I see a few people here complaining about the idea of a central digital identity service.
As a Dane, having lived in other countries, MitID is an insanely superior to anything I've ever tried. It simplifies so many touchpoints with the government, and is honestly such a good upgrade going from nothing -> physical NemID card with codes -> digital MitID (literally "My ID").
The only real disruption I'd say is if you happen to be buying something online that triggers the 3DS prompt (an additional security layer to prevent cards getting stolen/scam). In Denmark the 3DS prompt for VISA at least uses MitID to verify you are the owner of the card, so that'll obviously not work when MitID is down.
I'll say, it has been surprisingly stable though otherwise, and disruptions usually aren't a big impact (I literally wouldn't have known unless I saw this HackerNews post).
As for a centralized identity system: I personally see this as an acceptable contract for living in a society. Most countries have SSNs anyways, your taxes and many other things are tied to this. Centralizing this identity allows the government to streamline so many things to give a better service to their citizens. For example, all official communication goes to your "DigitalPost" email inbox, your verify identity with "MitID", and every person or company has a registered "NemKonto" tied to them for any salary or government payouts.
I maybe see people get tripped up at the concept that your government should actually care about the service they deliver. That's probably already the point where we diverge when talking about if these things are a good idea or not.
> The only real disruption I'd say is if you happen to be buying something online that triggers the 3DS prompt (an additional security layer to prevent cards getting stolen/scam). In Denmark the 3DS prompt for VISA at least uses MitID to verify you are the owner of the card, so that'll obviously not work when MitID is down.
If you use Lunar, the 3DS prompt uses the Lunar app and not MitID.
> I see a few people here complaining about the idea of a central digital identity service.
Digital identity service is fine for gov services. It’s not OK as a hard requirement for anything else such as banking.
Digital ID in my country is down for about 7 days and counting. iOS app no longer opens after the recent update. I cannot pay tax without digital id app working but i can do banking and everything else.
> It’s not OK as a hard requirement for anything else such as banking.
What’s the alternative that you think is okay for that then?
Certain businesses have regulatory requirements to know and verify your identity (banking, telco).
A UK poster gave an example of how they need to mail the bank a copy of their passport and other private information.
I’d certainly much prefer simply using a digital login solution as an alternative to that. They can verify I am who I say I am, without needing my passport which I would consider a much bigger privacy invasion to hand out.
I have an electronic certificate for sign and verify on my physical national identity chip card. You either use it physically or online but only at times when identity confirmation is required.
> It’s not OK as a hard requirement for anything else such as banking.
It is in fact not a hard requirement. It just happens that when you have a relatively cheap and efficient digital identity, which is by definition trusted by the government, banks will use that to reduce risk. It's not that they can't verify your identity any other way, this is just the obvious and easy one.