> ... digital driver's licenses and state identification cards are currently accepted at ... Apple Stores in the U.S. and in select apps that require identity or age verification.
Delightful.
It's only a few years until anonymity on the internet will be a thing of the past. Every account will be tied to your government issued ID card.
In the mean time, enjoy the novelty of using bluetooth to prove your age to the bartender.
It's funny. I switched back to using Bluetooth exclusively in my car instead of Android Auto because the latter constantly pauses functionality when I'm driving for "safety pauses". So I literally can't change the song on.
All I need is the technology, I don't want the product. The product intrudes on my life and personal decisions. Same with this ID/Wallet thing. I want the technology. I don't want the product.
Europe has had interoperable eID for a while now, yet it hasn't lead to an increased number of sites digitally authenticating me.
On the other hand, for the few sites that do have a legitimate need for wanting to verify my identity (banks, tax authorities etc.), I feel much better about using actual eID than doing the weird dance of sharing my SSN (the worst bearer token in history) and maybe uploading a photo of my license that they might (but probably won't) check for being lost/stolen/involved in prior identity theft.
Unlike with the "photo of a physical ID" non-model, eID even has the potential to only share some assertions about you selectively (e.g. only your age, but not your name or even date of birth, or a company-specific/non-cross-correlateable identifier).
I think that would have a pretty concerning chilling effect in many public forums.
Not everything needs to be on the public record permanently; among other problems, it makes it that much harder for people to walk themselves back from a previous extreme position as they grow up, make new experiences etc.
Of course it depends on the use case, but for some, pseudonyms are really great. It's working pretty well over here, for example!
Sure, and I have pseudonyms in some forums and I would prefer to continue to use those.
That doesn't mean there can't be optional forums or messaging platforms where everyone is required to have state-issued IDs.
We're pretty close to a world where anonymous forums are going to be overrun with LLMs that are somewhat indistinguishable from real people.
In addition, the main True Identity (TM) platforms are Facebook and Twitter, private companies in a privileged position regarding identity verification. I'd much rather have a public institution issuing PKI enabled ID cards and having individual states operating as certificate authorities with DMVs being the gatekeepers.
Delightful.
It's only a few years until anonymity on the internet will be a thing of the past. Every account will be tied to your government issued ID card.
In the mean time, enjoy the novelty of using bluetooth to prove your age to the bartender.