The EU wallet arrives before its privacy does
Europe's identity wallet is real, useful, optional—and racing toward a privacy problem that selective disclosure does not solve.
privacy
6 stories — 4 reports, 2 essaysAll tags overlap by design
Worldcoin and the price of one human
Proof of personhood answers a real AI-era problem. The Orb makes the bargain unusually visible: uniqueness in exchange for an irreversible measurement.
When does an age check become an identity check?
The EU's age-verification blueprint promises a simple yes-or-no proof. Its success depends on preventing that proof from becoming a reusable tracking handle.
Selective disclosure is not invisibility
Showing fewer fields is good privacy. It does not necessarily stop a verifier from recognising you across presentations.
The state can protect your privacy and still see everything
China's national internet identity service reduces the need to hand civil-ID data to platforms by concentrating authentication in a public system.
Identity is the wrong abstraction
A library needs to know that you may borrow a book. It usually does not need a universal account of who you are.