alt Hacker News> I will also never have an electronic ID. We (Switzerland) were dumb enough to vote yes for it but we are giving away our freedoms eventually.
What's the link with the rest though? Your government already knows you, whether your id has your information printed with ink or stored on a chip.
Belgium has had electronic id for decades now and I fail to see how it has taken away any freedom, but it has enabled people to get their official documents online without having to make appointments in person in most cases.
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kuon • last Saturday at 12:17 PM
Because it will be used by other services. Like google requiring one for you to use their services. That's the problem.
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I think the fear many people have is that digital ID will be required for non-government services as well. I can easily see that happen in the USA and Switzerland is the kind of weird that may also let that sort of thing happen.
With things like age verification becoming mandatory just about everywhere and actual privacy-conscious digital age verification being very difficult, there's definitely a risk towards abuse and badly designed authorization mechanisms (although the EU's open source backend and frontends should make it easy for other countries if they do actually care about privacy).