(Compulsory) national ID cards

Duoae wrote:

Just a question.. If it was all combined into one card/service.... How would you revoke and take back the card if one of those services are infringed in some way?

e.g. A driving ban (you lose your license - it is physically taken off you) or an investigation (police/federal) requiring a travel ban... I'm pretty sure that in some instances they take your passport off you too. Is that just suddenly going to change? Or do you lose your ability to vote and whatnot too by having your card taken off of you...

If they are all bundled into one card/service, I'd imagine you'd be allowed to keep the card, it would just be flagged as not being valid for whatever restriction you're under. This isn't much different than the system's currently set up. A passport is still checked against the system when you go to use it, and if you've been flagged, it'll pop-up. Whenever a cop asks for your license when you're pulled over, they run it (and the plates of the car) through the system.

Edit - you've got a good point how it'd be handed when you'd normally have to surrender your passport. Passports are checked when you try to enter a country, not when you leave, so flagging it in our system would do no good unless we shared access to our database with the country a person was trying to visit.

bandit0013 wrote:
clover wrote:

I carry my driver's license when I drive. Otherwise, I show my passport for everything.

If a (US) national ID is supposed to replace both, wouldn't that necessitate nationalizing the various DOL/DMV/BMV/BBQ agencies? Or are you thinking each state would issue its own REAL ID-style document? That's not really a national ID, just nationally standardized.

Yes, I would shut down the DOL/DMV/BMV/BBQ agencies and roll it all into a single service. I see no reason why we should have 50 different BMVs with 50 different policies.

Ha! ya the states are going to allow that to happen. These are probably one of their biggest sources of income.

ranalin wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:
clover wrote:

I carry my driver's license when I drive. Otherwise, I show my passport for everything.

If a (US) national ID is supposed to replace both, wouldn't that necessitate nationalizing the various DOL/DMV/BMV/BBQ agencies? Or are you thinking each state would issue its own REAL ID-style document? That's not really a national ID, just nationally standardized.

Yes, I would shut down the DOL/DMV/BMV/BBQ agencies and roll it all into a single service. I see no reason why we should have 50 different BMVs with 50 different policies.

Ha! ya the states are going to allow that to happen. These are probably one of their biggest sources of income.

Not to mention the number of people that would be suddenly unemployed.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

If the federal government mandated a national ID, what are they going to do if the states refuse to cooperate by providing information such as driving records?

I'm totally with you on this being a terrible idea, but to play devil's advocate, I'd answer this question by saying — The same thing they always do to get the states to capitulate to their demands: threaten to withhold funding. Seems to work 95% of the time or more.

Stengah wrote:
ranalin wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:
clover wrote:

I carry my driver's license when I drive. Otherwise, I show my passport for everything.

If a (US) national ID is supposed to replace both, wouldn't that necessitate nationalizing the various DOL/DMV/BMV/BBQ agencies? Or are you thinking each state would issue its own REAL ID-style document? That's not really a national ID, just nationally standardized.

Yes, I would shut down the DOL/DMV/BMV/BBQ agencies and roll it all into a single service. I see no reason why we should have 50 different BMVs with 50 different policies.

Ha! ya the states are going to allow that to happen. These are probably one of their biggest sources of income.

Not to mention the number of people that would be suddenly unemployed.

So if we have wasteful, redundant processes that happen to keep people employed that's considered a good reason to continue said processes?

Re: Passports all you'd have to do is provide a simple webservice that given an ID key just says yes or no they're permitted to travel. Naturally deactivating any priviliges would be done electronically, so in the case of suspended driving when the cop swiped your card it would come up as 'suspended'.

Also re: identity theft, if I would happen to steal your birth certificate and pass it off as my own, I could get just about anything I wanted from your file and if you were like Phoenix and thought it was safely squirreled away somewhere it'd likely be quite some time and quite a lot of damage before he realized that I had obtained a DL, Social security card, and used those to open credit accounts in his name. On the other hand, if you had one national ID that was like your driver's license that most people keep with them as soon as you noticed it was missing you'd have one call to notify authorities and shut down any fradulent activities immediately and re-issue a new card. Anyone who has ever lost their wallet can attest to what a pain it is to contact everyone, imagine if it wasn't your credit card, it was your social security card. Identity theft is such a big PITA in our system (again, made easier because of the dispersement of your data that some falsely argue is more secure, it's not) that you actually can buy insurance against it. Additionally, with two or three factor authentication including biometrics an identity theif would have to be very sophisticated to do any damage, and that kind of criminal isn't going to be after average and low net worth individuals like I assume we all are.

