Comment by tavavex
8 days ago
As the article says, there are but it's still rare. But the capability exists, it's in the spec. And you know how this goes - now that this is possible, they just need to onboard enough users and then start progressively shoving it down the throats of the rest. What are you gonna do, not use major internet services?
They'd currently also have to give up on Apple users. Apple has made a strong case that they will not support attestation on consumer devices because they see it as a consumer privacy violation. (They support it on enterprise-managed devices only.)
Why though? What's the objective, and why are passkeys the easiest way to achieve that objective?
Complete user control.
Look at "the war on general-purpose computing" for a good perspective.
I don't understand what "Complete user control" means, or how it relates to passkeys?
The objective is for American big tech to be the sole gatekeeper for your ability to log in to things. They would love for it to be required for everyone on Earth to own an Apple, Google, or Microsoft device to use the Internet.
The article explains this quite well.
I disagree. TFA is extremely muddled in it's thinking, and the appeal to conspiracy is rather distracting from any good points that might exist.
Hence my question about "why though?". The only answer I can see is "user control", but I have no idea what that is. It sounds like a means, but to what end?
2 replies →
This is ignorant fearmongering. Attestation has existed for decades, for enterprise use cases. Now decades later, people discovering attestation for the first time are panicking. If you had panicked a decade ago, that reaction might have had more merit.
Today attestation is the most sophisticated it has ever been, and its rollout to the general public, outside of strictly controlled environments, is more viable than ever. We are already going down the road where we are constantly having choices taken away. If you are blinded to this by the fact that "you could do this in your organization 15 years ago so it's no big deal", then that's your opinion, it's no less ignorant.