Comment by eigenspace
1 day ago
Well, a national ID number isnt usually publicly available info, even if it can be obtained by the US government through illicit means.
But yeah, it does sound that way, but certainly not clear cut to me what the situation is. I.e. does the agreement involve clauses about what to do if this is abused? Do we have a way to detect if theyre using this on non-travellers? Etc.
> a national ID number isnt usually publicly available info
A couple of counterexamples:
Italy's "fiscal code" is generated with a simple algorithm which can be executed manually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code
Sweden's "personal identity number" is public information and can be looked up by anyone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed...
Belgian National Number is your birth date, then an increment from 1 to 999 for every baby born that day, then a base-97 checksum.
Are there never more than 1k babies born in a day?
1 reply →
Not sure if still the case: odd numbers for males and even numbers for females.
This also means a person’s Belgian RRN can change.
2 replies →
This is the leaked draft: https://statewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/wk_5183_20...
It's not clear how it is supposed to work in detail. But it sounds like it could be implemented in a way that makes illegitimate queries possible. It doesn't sound like they want to really ensure that you can catch those.
In multiple European countries, national ID numbers are public information that can be searched by name and address (i.e. Sweden)
I played with Estonia’s e-residency and they use asymmetric cryptography for everything so the ID is public but does nothing without the corresponding private key.