Bad system is bad. It's outdated, expensive, redundent. We've got people in other threads calling for singularity and yet we're afraid of having all your data linked to a single ID.

Expanding on the birth certificate thing. It's a single point of failure whether the systems are distributed or not. Birth certificates don't contain any biometric information or photo id. A clerk can't tell me from Stengah if I have his birth certificate, and the "privacy" trying to protect is gone as soon as I obtain a new driver's license. I'll have his medical records, credit report, just about anything I want at that point. I've had to go through identity theft/fraud prevention stuff for IT security, and that's pretty much how it works. I get one piece of ID and suddenly I can get into all the other systems. Since the systems don't talk (as people claim is more secure, falsely) it takes that much longer for anyone to realize anything is amiss. Usually you don't know until I do the big score and steal thousands of dollars of stuff and leave your credit rating in shambles, which takes many months to repair.

With distribution all you could really argue is that if I truly hacked the central source (which again, is more secure via biometrics than any of today's various sources), I could probably get his info in minutes. In the other scenario where I get his birth certificate or social security card, ok, it's not minutes, it's more like a few hours. As long as it takes me to go through the line at the BMV.

An adendum on the central security benefit thing, let's say someone does steal your national id card. Let's even say the crack the biometric part and can actually use it. Chances are activity is going to pop up in a different location than you frequent. If you have a credit card and travel/shop over the internet I'm sure many of you have been contacted by the card company when all of a sudden they detect a location/behavior change. Very easy to implement as a safeguard in a national id system.

I expect that facilitating the government having a reasonably-good idea of your location and patterns of behavior would be viewed as a negative by opponents of a national ID system.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

I expect that facilitating the government having a reasonably-good idea of your location and patterns of behavior would be viewed as a negative by opponents of a national ID system.

Versus the entire credit card industry? I would love to know how many pro privacy people use non cash payments.

bandit0013 wrote:

So if we have wasteful, redundant processes that happen to keep people employed that's considered a good reason to continue said processes?

Somewhat, yes. Unless you can find them similar jobs that aren't as redundant, at the moment, people aren't going to be to willing to eliminate thousands of jobs just to make it easier to persecute illegal immigrants.

bandit0013 wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:

I expect that facilitating the government having a reasonably-good idea of your location and patterns of behavior would be viewed as a negative by opponents of a national ID system.

Versus the entire credit card industry? I would love to know how many pro privacy people use non cash payments. ;)

The government tracking your movements is a bit different than your credit card company knowing them.

Interesting. I would never have guessed you trust the banks more than your government

bandit0013 wrote:

Interesting. I would never have guessed you trust the banks more than your government

Would you kindly stop putting words in my mouth? You've got a history of assuming people are saying things they're not. I never said I trusted either. It's more a case of what each can do with that data. A bank's main concern is money, there's not much they can do with my buying history that I'm worried about. A government's main concern is control, and they can do quite a bit more to me with my buying history than the bank can.

Stengah wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

Interesting. I would never have guessed you trust the banks more than your government

Would you kindly stop putting words in my mouth?

I would say that it's more of a derogatory/trolling remark than actually trying to put words in your mouth. It's a classic debate technique: You find A less disgusting than B... therefore you are for A. (Aka, Straw Man)

True. Either way, I have to defend myself against something I never said.

Stengah wrote:

I love banks and want to marry one.

Dimmerswitch wrote:
Stengah wrote:

I love banks and want to marry one.

:P

I like big assets and I can not lie.

Stengah wrote:

I like big assets and I can not lie.

Man... why didn't i think of that....

I, uh... Like saving in case of rainy... er, days....

Aw, crap!!

Stengah wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:
Stengah wrote:

I love banks and want to marry one.

:P

I like big assets and I can not lie.

My asset manager don't want none unless you got FICA, son!

Stengah wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:
Stengah wrote:

I love banks and want to marry one.

:P

I like big assets and I can not lie.

You raise an interesting point, Stengah, and DimmerStengah. We clearly need marriage equality for corporate persons.

NSMike wrote:
Stengah wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:
Stengah wrote:

I love banks and want to marry one.

:P

I like big assets and I can not lie.

You raise an interesting point, Stengah, and DimmerStengah. We clearly need marriage equality for corporate persons.

Do you get half of their profits when you split up? That'd be pretty awesome...

NSMike wrote:

You raise an interesting point, Stengah, and DimmerStengah. We clearly need marriage equality for corporate persons.

