375 karma · joined May 16, 2012
> "If I throw away a cable, and then I need that same cable, I'll kill myself. I will go to the store and buy it, and then hang myself in the parking lot." "I know, it's not a matter of life and death, it's much worse than that."
Why the hell should companies get to dictate on their own to the government how their product is used?
My guess is that's probably one of the reasons Google tried to push for Play Store only apps, provide a measurable/verifiable software chain for stuff like this.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clacks-overhead-gnu...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/x-clacks-over...
If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the government (the guys that are watching most things you do already), and you need your digital ID to do most commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel, etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to do any of those commercial interactions (or even other things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel papers" for driving out of state).
And it doesn't even have to be in response to criminal actions. You too too many trips this year? Well, you've used up your CO2 budget as a citizen, have fun not buying CO2-intensive food (meat). Said something racist online? Well we certainly can't let a person like you buy a car now, can we?
And yes, things like credit cards and credit scores are centrally managed to a degree, and Visa/Mastercard can deny transactions for somewhat-arbitrary reasons (they're actually fairly legally limited in how they can do this, it's not totally arbitrary). But these things are not tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year), whereas states can (or can invent the legal authority to) tie a digital ID into everything.