[Cryptography] WEF identity document

[John Levine]

It appears that Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill at hallambaker.com> said:
>Attesting to the authenticity of passports / eliminating passports
>altogether is one of the few areas where structured cryptography is being
>appropriately proposed as a solution. Though there is absolutely no call to
>introduce 'Blockchain'.

We've had biometric passports for 20 years, which have an RFID chip
containing a copy of the information on the photo page of the passport
(including the photo) with a digital signature by the issuer.

Wading through the verbiage in that white paper, it apears that the
idea is to put the same info into a form the user can manage,
presumbly mangaing who can see the info stored in an app. They make it
clear it's self-managed, not self-issued, the issuer is still your
government.

The permissioned blockchain appears only to be used to store a CRL of
cancelled passports. I suppose that's not a totally stupid thing to
put on a blockchain although of course as always the real value of the
blockchain is pixie dust to get funding for an otherwise worthy but
boring database project.

R's,
John