alt Hacker NewsBelgium has had exactly this for decades. But now they want to get on the hype train for smartphone based ID, because card reader support is still shit in browsers in 2026.
Adding to this: anyone older than 12 years old is required by law to have their government issued ID on them at all times when in public. If your ID is suddenly your smartphone, you're essentially required to have that on you 24/7. Dystopian spyware.
Replies
Avamander • today at 11:58 AM
> because card reader support is still shit in browsers in 2026.
Tragedy of the commons, nobody seems to have bothered to work on it. It's not like Chromium or Firefox wouldn't accept contributions.
because card reader support is still shit in browsers in 2026
Around a decade ago I was working at a company that used smartcard login for authenticating to internal sites. I've heard of many others doing the same. USB card reader worked fine in both IE and Firefox at the time, so I take your statement to mean that we've somehow regressed since then (not surprising) or this was an isolated instance of success (less likely, considering the US government also uses this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card).