(Compulsory) national ID cards

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Spinning this one off the now-deceased war on voting thread.

Where do you stand on the idea of national IDs (American or otherwise)?

Most conservative religious people I know are staunchly against them, shouting zomg/mark of the beast/end times/etc., and most progressive types I know cite privacy concerns and vague Big Brother fears. But I haven't heard many people make arguments for them (that didn't center completely around illegal immigration) until it cropped up in the other thread.

So do you think the benefits and conveniences of a unified ID system outweigh the concerns, or do you see it as another step down the road of "your papers, please..." ?

They don't do us any good. The only reason to have them is to give authoritarians more power.

I can't think of any function an ID card would serve that a driver's license or passport doesn't already... And wouldn't having another card just cost the government more money in administration?

Fun fact, though: my province (Ontario) just rolled out an ID card for people who do not have a passport or driver's license. It serves as the "valid photo ID" that places often as for.

Edit: instead of creating a whole new ID card, a country could just make passports a mandatory constant. It might save on administration costs.

Maybe I'm being dense here but wouldn't putting a photo on a social security card give you pretty much the same result.

Forte wrote:

I can't think of any function an ID card would serve that a driver's license or passport doesn't already... And wouldn't having another card just cost the government more money in administration?

Definitely not. The concept of a well integrated national ID solves many issues that the United States in particular has that many other countries don't. The main thrust of the problem is that with state sovereignty being so highly prized we often duplicate systems and technology 50 times in 50 different ways which is going to ALWAYS be more inefficient than centralizing when it comes to information and data processing.

I am a proponent of the national id replacing passports, driver's licenses, and all other forms of photo identification. I've posted reasons why in various threads, but I'll re-post some of the stronger points here:

1. Duplication of effort is expensive (as stated above)

2. Too often, because systems don't talk to each other well, it requires extra work for information to flow. For example, if you move from one state to another, you have to register with both post offices, update your driver's license, update the IRS to your new residence, update your state tax authorities, update your vehicle registrations, etc etc etc etc. Each of these processes is completely separate and very time consuming. With a well implemented national repository you could in theory update once and have that data flow to all impacted agencies.

3. Because systems don't talk, it happens quite often that a criminal can travel across state lines and not be recognized since the data doesn't go with them as they move about. Note that 2 of the 9/11 hijackers were on terrorist watch lists and because the systems didn't talk as they moved about they were able to board planes.

4. Americans in general (75%) are supportive of photo id being shown at the polls. However, as pointed out in other threads, there is a known problem with fraud, oftentimes stemming from out of date voter registrations which allow corrupt polling workers to vote for people who are absent. Most modern ID cards are bio-metric capable, so it's quite possible to imagine a system where you swipe your card in the booth and press your fingerprint or use retinal scan for two part identification. This would make voter fraud and poll worker tampering nearly impossible.

5. We have a huge illegal immigrant population. The biggest reason illegals are here is because unscrupulous employers like to exploit them by paying them under the table wages and not providing them the safety and other required benefits. A bio-metric national id coupled with a compulsory verification/certification by the employer would allow us to draft legislation that would SEVERELY punish employers for hiring illegal workers. (of course this should be coupled with a quick and reasonable temporary worker program for our friends down south, they could be issued an ID with restrictions to ensure they are not only treated according to labor laws but also that they would have to leave the country when their time was up).

6. Information technology in Medicine is one of the biggest ways we can start cutting cost of our healthcare. Access to up to date and accurate medical records regardless of your current geographic location is key to providing the best care possible as efficiently as possible. Tying your medical records to your ID makes a whole lot of sense. (If you were allergic to penicillin and brought unconscious into the ER, would you like that to come up in your records when they swiped your ID?)

7. Giving banks and other service providers access to bio-metric verification makes check cashing, ATM use, and other forms of payment more secure.

8. Faking a bio-metric/national id is exceptionally difficult.

9. Most "privacy" rights people don't realize how little privacy they have today. Your privacy would be relatively the same after this.

