Alsadius comments on Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Gondolinian 19 January 2015 12:04AM

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Comment author: Alsadius 20 January 2015 04:23:22AM 1 point [-]

What would you estimate the probability of ever having the former without the latter being? Of having that happy state last for more than a few years?

Comment author: [deleted] 20 January 2015 02:46:15PM 3 points [-]

Well the former pretty much describes the current state of affairs. Anyone with a government ID card or national healthcare ID probably has a chip embedded with an escrowed signing key. There's really nothing unique about Estonia here -- they're using the same system everyone else is using. Even if your country, like the USA, doesn't have a national ID of some kind or doesn't have a chip embedded, your passport does. The international standard governing "smart passports" being issued by just about every country in existence for the past 5-10 years includes embedded digital signature capability.

Now I don't really know how to estimate the probability of sliding into the latter case. I don't see them as intrinsically connected however.

Comment author: Lumifer 20 January 2015 06:22:23PM 2 points [-]

Generating private/public key pairs is trivially easy.