I'd like to offer some food for thought around offline trust as well.

In 2009, a man arrived at the world-famous Sun Studio in Memphis, TN for a private tour. He told David Brookings, the young, aspiring musician giving the private tour, that his name was Steve Eason. David had been briefed that Eason was a big figure in the music industry, very famous, and so Sun would have to be very careful to preserve his privacy. Eason was also darn ill; he'd been hooked up to some gear that followed him around the studio.

The kid had never heard of Steve Eason, but he gave a passionate tour. At the end, David handed Steve a CD with music on it, hoping to land a record deal. A month later, Brookings got a message from Apple, asking him to come join iTunes to curate Rock & Roll playlists.

And Steve Eason? He wasn't a musician, or even a record producer. The man receiving the Sun Studio tour was Steve Jobs, who had been in Memphis to receive a kidney transplant for pancreatic cancer. He was staying in a house bought by a man named Eason, but Eason was - in fact - the doctor Jobs had scheduled to perform the transplant surgery.

Brookings has worked at Apple to this day.

In truth, more people go by alias names than you'd expect. Without checking a driver's license (and, depending on the sensitivity, maybe some utility bills), you may never know if someone is who they say they are.

Also, I have friends I've met offline, who have moved around to different countries and swapped devices. It's always a big pain trying to establish trust once your physical relationships go digital. There are only so many challenge-response questions to ask them (i.e., things only the two of you know). In reality, our digital and offline lives are intermingled; they each inseparably affect the other, and sometimes it feels like identity problems are turtles all the way down.

Identity and trust are not necessarily 100% congruent. There are plenty of people who I trust whose identity I would not vouch for and there are many more whose identity I am sure of but who I would not trust.

Trust is the main problem people are trying to solve when hiring. Before 2020 most of my interviews were done in person, so even with IRL meetings it's a hard problem.

This usually boils down to references and then by extension the trust in those references. It is definitely tricky, before COVID we would fly in new hires to meet them and talk to them, since then we have only hired one new person and only because one of our team has a prior relationship with that person so we can extend our trust.

Interesting, just looked through notsureaboutpg's reply to your comment and it seems like someone has gone through and systematically downvoted(?) all of their comments (now marked as dead). Why?

>Geopolitical entities have been using the Internet to undermine trust in "the West," broadly speaking, for at least half a decade. Warfare has always included disinformation campaigns (they called it "propaganda"), but never has it been so viral.

I mean, you have to understand that the actions of the globally dominant "West" (North America, EU, Australia, and their allies) in the past 20 (and further beyond that) years have done a lot to undermine trust in them also.

Fake news to lead people into the Iraq War (a 20 year quagmire which only cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars for minute changes on the ground), an inability to defeat ISIS which meant the US had to rely on Iranian militias to beat them. On that note, I think the whole history of US-Iran relations is enough to undermine faith in the "West" as it stands.

I'm not saying other axes of power are better, but trust isn't a competition, it's very possible for people to trust no one outside their few close acquaintances. Trust has to be earned, and the "West" doesn't do a good job of it.

That might bring it back to actual people. If you can't even tell which pop artist is real, or which talking head is legitimate, maybe you trust the people you know. We go back to trusting that newspaper that you pay, who in turn pays someone to actually be on the ground somewhere. And trusting people you personally know IRL. No more of this reporting on things the journalist read about on twitter and read a press release about.

Why? This was the situation in the 90s. No one trusted the internet. It's hard to imagine unless you lived it, but buying something online was once seen as completely stupid, and people were universally skeptical of information (and people) online. We should be more concerned about the level of trust built up since then, not the other way around.

Yes. It’s our own Tower of Babel. All built in the name of 3rd party advertising.

> Yes. It’s our own Tower of Babel. All built in the name of 3rd party advertising.

Do you mean Library of Babel [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel: "In any case, a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing zero books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information..."

The Tower of Babel refers to the story from the Bible's first book, Genesis, in which the hubris of people leads to the building of a gigantic tower, a technological marvel for its time but one that ultimately contains the seeds of its own undoing. People build the tower as a symbol of greatness and unity but in the end are scattered by God and thrown into disunity and disarray. It's an enduring story precisely because it seems to so well encapsulate our relationship with technology and the law of unintended consequences.

Borges' story on the Library of Babel is in conversation with this much older story.

I suspect they meant what they wrote.

Trust no one? Have people historically trusted anyone other than their families?

This is basically how I already treat the Internet. I take a defensive stance and just assume everyone is a foreign bad actor or shill.

Ehh.. ive thought about it, either for fake news or fake identities. Maybe also people will start spending less time online and care more about local stuff that overall, will impact their lives more directly.

Maybe not that bad of a thing.

Implying you trust government and police, because they never done anything malicious before...

At least with online sources it's up to you to decide.

Not really trust, but it's the local gang with the physical power and presence to operate conspicuously in the area.