Is this the “self sovereign” ID?
The concept of SSID has been rattling around for a long time but the idea is, *you* decide what to put in *your* wallet, the supplier is mainly providing you with an almost empty wallet (the main content usually being some NIST/ISO level of authentication standard that your identity is definitely yours and not someone elses’.)
The digital wallet can then be used to assert “I am who I say I am” while also holding the necessary information an organization may test to confirm it, eg a biometric registration that’s been signed can be checked again and if the wallet is still in the hands of the natural owner it’ll say “scanned data matches stored data and stored data is signed”.
This will definitely freak out some privacy experts, especially those who can’t read good and don’t understand the tech or the standards involved, and who need tin hats all the time anyway.
But if it’s okay for the Federal Government to do it for checking employees, okay for Apple to do it for customer (and Apple is Made In China) and it’s okay for protecting healthcare information that YOU DECIDE to make portable for your healthcare provider AND ANY OTHER to access on their behalf in an emergency, opting out is just as open to a privacy/security/convenience debate as opting in.
Simple example - if you are involved in an accident and a paramedic has a NIST compliant biometric enabled single person use iPad and you have a digital wallet, the paramedics can tell who you are, who’s your insurer, what blood group you are and what medication you’re on /allergic to (IF YOU DECIDE TO REVEAL ALL THAT) simply by opening your digital wallet.
Pre-digital, how would a paramedic know who you are? Ooh, er... Maybe check if you’ve got a wallet? Look at your driver’s license?
If they look at your digital wallet there’s an audit trail: on this date and that time this specific paramedic opened your wallet to read only what you gave prior permission for them to read... You were unconscious at the time, and they needed to know which of 2 large hospitals near you is better. Not closer... Better.
Can the nondigital wallet do a tenth of that?
There’s going to be a huge paradigm shift in personal tin hat privacy nuttery over the next 25 years. It’s not “privacy Vs independence” so much as
“your privacy + your security + your right to know who’s accessed what”
Vs
“la la la, you’ll get the info you need to help me only if you can prise it out of my cold dead hands or if I’m conscious and in a really good mood when you ask me nicely.”
That is assuming it will not be used to control or infringe on people’s rights.
Or, conversely, “disappear” people; no digital identity, no existence. Think identity theft in reverse.
Since it’s the unelected European Commission pushing this, then the answer is no.
Like any intrusive government program, it is great until it is abused. And law of the Universe #3 states that: Any power that a government can abuse will, sooner or later (Probably sooner) be abused.
That’s the issue. It will be abused. And probably badly abused.
That said, in the PRC this stuff is already here. Almost all payments are made via electronic transfer. Doors to your house and car are unlocked by your cell phone. They just need to implant the thing in your hand and on your forehead.
Yeah right, I totally trust Google to do the right thing. Location Services OFF but they can and do still track you. That's been known for years. If they make truly Open Source phones that's one thing but if it's not open source, Apple, Google, MS etc will collect and sell the data.