Swiss Voters Back E-Id Legislation

Land doesn’t vote though. People do.

> I still believe it's the way forward

Why? I mean this sincerely, are you not concerned about the dystopian social credit scoring potential of these systems

The codebase they are going to use already exists and is open source. Most of the specs can be found somewhere on their github. It's a bit more voodoo than just plain credentials to satisfy privacy requirements.

https://github.com/swiyu-admin-ch

And rightly so. The Swiss have direct democracy. We have a PM who is so jealous of Tony's 20 mil a year in post-Iraq 'speaking fees' that he'll do anything to figure out his own revolving door - in this case throwing an entire nation's worth of data under the Peter Thiel bus in the hope of some kickbacks.

What the Swiss just voted on and what the UK government are mandating are absolutely not 'the same'. Use of the swiss ID is voluntary.

There seem to be massive differences between the two. Per the article, the Swiss system:

> People can use it to identify themselves to authorities and businesses... Use of the e-ID is voluntary

Whereas in the UK, Starmer proudly proclaimed that the "right to work" in the UK would require this ditigal ID, which is a rather creative use of the word "right".

The UK proposal is not the same because it would be de facto mandatory. In addition, Switzerland already has ID cards. The UK does not and the people have always resisted them.

I live in a country (Austria) with at this point more than 20 years of a sort of digital ID. I’m really not quite sure how something as simple as authenticating as a citizen to access governmental services has become so controversial.

This being HN, I expect most people on here are American and view social topics from an American perspective. Swiss have a level of trust in their governments that Americans could never even dream of. The pros and cons of this debate are not necessarily about whether the current government or a near future one will abuse it. But I feel that Americans on here (as well as folks living in countries with low government trust) are projecting their low trust views onto other countries and thus concluding that the current swiss government or a near future one cannot be trusted with this power.

Voter here. Although I'm not totally convinced of the absolute necessity of an e-ID, and that there are a few points that I find inherently bad (mainly the necessity of using a smartphone, and possibly excluding rooted ones or those with customized installations like LineageOS), I still approved this. The reason is simple: the tendency to be able to identify people on online services can only increase and will so. It can be proper identity verification (let's say to activate a SIM card or to request some service like to open a bank account), age verificaiton (prove that you are >18), or perhaps other things too. The system they propose seem to be able to provide the minimum amount of data possible (e.g. you can verify your age without providing your birth date). My guess is that if we don't have a public e-ID system, we'll have one or more private ones, probably managed by one or more of the usual big corporations. Personally I trust the Swiss government more than them. And finally if it gets totally wrong, 100k people are enough to go to the vote again and abolish it through a popular initiative.

There wasn't really a yes campaign which, imo, is why it was this close. The government put it out there, made their handful of media appearances and that was mostly it. The vibes were that it was going to pass easily so everyone almost sleepwalked themselves into a disaster.

The main reason I voted against was because it is tied to smartphones with only the vaguest promise that it won't stay so. Ironically one of the arguments in favor was independence from megacorporations (or foreign countries for that matter). But you couldn't find this point in the main opposition website. The opposition was very weak with weak arguments and the parliament was massively in favor.

> People who have used it are generally supportive, if they think about it at all.

What are you basing this assertion on? Have you considered China? Do you know if you can get accurate representations of citizen sentiment on this issue?

> HN being HN, is almost entirely in the latter camp regardless of where they live.

Ostensibly we're hackers. We understand how good technologies can be put to inhumane uses. We see it quite often. Many of us hack on software in an effort to eliminate these often unintended consequences.

> Still, it would be interesting to know what argument the Yes campaign used that resonated with > 50% of voters.

You should know this isn't the first time the vote was held. In previous referendums the proposal was defeated and this time it only narrowly passed. You might be better served in doing a comparison between the two.

Who maintains the register? And what happens if they withdraw credentials, or what are the grounds to do so?

Have not looked into it yet but sounds a lot like a PKI based certificate style scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44723418

The verifier is the entity you hand your information to for verification, ie the CA. The extent of your interaction and linkage with them is mainly at point of verification and issuance.

It is however possible to trace a certificate to it's issuer, which on the surface sounds like a bad thing, but is in fact good if the goal is to provide privacy while ensuring accountability.

The privacy story of this looks better than the Norwegian BankID approach.

I would like if Norway moves in this direction, and I think that through the ongoing alignment with the EU wide program on digital id, that might happen.