<story><title>BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration</title><url>https://element.io/blog/bundesmessenger-is-a-milestone-in-germanys-ground-breaking-vision/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>foepys</author><text>Germany was quite advanced when it came to technology but then the drive to make more of it somehow stopped.&lt;p&gt;It has always been incredibly sad to me that the German ID card (Personalausweis) has an RFID chip inside with trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more and just never had been used. Like at all except for getting cigarettes at vending machines.&lt;p&gt;12 years after the first RFID Personalausweis had been issued it is only possible to register your car in &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; cities. Maybe there are other minor uses but it&amp;#x27;s negligible.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a very cool technology with a certificate authority and cryptographically secured claims for various things (proving you are over 18 without revealing your DOB, only giving out the name and address, authenticating as a German citizen, pseudonymity with separate identities for each service you use etc.). All functionality is also available for use over the internet.&lt;p&gt;The German Wikipedia has a good overview: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Personalausweis_(Deutschland)#Der_elektronische_Personalausweis_(nPA)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Personalausweis_(Deutschland...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>woah</author><text>Makes a lot of sense with German culture IMO. There&amp;#x27;s a culture of doing your job very well, but not much of a culture of thinking outside of the box or shaking things up.&lt;p&gt;Some Herr Doktor probably followed all the best practices to implement &amp;quot;trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more&amp;quot; in the ID, doing their job really well. But actually changing the processes to use those features is not anyone&amp;#x27;s job, and might actually eliminate a lot of jobs, so it never happened.</text></comment>
<story><title>BundesMessenger, a secure messenger for Germany’s public administration</title><url>https://element.io/blog/bundesmessenger-is-a-milestone-in-germanys-ground-breaking-vision/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>foepys</author><text>Germany was quite advanced when it came to technology but then the drive to make more of it somehow stopped.&lt;p&gt;It has always been incredibly sad to me that the German ID card (Personalausweis) has an RFID chip inside with trust zones, certificates, authorization features, and much more and just never had been used. Like at all except for getting cigarettes at vending machines.&lt;p&gt;12 years after the first RFID Personalausweis had been issued it is only possible to register your car in &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; cities. Maybe there are other minor uses but it&amp;#x27;s negligible.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a very cool technology with a certificate authority and cryptographically secured claims for various things (proving you are over 18 without revealing your DOB, only giving out the name and address, authenticating as a German citizen, pseudonymity with separate identities for each service you use etc.). All functionality is also available for use over the internet.&lt;p&gt;The German Wikipedia has a good overview: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Personalausweis_(Deutschland)#Der_elektronische_Personalausweis_(nPA)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Personalausweis_(Deutschland...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>moooo99</author><text>Its hilarious. I recently moved and wanted to update the registration info for my car. My city boasts about having an &amp;quot;online self service for anything you&amp;#x27;d usually need&amp;quot; (sad enough that this alone is a rare achievement), so naive me decided to give it a try. I successfully registered and wanted to update the info on my car, but got stopped by a disclaimer saying &amp;quot;if you want to do this online with your eID, you need to attach a picture of your ID to the form&amp;quot;?!. I burst out laughing, wondering what the point of this eID even is. And I still haven&amp;#x27;t updated my info</text></comment>