Re: Utah State-Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) legislation

On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 12:49 PM NIKOLAOS FOTIOY <fotiou@aueb.gr> wrote:
> Business with online presence implicitly trust browsers

That's not something they can do... :) they can't even be sure of
which browser they're interacting with... they can't even tell if the
system they're interacting with is real at all (a virtual machine
within a virtual machine)... and that's the point. This whole "We're
going to bless wallets so we can trust them" is a sham that falls over
the second you have a dishonest client, jailbreak, or proxy a
device... it's security theatre and it's one of the greatest threats
to real market competition.

> Having say that, it is in the best interest of governments to protect the identities they issue and make sure that they are accessed only by approved verifiers.

No, that's government overreach into the private lives of individuals.
I should be able to show my government ID to anyone I choose to show
it to. It also works against the government because your credentials
become less valuable as less people can rely on them. How do you get
onto the verifier list? These are policy decisions that often get
gamed by large organizations.

> I don’t want an internet where any web site has the ability to request your id (and deny access if you don’t provide it).

You already have that Web. Any website can ask you for any piece of
information and you have the choice to not give it to them, complain
about them online, and rate them one star for asking for more than
they should.

I realize that different people trust their governments to different
degrees, but a government restricting who can ask for information in a
private interaction does not provide the safety guarantees that you
think it does. :)

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Friday, 13 February 2026 21:44:05 UTC