Comment by Workaccount2
9 months ago
The US has three dumb points pushing back on this.
The first is religious nuts who think it would be a "mark of the beast"
The second is anti-government types who are, well, anti-government anything.
The third is many business owners, because it would become much harder/risky to hire illegal immigrants to work.
The "mark of the beast" types are pretty much fine with cards that have chips in them, but they really hate it when you threaten to implant those chips into people and they want cash to remain an option - same as the anti-government types. I don't share their apocalyptic or anti-government concerns, but I'm actually kind of grateful for their passionate opposition to both of those things anyway. I don't really want an implant and the option of using cash is a very good thing.
The anti-government types do hate the idea of a national ID, but they're already forced to carry a drivers license/state ID, and SS card so they've pretty much lost the battle already.
I'm afraid that it's the business owners who are our biggest hurdle.
It doesn't need to be a national ID, it could just operate on a state-level like drivers licenses currently do.
Eh, depending on the flavor, the mark of the beast types don’t even really like barcodes. Allegedly Hobby Lobby does not use a barcode inventory system for this reason.
Hobby Lobby's CEO provided a handy list of reasons why they do not use bar codes, none of which have anything to do with them being marks of beasts
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hobby-lobby-mark-of-the-be...
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Correct. But not insurmountable.
Make the ID card optional, so that it simplifies things if you have it, but still allows operation without it. If 80% of law-abiding population has the card, only the stubborn deniers will remain targets of easy identity theft and fraud based on it. Partly it will stop being worth the effort, partly it will serve as a good control group.
Allow but do not require to use the card for employee identification. Whoever insists on hiring undocumented immigrants, could continue. Most industries don't do that, and would reap the benefits of a more secure identification.
Don't make the card universal. A bank card with a chip does not identify you for governmental agencies, but prevents a lot of PoS fraud. It could prevent credit fraud if banks allowed me to require the card to take a loan in my name, or to make a transfer larger than $10, and provided the card identity check service to each other and to credit unions. Phones with NFC can read bank cards, so it's a good way to say "it's me, I confirm" in a secure way.
Evolutionary, opt-in, piecemeal solutions often have higher chances to succeed than abrupt all-at-once changes.
>Most industries don't do that
They absolutely do, but most of the immigrants have a form of ID that gives the companies some measure of deniability. As long as the I-9 goes through, not my problem. If it doesn't, well that's where contractors come in. Official numbers say around 14 million illegal immigrants. Reasonable estimates are closer to 22 and some non-hyperbolic estimates go as high as 40 million.
>Make the ID card optional, so that it simplifies things if you have it, but still allows operation without it. If 80% of law-abiding population has the card, only the stubborn deniers will remain targets of easy identity theft and fraud based on it. Partly it will stop being worth the effort, partly it will serve as a good control group.
Kind of like RealID[0]? It exists right now in the US.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act
Yes, this is a step in a right direction.
If it's optional, then one would need to be able to have a central database of people who have IDs and want providers to require them.
Otherwise there's no protection against impersonation if IDs aren't mandatory.
Indeed. But a federated database is fine, too; this is how Visa and MasterCard work.
Imagine having a bunch of ID cards in you wallet, like you already have (driver's license, library card, office access card, store loyalty card) that all have interoperable smartcard interface, and a QR code of their built-in public key.
They would be much like contactless bank cards you also keep in your wallet.
Banks and phone network operators are uniquely positioned to sell a validation service for such cards, being highly connected and already having data about their existing customers, which would be an easy initial audience pool.
Governments murdered hundreds of millions of their own people during the 20th century, and the 21st is shaping up to tell the 20th to hold its beer.
Any proposal for modern ID needs to have Constitutional protections, checks, and balances or it will eventually devolve into a digital police state.
A lack of national ID cards would not have hindered the Nazis in carrying out mass murder one bit.
More apropros to the current situation, Henryk Jagoda and the bolsheviks killed/starved between 29 million to 113 million people, depending on estimates. They certainly ID's people, based on ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, and class status.
My point is to not make it easier for them.
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How?
Everyone's like "a government went on and extermination campaign" and for some reason what would've stopped them is the difficulty in identifying who to exterminate?
As though genocides much care about accuracy.
The big secret of Nazi Germany that isn't a secret at all I is that they put a lot more then just Jews in those camps.
There are key differences between today and the 20th century that you are ignoring. Widely enforced digital ID not only makes it easier for them to identify who to genocide, it forces total compliance with the state, because if you do not fully comply, you risk death, imprisonment, or having your freedom and bank account revoked.
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There is another group: those of us who think the trend of requiring ID to transact is a dangerous one.
One doesn’t need to be anti-government to fear governmental intrusion on one’s rights without due process. Our current government does that now.
> those of us who think the trend of requiring ID to transact is a dangerous one.
agree and second -- history shows that this sort of thing goes badly due to "humans"
> The third is many business owners, because it would become much harder/risky to hire illegal immigrants to work.
Big one, but even though employing illegal immigrants is a crime, it's almost never prosecuted.
It's trivial as an immigrant to get a (stolen) SSN. Business owners are not responsible for checking if the SSN is stolen or not.
You're forgetting the entire political left, who claim only whites are intelligent enough to get IDs.