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This is a major development. Let me count the ways:
1. It portends a world where access to the internet requires ID of some sort.
1. It portends a world where access to the internet requires ID of some sort.
2. Governments, in our current decade, *love* the idea of a "driver's license for the internet." They want to know who is behind every post.
Using a think-of-the-children argument is one way to get at this. You show your ID at one site, they'll have you linked everywhere else.
Using a think-of-the-children argument is one way to get at this. You show your ID at one site, they'll have you linked everywhere else.
3. There's a new generation of politicians coming up, who grew up with the internet and understand the concepts of anonymity, pseudonymity, and accountability without full identification. They grew up on the internet.
These ID proposals are from the aging old guard.
These ID proposals are from the aging old guard.
4. Nevertheless, there's about a decade of vulnerability ahead, during which we will see variants of this proposal to mandate ID.
It'll be for porn today, expand to social media tomorrow. These are the forces that chip away at our privacy and freedom.
It'll be for porn today, expand to social media tomorrow. These are the forces that chip away at our privacy and freedom.
5. In the short term, such laws will have a terrible effect: people will flock to VPNs.
6. Recall that most VPNs are honeypots run by intelligence organizations. A Draconian law simply send your population's data into the hands of your mortal enemies' datacenters.
7. A British subject with fringe sexual tastes who doesn't want to identify himself to a porn site will instead end up identifying himself to a "small VPN in <insert small innocent country, eg Belgium>," in reality run by Russians, etc.
8. Exporting your intelligence data to other countries is a terrible idea. Which makes these ID laws terrible national policy.
9. At the same time, it will spur on technological solutions to ID management.
This is a space where research has been driven primarily by military needs, then by commercial needs. The heavy-handed solutions do not permit much privacy.
This is a space where research has been driven primarily by military needs, then by commercial needs. The heavy-handed solutions do not permit much privacy.
10. It's high time for organic, human-serving solutions to the privacy and identification problem. We have useful tools in our arsenal to tackle this now, eg blockchains.
10. Overall, these are ill-thought-out policies that will leak compromat at national scales.
The one good thing to come out of such efforts may be anonymous credentials, implemented with the aid of peer-to-peer tech.
The one good thing to come out of such efforts may be anonymous credentials, implemented with the aid of peer-to-peer tech.
10-number-3. What's another 10 between friends?