Forte wrote:

I can't think of any function an ID card would serve that a driver's license or passport doesn't already... And wouldn't having another card just cost the government more money in administration?

Fun fact, though: my province (Ontario) just rolled out an ID card for people who do not have a passport or driver's license. It serves as the "valid photo ID" that places often as for.

Edit: instead of creating a whole new ID card, a country could just make passports a mandatory constant. It might save on administration costs.

Hmm, and if they're required they kind of have to be free. I would be ok with a free passport as long as it didn't have my social security number and my home address inside it.

A few years ago the US came out with a "passport card" that is good for land crossings... maybe something like that would be a test case. Washington and Michigan are also rolling out the "enhanced" driver's licenses that can double as a passport card.

Agreed, it should be free if it's compulsory. It'd probably pay for itself if you shut down all the other agencies and rolled the funding into the single source.

Hell, the post office is losing money and running low on work to do. Let them take this over. Gives a good extra benefit to keeping those people employed.

You already order your passport through the PO in everywhere except the largest cities; I suppose it wouldn't be fundamentally different.

clover wrote:

You already order your passport through the PO in everywhere except the largest cities; I suppose it wouldn't be fundamentally different.

Agreed, I was just thinking that a lot less people get passports than would the national id, so the volume should help the PO out.

My objection to a national ID card is almost strictly legal.

In the U.S., you are not required to carry ID. If you are stopped by the police, you can only be forced to identify yourself if you are stopped for reasonable suspicion of a crime. If you are only being detained, you can identify yourself verbally. Only if you are arrested do you need to produce a physical ID. This has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If a national ID card is compulsory, I worry that some would like to make it so that citizens are required to carry ID at all times and that is anathema to our constitution. A U.S. citizen, minding his or her own business, should not be required to carry an ID from the state just for walking down the street.

Since we would probably need to amend the constitution in order to require the carrying of ID, I don't see the point of just having a national ID now when I can easily identify myself with a driver's license, passport, passport card, or my beloved NEXUS card (which is more secure and a better identifier of who I am than my DL or passport).

I was thinking back about the last time I actually had to pull out an ID, and the last time was when I flew to SoCal to see Rubb Ed (over the July 4th weekend), and at that time, I showed my NEXUS card. I could easily go weeks, doing my day to day activities without ever having to show or carry an ID. Now, I do have my DL on me because of the amount of driving I do every day. But, if Phoenix had a full subway system like NYC or Boston, I can't think of a single time in the past, say, month, where I needed to have an ID on my person.

It seems to me to be just another layer of bureaucracy.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

In the U.S., you are not required to carry ID. If you are stopped by the police, you can only be forced to identify yourself if you are stopped for reasonable suspicion of a crime. If you are only being detained, you can identify yourself verbally. Only if you are arrested do you need to produce a physical ID. This has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If a national ID card is compulsory, I worry that some would like to make it so that citizens are required to carry ID at all times and that is anathema to our constitution. A U.S. citizen, minding his or her own business, should not be required to carry an ID from the state just for walking down the street.

This is my main problem with the whole idea.

How backwards is it how our personal identifying data is used now compared to our realtime and direct control/visibility to it.

Maybe a national id system doesnt just have to be about the individual being monitored, but could empower the individal with the ability to monitor how others are attempting to access and use such information.. and also the tools to protect themselves.

If such a national id card could be rolled out with a system that provides immediate visibilty and direct control over their personal identity, then maybe it would be a great thing. From the ground up, build in protections so folks have immediate access to 'commercial' requests for that information, maybe with the ability to approve/reject, a log of when the id data was last checked / used for confirmation (taxes, borders, public services such as license renewal, credit, employment, whatever). without having to go through third party companies. That would be a public service I think many people would appreciate.

Give parents the ability to proactively monitor and control that information on behalf of their children.

Give folks a dashboard and interface into that data, not only with the abilty to review 'events' but also to setup alerts, enable protections themselves etc. Tie it into modern technology.. email, mobile devices etc.

Maybe it just wouldnt matter if the national id was being checked if the people also had full reverse visibility into when / where it was last checked.

