Comment by uniq7
2 days ago
If companies are required to verify age, then it's in their best interest to store all tokens, just in case they are ever accused of not verifying it.
The Swiss E-ID system stores people identifiers and token status lists in their so-called "Base Registry". From https://swiyu-admin-ch.github.io/technology-stack/#credentia...
> Decentralized Identifiers (DID) developed by the W3C represent an identifier standard that provides a subject-controlled method for identifying individuals, organizations, or objects online. In the swiyu Trust Infrastructure, DIDs are utilized as a standard identifier for issuers and verifiers. They are centrally hosted on the swiyu Base Registry.
> In this protocol, the trusted authority issues certifications (“trust statements”) concerning the identity (i.e., who is the real-world identity controlling a DID) and legitimacy (i.e., who is allowed to issue or verify credentials of a specific VC schema) about an entity as SD-JWT VC and publishes these trust statements in the trust registry.
> Token Status Lists are signed, maintained and published by the credential issuers but hosted on the Base Registry.
That's not how that works - they can prove they check by showing logs, rather than VPs. There's even legal limits on what identifiers they can store and for how long. But even ignoring that, they'd be storing only very limited disclosures.
The base registry stores identifiers of issuers and verifiers, not credential holders.
Even the status register does not contain the tokens themselves:
> Within these status lists, each index (i.e., status entry) documents the validity of one VC. The corresponding index is captured in the VC’s metadata to allow for a decentralized status information retrieval that does not require verifiers or the VC holder to contact the issuer.
Of course, each issuer needs to maintain a list of the credentials they have issued in order to be able to ever revoke them. That's unavoidable.
> But even ignoring that, they'd be storing only very limited disclosures.
Just to be clear, here I am not concerned about the verifiers, I am concerned about the authority (Government).
> The base registry stores identifiers of issuers and verifiers, not credential holders.
If the verifiers provide the verification tokens to the Government, can't the Government identify the original issuer even if they don't store them? Don't these tokens contain the DID of the issuer? Please correct me if I'm wrong, maybe I didn't get this part right.
> That's not how that works - they can prove they check by showing logs, rather than VPs
Logs can be manipulated, VPs can't. If I had a company and I was forced to verify users, I'd try to store those VPs for as long as possible, for my own protection.
> There's even legal limits on what identifiers they can store and for how long
I was not aware of this. Is that documented anywhere?
At least the US bills I've read make it illegal to store any information provided as part of age verification. Are the EU versions not the same?