[nonchalantsui]

That's exactly how a digital ID system would work, and yet people argue against those all the time as well.

Additionally, the corner shop does not have far lower data privacy risks - actually it's quite worse. They have you on camera and have a witness who can corroborate you are that person on camera, alongside a paper trail for your order. There is no privacy there, only the illusion of such.

[jkaplowitz]

By data privacy risks I meant the risk of a breach, compromise, or other leak of the database of verified IDs. No information about the IDs are generally collected in a corner shop, at least when there's no suspicion of fraud; they're just viewed temporarily and returned. Not only do online service providers retain a lot of information about their required verifications, they do so for hugely more people than a typical corner shop.

Also, corner shop cameras don't generally retain data for nearly as long as typical online age verification laws would require. Depending on the country and the technical configuration, physical surveillance cameras retain data for anywhere from 48 hours to 1 year. Are you really saying that most online age verification laws worldwide require or allow comparably short retention periods? (This might actually be the case for the UK law, if I'm correctly reading Ofcom's corresponding guidance, but I doubt that's true for most of the similar US state laws.)

[YetAnotherNick]

A lot of these shops have cameras which could similarly be compromised. In fact the camera is likely to be more vulnerable and probably already had been hacked by DDoS orgs.

I hate sites asking for photo verification, but I think it is more about convenience/reliability for me. My bigger fear is that if AI locks me out with no one to go for support.

[eszed]

Where I live they scan the barcode on the back of the ID into their POS. I don't know what data that exposes, or exactly what's retained, but I suspect it's enough to thoroughly compromise the privacy of that transaction - with no pesky, gumshoe witness-statement and camera-footage steps necessary.

[ndriscoll]

At least the US laws I've looked at have all specifically mandated that data shall not be retained, some with rather steep penalties for retention (IIRC ~$10k/affected user).

[tempodox]

When the corner shop checks your ID, they won't take a photo of it. Digital IDs can easily be stored without the user's knowledge. That's a privacy nightmare.

[KaiserPro]

Its a different risk.

The cornershop does not have access to your friend graph. Also, if you pay by card, digital ID only provides corroboration, your payment acts as a much more traceable indicator.

The risk of "digital ID" is that it'll leak grosly disprocotionate amounts of data on the holder.

For Age verification, you only need a binary old enough flag, from a system that verifies the holder's ID.

The problem is, people like google and other adtech want to be the people that provide those checks, so they can tie your every action to a profile with a 1:1 link. Then combine it to card transactions to get an ad impression to purchase signal much clearer.

The risk here is much less from government but private companies.