Free for the individual. Maybe do cost recovery against private and/or public organization/department budgets who interface the system, or some other means to fund it.

I think such a system could be a very powerful tool for the individual.

Living abroad for about 4.5 years, the reality was that I had to carry a foreigner registration card every day just in case it was requested. You know what? It really wasnt a burden at all and so I dont think I would mind it here in my own country either. Maybe it wouldnt even have to be carried all the time, just available those times it was required.

With central authority comes central control. If there's a single point of identification, that's a single point that can be turned off.

Think of how useful the ability to instantly shut someone out of pretty much all of society would be, for those of authoritarian stripe. Your life can already be made living hell if a TSA employee or an airline employee don't like you. How much worse could it be if their complaints got to someone with their finger on the button turning you into a nonperson?

Occasionally, the religious do get it right, and their fear of the Mark of the Beast is a superstitious version of a very sensible fear, that of making yourself subservient to authoritarian control. When Christianity was just a cult, the Romans would have been able to extinguish them outright if they'd had that much control, and that fear is quite heavily encoded in the Bible.

There's a LOT to be said for the many separate systems we have. Yes, it's duplication of effort, but it's separation of authority.

I see your point. And yet, even seperately if there was a conspiracy against an individual, they could all be flagged. We're talking hypotheticals here I think, so I dont see why the system could not include process and/or checks n balances to appeal and prevent abuse by government. It would have to.

One aspect I think my post was unclear about was this concept of consolidation. I don't think I would have a national id card replace all the seperate systems we have now for specific purposes, social security, drivers license, etc etc but it could serve as a central linked hub around the concept of personal identity. Linked to other documentation, I still think it could provide a powerful single point of information and personal identity management whenever it is queried or used as the proof of identity for the actual individual.

so I dont see why the system could not include process and/or checks n balances to appeal and prevent abuse by government. It would have to.

Sure, just ask anyone on the no-fly list how well those work. Or on any number of other lists that the government is maintaining that they don't talk about a whole lot.

Maybe some of that is exactly the fault of a broken, inefficient and disparate system that was hammered together in reaction to specific events. Maybe on a national level, as a process that needs to be open and applicable to all, some of the politics of how the regulations that allow those lists to be generated and maintained the way they are could not get through the cracks.

I dont think fear of what ifs should become paralysis in the face of at least considering "Can it be done better?" And by better, I really mean for the individual.

Malor wrote:

With central authority comes central control. If there's a single point of identification, that's a single point that can be turned off.

Think of how useful the ability to instantly shut someone out of pretty much all of society would be, for those of authoritarian stripe. Your life can already be made living hell if a TSA employee or an airline employee don't like you. How much worse could it be if their complaints got to someone with their finger on the button turning you into a nonperson?

What would be the point of shutting off someone's entire identity punitively? It would make entry/exit from the country easier to track, and one would assume the process for blocking that would be the same as the process for blocking your passport. I really don't understand the non-person fear though? What exactly are you imagining they do? It's not like anyone is asking for your id card to start your car or buy your groceries.

There's no worse mischief that could be done to the individual than what is already allowable in the current system.

You know, having been married to a Swede, I found it really interesting that over there anyone can just go pull your tax records, etc for any reason. They don't really have this "omg privacy!" thing that Americans seem to have.

My main objections are what i pushed when the UK ID card was mooted:

1. Huge expense to government (and thus taxpayer).

2. Huge expense to the public - you had to pay for one and they were £90-ish.

3. The data was not safe on the card - the cards were hackable and thus your data could be skimmed or falsified like credit cards are. (IIRC they showed that the cards could be hacked and re-written in this manner too) Also, the government is so incompetent with managing and losing data (all those stories about lost social security info etc) means that ID theft would be easier than ever because with a biometric ID everything is in one place and so makes the "combats illegal immigrants" argument moot. You lose your card, you potentially lose your life because someone else has stolen it unlike with CCs, passports or social security cards.

