Comment by ajb
19 hours ago
Renting and work already require ID in the UK. Every landlord and employer is supposed to take a copy of original documents proving the right to rent/work in the UK. Technically you can do that without handing the docs to the government, but there's less potential liability to do so via the Home Office website.
That did not stop the Government from pushing digital id in order to prevent illegal working, did it ?
You miss the point - they are stitching it all together in a way that deanonymize you to your ISP under the guise of save the kids and then convenience
This is a very libertarian and ultimately low-trust forum where most people seem to think the government is out to get you, but I have to say: what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway? I mean, seriously. Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be?
It's not as if there are no downsides. There are, and some of them are so severe that they are impacting the whole of society.
People can impersonate to be 500 or 5000 or 500000 people from another country and all echo some detrimental or even treasonous sentiment, critically influencing and steering voters, which changes politics and election outcomes and thereby the trajectories of whole countries. I cannot understate how serious that is.
If we can make sure that every real person can only have 1 social media account per platform, and if we can check that someone is an adult, and if (and only if) we can do that in a privacy preserving manner... then honestly, I don't see why I would be against that. I'm ok with being held accountable for what I do online. I want to pay that price to prevent the severe outside interference we've seen in elections and in our politics.
You and many others might not be, but it seems like you've lost the argument.
Just off the top of my head, what if I want to use reddit mostly to talk about mundane things like local events in my city or technology and don't really care if that ties back to me, but I also want to ask about embarrassing health problems or just weird shit and I would rather not have that tied back to me? I should have no options without everyone in the world being able to easily find out about it?
If some sites like Facebook want to be real-name only, that's fine. People can use Facebook for that if they choose. But don't ban alternatives for people who want alternatives.
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Unfortunately I think most normies is thinking like this. And buy into the idea that we must all give up what we have so far considered freedom ideals because the bad guys will get us if we don't.
In my opinion this is just blind compliance and misunderstood trust in a system which is changing rapidly.
People that came before us have fought hard for these rights and if I'm not mistaken the us was founded on these rights.
I'm not saying that we should allow criminals to take over and I know crime is rampage but if we give up our liberties, what are we then fighting for.
I think the ideas the leaders are proposing have been shown not to work in history. Like east Germany and Similar...
> Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be?
In real life you are largely anonymous if you go to any place that is not in your social circle. If I go to any physical store under the sun and pay in cash I remain completely anonymous. The only exception is staff checking your ID for alcohol etc. if you look underage, but that datum is only stored in one persons brain for as long as they bother to remember. Many people would take issue if the clerk noted every persons name when getting carded.
> what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway?
Because liberal governments can always become repressive governments. Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future. Infrastructure that has a minor benefit under a "good" government, but would serve as a major tool of repression under a tyrannical regime should not be built out of principle.
As a thought experiment, ignoring issues with technical feasibility, would you approve if every person is only allowed to leave the house, under a stiff prison sentence for violation, if they wear a shock collar that can be activated remotely by a law enforcement official? That way, if police want to arrest you, they don't need to use violence and they don't have to chase you if you tried to run. It would make the police's job a lot easier, would it not?
> If we can make sure that every real person can only have 1 social media account per platform, and if we can check that someone is an adult, and if (and only if) we can do that in a privacy preserving manner... then honestly, I don't see why I would be against that. I'm ok with being held accountable for what I do online
To the extent that political discourse is shaped by astroturfing, realistically it'll just give a monopoly of influence to whoever controls/bribes the company or entity doing the verification. There certainly would be technical/cryptographic solutions where there isn't some central entity with a master key, but I doubt that it'll work like that anywhere, especially if it requires a citizen safeguarding his own keys.
> I want to pay that price to prevent the severe outside interference we've seen in elections and in our politics.
Outside interference in the form of legal bribes (lobbying) and sometimes less legal forms of corruption has orders of magnitude more sway over politics than whatever the public may effect in elections.
> You and many others might not be, but it seems like you've lost the argument.
It's ridiculous to imply that there was any serious public debate on this.
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Do you want to help stop that, or do you just want to feel smarter than other people? If you happened to have seen my comments in other threads, you'd know I'm against all this. But telling people they are idiots isn't going to win them over. This is not just a criticism of your comment, it's widespread in these discussions.
Opposing this requires:
* Linking to specific harms, which the public can emotionally resonate with. For example, scanning billions of photos for suspicions of child abuse will result in false positives that cause innocent people's kids to be taken away.
* Not seeming like an overheated conspiracy theorist. Feeling angry about this is legitimate, but it's not necessary to communicate in the same emotional register that you are feeling, even if it feels inauthentic not to. The public are saturated with people being publicly angry, much of which is purely performance. Deep concern may work better.
* Have plausible reasons for why this is happening. Yes, a few individuals like Thiel want to create a digital Stasi, but this would still be happening without them. Mostly this is driven by companies that want to make money, and officials who have a bias towards centralised processes, and are tunnel-visioned with respect to some issue. And people who are genuinely concerned about kids and haven't been given another convincing solution.
* Get facts straight. (Eg, rent/job IDs aren't a future threat. They are here)
And this is why we are where we are
I'm not a big fan of the "my way is the right way to oppose things, your way of opposing it is wrong" routine.
You can each make a difference in your own way and report back in a year who changed the world more. No need to alienate allies.
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Isn't this already the case in a lot of the Continent? I was just in CH and it seemed impossible to have anonymous Wi-Fi without a Swiss SMS or a airline boarding pass.