Comment by solardev
3 years ago
We already use social security numbers for everything (insurance, credit, etc.). It's pretty much a national ID, just a shitty one.
3 years ago
We already use social security numbers for everything (insurance, credit, etc.). It's pretty much a national ID, just a shitty one.
The way they got SSNs through is by promising that it would be illegal to use them for identification. The only remnant of that is that it (still?) remains illegal to refuse services to people who refuse to give their social security numbers, although if you do it you'll break customer service.
> it (still?) remains illegal to refuse services to people who refuse to give their social security numbers
I'd love to read this, for anyone more familiar with the legislation/where to find it.
"Can I see your social security card, please? The one that says 'Not to be used for identification' on it?" lol
USG has issued national ID documents for more than 200 years. They're called passports.
Between passports, SSNs, state IDs, your birthday, homeowner records, and metadata like addresses/phone numbers/employers, it's already trivially easy for any actor to fingerprint you anyway. Even the private sector does this for cheap. To say nothing of biometrics like facial recognition, which ironically, the government sometimes tries to protect you from (like in Illinois, where it's banned).
It's so weird to me that people are afraid of the government knowing who you are when like every private company asks for the same kind of information all the time, and data brokers gobble that up and resell it all the time (including to government), and nobody bats an eye.
Everyone who is sufficiently against national ID must never have left the United States, then? Correlation or causation, I wonder.
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