4. It's one more way of having security theatre without actually providing any better service or protection.

bandit0013 wrote:

What would be the point of shutting off someone's entire identity punitively? It would make entry/exit from the country easier to track, and one would assume the process for blocking that would be the same as the process for blocking your passport. I really don't understand the non-person fear though? What exactly are you imagining they do? It's not like anyone is asking for your id card to start your car or buy your groceries.

There's no worse mischief that could be done to the individual than what is already allowable in the current system.

To be able to qualify for work you would need to have this ID. To be able to vote you would need to have this ID. It's all doable in the current system... but not from one piece of the pie. You have to do a lot in different areas to have the same effect.

Duoae wrote:

My main objections are what i pushed when the UK ID card was mooted:

1. Huge expense to government (and thus taxpayer).

2. Huge expense to the public - you had to pay for one and they were £90-ish.

3. The data was not safe on the card - the cards were hackable and thus your data could be skimmed or falsified like credit cards are. (IIRC they showed that the cards could be hacked and re-written in this manner too) Also, the government is so incompetent with managing and losing data (all those stories about lost social security info etc) means that ID theft would be easier than ever because with a biometric ID everything is in one place and so makes the "combats illegal immigrants" argument moot. You lose your card, you potentially lose your life because someone else has stolen it unlike with CCs, passports or social security cards.

4. It's one more way of having security theatre without actually providing any better service or protection.

bandit0013 wrote:

What would be the point of shutting off someone's entire identity punitively? It would make entry/exit from the country easier to track, and one would assume the process for blocking that would be the same as the process for blocking your passport. I really don't understand the non-person fear though? What exactly are you imagining they do? It's not like anyone is asking for your id card to start your car or buy your groceries.

There's no worse mischief that could be done to the individual than what is already allowable in the current system.

To be able to qualify for work you would need to have this ID. To be able to vote you would need to have this ID.

If this card was used by banks and credit agencies you could potentially allow individuals to opt-in to share certain data about their preferences, accounts, etc that marketers would pay for. I daresay it could fund the entire program. Perhaps as a compromise you only charge people who block all sharing of information outside federal agencies and provide a free ID to anyone who is willing to allow certain non-private information to be shared. I mean, if marketers want to know what credit cards I have, where I bank, etc that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Anyone who pulls a credit report can get it anyways.

Some of you are making a big assumption that due process would be out the window. If you're going to walk that road that you're afraid of big brother, I'm curious what you think your level of privacy is today and how "safe" you think you are from state-harassment?

Additionally, with bio-metrics you would never have the card verify itself. You would always use two or three factor authentication in tandem with the card which while nothing is "foolproof" you can make it difficult enough that it isn't feasible to do on a mass scale. I disagree with your assertion that biometric would make identity theft easier, because biometrics + two/three factor authentication is currently the most secure platform on the planet. Imagine if you will swiping your card, it passes an encrypted key to a server somewhere, you scan your fingerprint and the server compares that one to the one on file, finally, like an atm card, it asks you for a pin. The chances of an identity thief being able to get your card, your fingerprint, and your pin are pretty small, and impossible to scale.

bandit0013 wrote:

Additionally, with bio-metrics you would never have the card verify itself. You would always use two or three factor authentication in tandem with the card which while nothing is "foolproof" you can make it difficult enough that it isn't feasible to do on a mass scale. I disagree with your assertion that biometric would make identity theft easier, because biometrics + two/three factor authentication is currently the most secure platform on the planet. Imagine if you will swiping your card, it passes an encrypted key to a server somewhere, you scan your fingerprint and the server compares that one to the one on file, finally, like an atm card, it asks you for a pin. The chances of an identity thief being able to get your card, your fingerprint, and your pin are pretty small, and impossible to scale.

You're assuming that the people who make these decisions are competent. Like i stated above. The proposed UK biometric passport and ID cards were hackable because they had no protection.

If this card was used by banks and credit agencies you could potentially allow individuals to opt-in to share certain data about their preferences, accounts, etc that marketers would pay for. I daresay it could fund the entire program.

