Digital ID is also an identification system, social security number isn't. For instance you can't ID people on porn sites using it.

You can't ID people on porn sites with what's implemented in most European countries either.

I feel like what you mean by "digital ID" is very different to what others mean.

How come not? I typically hear of some scammy Zero-Knowledge Proof promising the world and delivering either an easy-to-pass-around identifier or something readily able to be mapped back to you as a person.

I feel like we're talking about completely different things. What's currently implemented in various EU countries is basically OAuth, where user attributes are verified by the state. Being able to map that account back to a specific person isn't a bug, but the whole reason for the system's existence.

Here's a marketing page for a WIP pan-EU project to implement this kind of digital ID: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/digital-economy-and-soci...

There are also various plans for age-verification schemes that should (partially) preserve anonymity, but those aren't implemented and it's not what people mean by "digital ID".

I work in Zero Knowledge Proofs, and they are a great mathematical tool. But they ain't magic.

Yes you can, eID means that you can prove your identity online using your digital signature.

Can is the key word here. As implemented today, users can choose whether to use digital ID. In my opinion, problems would only start if the users had no choice and the government was the one choosing for them.

And of course absolutely no government ever, ever, decided that it was legitimate to choose for its citizens.

Yes, so you get all the downsides of

> "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.

but none of the upsides.

No, because with classic ID documents, the government doesn't know if I went to a specific healthcare provider, if I opened a social media account, if I bought a train ticket, or even where my bank accounts are (reporting is yearly, not in real time). Accessing all of this data is possible but bears a lot of friction, which prevents mass surveillance (or at least increases the costs).

Once the eID system is set up and becomes ubiquitous, it will be trivial for companies to use eID to open any online account or reserve plane/train tickets. Therefore, giving enforcement forces very convenient access to all of my activity and allowing automated monitoring. Just look at what is happening in China.

What is happening in China? I haven't been there in many years. There have been stories in the West about a social credit score system they had, but it turns out they didn't really follow through with that one.

You can't take a train if your social credit is too low.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/china-bans-23m...

With digital ID, they don't either.. You just have no clue what you're on about and it shows

With digital ID each time you open an account it pings a government server.

It depends on how the specific scheme is implemented.

This just shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

Why would a porn site pay ten cents per visitor to get a legally binding id of its visitors? But even more importantly, why would anyone sign it?

Y'all seem to think digital ID is some kind of super-cookie that tracks your every move online.

It's not.

Services do not regularly query your SSN or DL to determine if it is actively “in service” or is blocked. In fact most types of businesses don’t touch SSNs at all (the potential liability for mishandling it is radioactive). And the few that request licenses typically are only using it as part of a one-time KYC flow, there is no ongoing link to a central provider.

Yes, so you get all the downsides of

> "Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.

but none of the upsides.