Ensure protection in totalitarian state

The argument

An electronic identity is the credential through which a person speaks, transacts and is recognised online, so whoever validates it holds a record of who did what. By allowing an external entity (even outside the state itself) to validate user identity, individuals can ensure the state will not impede upon their freedoms of speech, because the party checking the credential is not the party with an interest in what is said under it. If states have the power to control and monitor electronic identities, states' power over individual rights increases, which would threaten civil rights — and that expansion of power is itself the threat, before any particular abuse of it. The danger is clearest at the extreme. In totalitarian governments, state control over electronic identities would be disastrous. Citizens would live in constant fear of repercussions and consequences if they were being monitored by their state around the clock, and that fear would do the work of censorship without any law being needed, since a person who assumes they are watched adjusts what they say before anyone has to stop them. The alternative costs nothing in capability. External parties can provide the same amount of security and accuracy that the state can to manage electronic identities, without the risk of impeding on individual freedoms of speech and privacy. Since the function can be performed either way, the only question left is who should hold the surveillance capacity that comes attached to it. If the state was allowed to regulate and monitor electronic identities, they would have the power to spy on citizens without their knowledge. This is too much power for a state to hold, because the state has its own political and economic motives that don't always benefit their citizens — and so electronic identities should not be managed by the state.

Premises

Counter-arguments

An entity that is not specifically controlled by a state does not have legal grounds to validate identities. States have the resources available to make identification more safe and secure. Private companies can sell identification information to the highest bidder. Private entities are about profit and can not be relied on to hold such valuable information. In totalitarian states, state entities can hold private information with regulations and laws enforced by external entities to provide more citizen safety. Full privatization could bring about more corruption and could affect totalitarian regimes and laws. For example, private corporations could begin to buy off those in power to force laws and changes that would benefit their company assets instead of the good of society and the state. Privatization of such valuable information could negatively impact human rights.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise assumes the state is the only threat. Governments already hold the underlying records — birth, tax, travel — so an external provider does not remove state access, and a private provider operating on the territory of an authoritarian government can simply be compelled to hand over what it holds. [Rejecting P2] The equivalence is asserted. Private providers answer to shareholders, face commercial incentives to monetise identity data, and lack the legal authority to attest to civil status on which identity documents ultimately depend. [Rejecting P3] What matters is accountability rather than motive. A state system can be constrained by courts, data-protection law and elections; a company's misuse is remedied, if at all, through the same state machinery the premise distrusts.