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griffin tucker

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cure identity theft

with the advent of informational sharing increasing at an exponential rate both legally _and_ illegally, i see the only way to stop identity theft and similar related crimes by not simply hiding information, but rather the opposite, make information even easier to access.

the idea here, is to make public information so publicly available to anyone on earth that people's whereabouts on earth can be known to be unique.

if a location of a particular person is unique at all times, identifying oneself would not only be near-impossible to replicate falsely, but also fast, easy, and efficient.

what other benefits/problems are there related to complete public awareness?

Topics: globalisation sociology
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    Timothy Campbell

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    Sep 10 2011: So somebody (presumably a computer) would know when you go to the Adult Toys store, or visit the liquor store before work, or drop in at some guy's house who is known to smoke funny cigarettes. Oh, and then you hang out with another guy who is known to have some odd political theories.

    I can imagine this information being abused somehow.
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      griffin tucker 10+

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      Sep 10 2011: it happens already, and the information access _does_ get abused. it is getting worse, statistics show that identity fraud related crime is increasing in the billion dollar range per year in australia alone.

      i'm not saying it's the best solution, but i can't see any other solution for a growing epidemic.

      perhaps the computer could be strictly used for identification purposes, with no human seeing the information other than consensual agreement with another human via the computer for transactional purposes, etc.
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        Harald Jezek 50+

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        Associate
        Sep 10 2011: check out quantum cryptography for making online transactions more secure. And it does not invade your privacy.
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          griffin tucker 10+

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          Sep 11 2011: identity thieves need not worry about how strong the cryptography used to secure a particular transaction is, especially when thieves already have obtained the information about the person via other means and can replicate anything the person would do in real life, virtually.
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        Harald Jezek 50+

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        Sep 11 2011: So where do you imagine identity thieves get your data from if not from the internet ? Sure, somebody might pick your wallet were you carry around all your personal data or perhaps steal computers or paper files where data are stored, but I suppose that's rather the minority of identity theft cases.
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          griffin tucker 10+

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          Sep 11 2011: if not from the internet, then from the information industry "bad eggs." selling credit card/social security numbers in bulk is big business. it's illegal business, but it's still big.

          also, with the advent of quantum encryption, the level of encryption is only as strong as the hardware it was built with. once every few weeks i hear of a story where a data-warehouse has been broken into virtually.

          a vault is only as strong as it's weakest link.

          considering that there is a huge number of illegal botnets around that are used to break into data warehouses these days, then it's like having the best security for one egg, while the other 11 can be taken out of the egg-carton, scrutinised, and replaced, all-the-while scrutinising the other 11 eggs reveals everything that needs to be known about the one original egg with supposedly the best security.
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