Government

Full Title or Meme

Sovereign states have a monopoly of use of force in its jurisdiction although it may contract that use of force to private entities. These states need to know which of their residents are lawful citizens and what rights and privileges are afford to each one. This implies the need to identify each resident with their respective rights and privileges.

Context

• Each government can create departments of a variety of sorts which can be granted some subset of the government's sovereign powers.
• For US State governments, it has been common for each agency to create their own customer/stakeholder lists with identity and sign-in.
• Establish a basic standard for life and labor and provide the necessary basic foods for all. Once that is done set the people free. Get out of the way and let them all make the best of themselves and win whatever prizes they can for their families and for their country. Only in this way can will an active, independent, property-owning democracy be established - (1947-10-26) Winston Churchill, conservative party chair, UK.

There are several ways that Governments get involved in Identity and Access Management.

1. Crating government-issued Identifiers - often as social security Identifiers
2. Crating government-issued Credentials, licenses are other grants of privilege, Permission or identification.

Problems

Sovereign states are not necessarily more likely to protect private User Information than commercial entities and only have Liability for disclosure when enabled by legislation. This fact is often referred to as Sovereign Immunity.

There are a huge number of reasons for governments to collect data on residents. See the details about one state in the wiki page on State Mandated Identification.

For purpose of regulation of people's actions and collecting taxes with greater efficiency, Government Digital Experiences are proliferating, but the legal and User Experience of their offerings are often far below that possible and enabled by commercial digital experiences.

Governments pass laws and regulations that can hamper development of use products. The False Choice Between Digital Regulation and Innovation tries to show that is wrong, but only shows that there are many types of laws that can hamper innovations.

The Proper Role of Government

In "The Road to Serfdom" Frederich Hayek explained that government intervention in markets would lead to a loss of freedom, he recognized a limited role for government to perform tasks for which he believed free markets were not capable:

The successful use of competition as the principle of social organization precludes certain types of coercive interference with economic life, but it admits of others which sometimes may very considerably assist its work and even requires certain kinds of government action.

While Hayek is opposed to regulations that restrict the freedom to enter a trade, or to buy and sell at any price, or to control quantities, he acknowledges the utility of regulations that restrict legal methods of production, so long as these are applied equally to everyone and not used as an indirect way of controlling prices or quantities, and without forgetting the cost of such restrictions:

To prohibit the use of certain poisonous substances, or to require special precautions in their use, to limit working hours or to require certain sanitary arrangements, is fully compatible with the preservation of competition. The only question here is whether in the particular instance, the advantages gained are greater than the social costs they impose. He notes that there are certain areas, such as the environment, where activities that cause damage to third parties (known to economists as "negative externalities") cannot effectively be regulated solely by the marketplace:

Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined to the owner of the property in question, or to those willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation.

The government also has a role in preventing fraud:

Even the most essential prerequisite of its [the market's] proper functioning, the prevention of fraud and deception (including exploitation of ignorance), provides a great and by no means fully accomplished object of legislative activity.[

The government also has a role in creating a safety net:

There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.[37][38]

He concludes: "In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing." What is most significant about the book is that the criticism is not about what he did say, but rather what he did not say, but clearly did support, like the welfare of citizens.

Trustworthy

Since governments have sovereign immunity they can make assertions that private enterprises would consider too expensive from a liability perspective. This lack of liability risk allows governments to ignore some obvious issues that private enterprises would avoid, like the strong identification of residents.

Edmond Burke had this to say about government actions.

The laws reach but a little way. Constitute Governments how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of powers, which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends upon them. Without them, hour Commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution.

Status

Some Status as of 2021-12-02

Kristina Yasuda to Everyone
UAE seems to have the best digital ID app
Singapore refused to accept paper certs that Japanese gov issued
so if you are a vaccinated Japanese flying to Singapore, and only have a paper one, you need 14 day quarantine
btw doing NFC phone to phone for mDL is really awkward
UAE is the same - I think your national ID card itself is a credit card lol

Torsten Lodderstedt to Everyone
and the government will pay your debts ;-)

Kristina Yasuda to Everyone wish that the mDL ecosystem would be the same log into OIDC to get an mDL
simple

John Bradley - Chile requires National ID on every credit card receipt, which makes identity theft a national crime.

• Cross-border digital ID is coming: MasterCard plans to supply infrastructure 2021-11-29. The governments of Singapore Australia and New Zealand working on inter-op.

Government-Issued Digital Credentials and Privacy

Heather Flanagan was contracted by the Open-ID Foundation to create a document.

References