The problem with this is that they already have all that information. There's no extra value you could give in this scenario.

bandit0013 wrote:

Some of you are making a big assumption that due process would be out the window. If you're going to walk that road that you're afraid of big brother, I'm curious what you think your level of privacy is today and how "safe" you think you are from state-harassment?

Not very, but at least it requires a bit of effort to get all the various state agencies working together to spy on you or disappear your identity. When people like Perry and Bachmann are serious presidential canidates, I want to make it as difficult as possible for them.

Perry and Bachmann planning to erase the identity of citizens?

Are you asserting that Obama on the Democrat side hasn't continued the Bush era policies (arguably even Clinton was engaging in this with operation echelon)?

bandit0013 wrote:

Perry and Bachmann planning to erase the identity of citizens?

Are you asserting that Obama on the Democrat side hasn't continued the Bush era policies (arguably even Clinton was engaging in this with operation echelon)?

No, nothing of the sort (how do you even get that?). In fact I posted in the current thread on Obama that he's continued Bush policies and grabs even more power whenever he sees the chance. I just expect that Perry, Bachmann, and their ilk would abuse that power even more so, and I absolutely do not want to make things easier for them.

Thanks for spinning this off, clover.

I'm not sure the unperson argument is inherently insurmountable. I'd want to see a transparent process for any official status change, one that supported appeals, and any revocation would have to meet a much higher standard than other status changes.

Identity theft and facilitated monitoring by authorities is, to me, a bit thornier of a problem. They both feel solvable, but I don't have good answers to either.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

I'm not sure the unperson argument is inherently insurmountable. I'd want to see a transparent process for any official status change, one that supported appeals, and any revocation would have to meet a much higher standard than other status changes.

I would imagine that any action taken against your record (like your criminal history, watch lists, etc) would be the same as programs like wiretapping today. You'd need to go to a judge and get it approved. Legislate in a time limit for review, and impacted persons could go to the courts to get it overturned.

With internet/media being as open as it is nowadays, I am highly skeptical that someone working for Bachmann would get a burr up their butt about Strengah and "turn off his identity" punitively. First thing any reasonable person would do is go straight to the media.

There's a lovely article on wikipedia about what happened in the last 5 years to the UK's ID card scheme.

It's not like anyone is asking for your id card to start your car or buy your groceries.

There's no worse mischief that could be done to the individual than what is already allowable in the current system.

Yeah, but they really have to work at it. And usually they can only do them if they call you a terrorist.

But a national ID card could very easily end up being like the no-fly list. And we don't get anything in exchange. There's NO benefit to us in a national ID card. We can ONLY lose, we cannot win.

bandit0013 wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:

I'm not sure the unperson argument is inherently insurmountable. I'd want to see a transparent process for any official status change, one that supported appeals, and any revocation would have to meet a much higher standard than other status changes.

I would imagine that any action taken against your record (like your criminal history, watch lists, etc) would be the same as programs like wiretapping today. You'd need to go to a judge and get it approved. Legislate in a time limit for review, and impacted persons could go to the courts to get it overturned.

With internet/media being as open as it is nowadays, I am highly skeptical that someone working for Bachmann would get a burr up their butt about Strengah and "turn off his identity" punitively. First thing any reasonable person would do is go straight to the media.

Stengah, no "r."

I'm not suggesting it's likely at all either, mainly because I don't plan on doing anything that'd make them even notice I exist. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to make it easier for them to do so should they choose to.

In the Netherlands, everyone over 13 years old has to have an ID. It's not like you are being checked all the time or you don't dare to leave home without. More people are probably not carrying it around then do. But, when the police wants to or needs to, they can make you ID yourself.
It solves several issues, but if they are going to play hard ball, it can be a pain for sure.

Malor wrote:

But a national ID card could very easily end up being like the no-fly list. And we don't get anything in exchange. There's NO benefit to us in a national ID card. We can ONLY lose, we cannot win.

You get a lot of convenience (single source updates) and a lot of potential other benefits (medical records). If anything it should make freedom of movement for the majority of people even easier (why not bake your passport into it?)

I much prefer privacy to convenience.

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