[Cryptography] Crypto basic income

[Natanael]

Den 25 sep. 2017 00:15 skrev "Guilherme Campos" <gpirescampos at gmail.com>:

I've written a "food for thought" kind of article around the usage of
cryptocurrencies for universal basic income (https://medium.com/@
guilhermepcampos/universal-crypto-basic-income-460fc46207f6). And, although
this is not 100% on topic, I would definitely like some opinions around
usage of biometrics for key generation. More precisely on:

   - Do you think it will be possible, at some point, to have some sort of
   biometric public key infrastructure, where public and private keys are
   directly pegged to a persons biometric details?

No, not unless you accept the use of schemes like Identity Based Encryption
which invariably requires central servers (although there exists a few
versions of these schemes where the server doesn't need to be trusted all
that much).

Just the biometric data alone in isolation is never good enough for
cryptographic secrets.


   - Could biometrics completely replace the need for passwords?

No, not unless they're just used to identify cryptographic public keys
where you hold the private key. Universal usernames, basically. I don't
care if you surgically place your hardware authentication token in your
skull or whatever to not need to remember to carry it with you, you just
need some kind of digital secret.


   - If compromise of biometric details occurs, how would one go around to
   solve this, since it's not possible to, for example, create a new
   fingerprint for a person?

You don't. If they're your last line of defense, you've already lost if
they're compromised. So don't make them your last line of defense.
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