Thread

1. KingMachiavelli · 1789617597 · focus · HN ↗

   All of this is nearly pointless unless the photo itself is in the barcode and also signed. You only need a leak of a few hundred real IDs to cover all of the identifiable characteristics (hair, eye, skin color, approx height and weight). Leak a few hundred thousand a year and now you can’t even flag leaked IDs without some false positives.

   A fake photo plus a valid barcode will pass any current check right? Unless you still do a secondary proprietary photo lookup that I don’t think exists.

   1. crote · 1789625499 · focus · HN ↗

      And it's a classic case of Not Invented Here as well: this problem was solved decades ago and the solution is widely-deployed in passports and most European identity documents - just use NFC!

      Cryptographic NFC chips are basically free these days, and any modern smartphone can read them. The photo issue is solved by having the chip contain a copy of the photo, as a few extra kilobytes of data isn't an issue when you aren't using barcodes. The copy issue is solved by having the chip sign a verifier-provided nonce together with the data, and having the government sign the chip's public key instead.

      1. lxgr · 1789627379 · focus · HN ↗

         Biometric passports, including US ones, have supported the same protocol for decades at this point.

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