What about when your smartphone is required to verify your identity so you can work / earn a paycheck? What about when it's required in order for you to engage in commerce?
We're headed down a very slippery slope and the destination is a very dystopian reality where those in power can prevent someone from participating in society on a whim. I believe the destination has previously been described as the beast system or New World Order.
We are all definitely going to have to make a choice. That much is certain.
> What about when your smartphone is required to verify your identity so you can work / earn a paycheck? What about when it's required in order for you to engage in commerce?
In some cases, it already is.
We're already far on the path you described, and there is no choice to make on it, not for individuals. To stop this, we need to somehow make these technologies socially unacceptable. We need to walk back on cybersecurity quite a bit, and it starts with population-wide understanding that there is such thing as too much security, especially when the questions of who is being secured and who is the threat remain conveniently unanswered.
The US is not nearly as far down that path as is, for example, China. But two forces are at play here: 1. Near-term concern: F-Droid is getting too popular for Google's comfort and Android revenue ambitions 2. Longer term goal: Control. Much of Chinas's social credit scoring is mediated by their phones. Not an issue yet here in the US but assuredly, if not explicitly on the current's government's list of aspirations. A completely managed device with no freedoms (like f-Droid et al,) is antithetical to a more restricted (managed) device.
> Near-term concern: F-Droid is getting too popular for Google's comfort and Android revenue ambitions
That's good to hear.
I'm entirely on F-Droid, with no Google account.
Well put. Most SWEs on this very site probably require a smartphone for id verification for work. Acting like that is a personal choice is not useful
We're already there. Attestation is not in your phone, but in your ID card. European passports and ID cards carry biometric data of your face, so you can be computationally verified.
I'm aware of this slippery slope for a very long time, esp. with AI (check my comments if you prefer). On the other hand, I believe that we need to choose our battles wisely.
We believe that technology is the cause of these things, it's not. Remember:
The governments believe that this is the "necessity", so the technologies are developed and deployed. We need to change the beliefs, not the technology.The same dystopian digital ID allows me to verify my identity to my bank while I'm having my breakfast saving everyone time. That e-sig allows me to have a practical PKI based security in my phone for sensitive things.
Nothing prevents these things from turning against me, except the ideas and beliefs of the people managing these things.
We need to change minds. Not the technology.
> We need to change minds. Not the technology.
I totally agree that changing the hivemind's mind is the only way to preserve these freedoms.
Is anyone making any progress on this? Beyond the FSF, noyb, and hn lurkers?
I feel better having a physical token like an ID than it being on my phone, however.
Sure, but the bank feels better about forcing you to interact with their app on a daily basis, because this gives them a direct upsell channel for their financial services. They don't actually want you to us a physical token. Security is only an excuse.
Yup, right on target.