Comment by 47282847
3 days ago
Germany has this. The card plus PIN technically proves you are in current possession of both, not that you are the person (no biometrics or the like). You can chose to share/request not only certain data fields but also eg if you are below or above a certain age or height without disclosing the actual number.
> if you are below or above a certain age or height
Is discrimination against dwarves still a thing in Germany?
I want to believe that this would be used at amusement parks to scan "can I safely get on this ride" and at the entrance to stairs to tell you if you'll bump your head or not.
The system as a whole is rarely used. I think it’s a combination of poor APIs and hesitation of the population. For somebody without technical knowledge, there is no obvious difference to the private video ID companies. On the surface, you may believe that all data is transferred anyway and you have to trust providers in all cases, not that some magic makes it so third parties don’t get more than necessary.
I don’t know of any real world example that queries height, I mentioned it because it is part of the data set and privacy-preserving queries are technically possible. Age restrictions are the obvious example, but even there I am not aware of any commercial use, only for government services like tax filing or organ donor registry. Also, nobody really measures your height, you just tell them what to put there when you get the ID. Not so for birth dates, which they take from previous records going back to the birth certificate.