Correct, a simple private key pair is not sufficient.

I realize that the second example is a joke, but willingness is a necessity, not a preference. Only people who volunteer and want to be verified will be verified, but there will be some people who want to be verified more than once. Also, your solution is by no means cheap.

One idea is to do periodic DNA tests which can be used as the private part of a cryptographic pair. The DNA labs would have to be independent and be audited by independent auditors who also audit one another. This pretty well solves the problem, but much too expensively and too difficultly. The challenge is now for someone to come up with a better solution according to the metrics of high practicality, low difficulty and low cost.

Thanks Red. That probably is the best solution currently available. Improvements to the certificate authorities would incrementally improve the whole verification system. What we need are organizations which rate the certifications based on how hard it is to create fake certificates.

Also, it would be important that they not only verify that the certificate is linked to a real identity, but that the solution would prevent multiple valid certificates created. For example, it wouldn't wok if I could create one certificate with an approved CA using my passport and social security number and then create another certificate with another approved CA using my driver license and utility bill.

Privacy would be a concern, but I think that's secondary to the other measurements.

And what about those who refuse to participate in the SS fraud? We can't use banks or credit cards, are you going to freeze us out of Bitcoin as well?

You know that the SSN is the index into Baal's Big Database. So much for decentralization!


 

That's a fabulous idea! I think that the current capability of artificial intelligence could probably be adapted learn to verify the authenticity and originality of two high resolution scans of both hands, which could be combined with a password to create a unique key. People could then scan their hands and enter their password whenever they wanted to be verified, but perhaps be required to scan their hands at least yearly or every other year to confirm that they're still alive. They could perhaps be allowed to reset their password once per year or every other year in case someone had previously been forcing them to be verified and didn't let them know the password. The main potential weakness is that although you'd have good hackers trying to strengthen the verification, you'd also have bad hackers trying to crack the verification. It would work so long as the general population and the good hackers had confidence that the bad hackers wouldn't be able to crack the system to allow unlimited verification. Most any solution would be susceptible to vulnerable people being taken advantage of, but that's really the problem of the local government and law enforcement. The system could have a voting system built into it so that people could set their vote for which hardware and software would be allowed. They could change their vote at any time so that whenever it comes to light that some hardware or software is better or worse than other hardware and software, good versions could be added and bad versions could be excluded.

This would incentivize hand and finger amputation?