Guuuuuurrrrrgh! You joke, but I can already see earnests posts from specific individuals redefining monopolistic mergers as corporate marriages, and accusing those who oppose them of bigotry, and it's already annoying the hell out of me.

We must protect the sanctity of corporate marriage! Anti-trust is anti-marriage!

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.

The passport card should work for this. The only catch is that the passport card contains an RFID chip, which a lot of people aren't crazy about despite the card being delivered with a foil sleeve to carry it around in.

Stengah wrote:

The government tracking your movements is a bit different than your credit card company knowing them.

Ok, I'm sorry for putting words in your mouth. Please describe in more detail how it is different and what repercussions you see from the government knowing this that a business doesn't have and vice versa. Also please provide evidence that the government doesn't already have the information provided from the banks upon request (They do). At least then we'll have the basis for a discussion instead of me posting several paragraphs of information and you coming back with witty one liners.

You know a debate is point->counterpoint. If you flesh out your counterpoints I'll be able to respond accordingly and won't keep having to interpret what you say. So far in this discussion you've made some pretty bold but vague assertions, several of which (distributed systems being more secure) are demonstrably false. I think the whole point of the P&C tab is for people like us to have these discussions so other people can weigh in or at least become more informed of various sides of issues and I don't feel like you're contributing clearly towards that purpose.

I mean, with just that one line to go off, it seems to me that you're making the assertion that banks having that data is less harmful than the government. Why? And if I'm putting words in your mouth then explain how that statement doesn't mean that you trust the banks more than the government with that information?

On a side note, those of you who are worried about the government abusing your information file I bet have never had something false show up on your credit report that needed handled. A bank can totally accuse you of late or non-payments falsely and prevent you from getting good credit until you get it resolved, which isn't the easiest process. If anything, at least a government agency can be held accountable to the taxpayers unlike a private company.

bandit0013 wrote:

On a side note, those of you who are worried about the government abusing your information file I bet have never had something false show up on your credit report that needed handled. A bank can totally accuse you of late or non-payments falsely and prevent you from getting good credit until you get it resolved, which isn't the easiest process. If anything, at least a government agency can be held accountable to the taxpayers unlike a private company.

Citizens cannot sue the federal government.

bandit0013 wrote:

Also please provide evidence that the government doesn't already have the information provided from the banks upon request (They do).

I realize that the government can get access to all this information, but currently they have to jump through several hoops to gain it. Your proposed system removes those hoops. That's the main difference between the current system and your proposed one: Yours gives the government far greater and much easier access to our personal information than they currently have. You don't view this as a big deal since they can already access it under certain circumstances. I view it as a violation of the 5th and (arguably) 9th Amendments. If you were to propose this exact same system, but make it voluntary instead of compulsory, I'd have no issue with it (I wouldn't participate in it, but I wouldn't oppose it).

bandit0013 wrote:

So far in this discussion you've made some pretty bold but vague assertions, several of which (distributed systems being more secure) are demonstrably false.

Notice how I never made that assertion. I said that your proposed system fails big when it fails. Not once did I say that having them separate made them more secure, nor do I think that they would be more secure. I was merely pointing out that should your proposed system fail, a user would be unable to do all the various things it does. The same thing happens when one of the current systems fail, but the actual impact is less, since it does less things.

bandit0013 wrote:

I mean, with just that one line to go off, it seems to me that you're making the assertion that banks having that data is less harmful than the government. Why? And if I'm putting words in your mouth then explain how that statement doesn't mean that you trust the banks more than the government with that information?

Stop assuming what arguments I'm making, because you've shown your terrible at it. I don't assert that banks can't do damage with the data they have on me. I do assert that the government can do MORE damage with the same data. If the bank has an error or gets malicious with my data, they ruin my credit. If the government has an error or gets malicious, I can't drive, access my bank accounts, fly on a plane, access my medical records, or even prove my identity. It would take multiple systems failing at once to have the same effect under the current system, so while it's still possible, it's far less likely.

I will stop assuming your arguments when you start describing your position clearly. also I never said you said banks can't I said less. But keep on blaming me for you miscommunication. Additionally you are making a broad assumption that in a central system all your data is on or off. This isn't how modern systems work. Could you please provide the scenario you are fearful of and lay out who is turning off your data at the government level and how it absolutely ruins your life?

Sure you can take the government to court. More efective against abuse would be going to the media. Or are they in on it too in this highly improbable scenario? Other countries in Europe have compulsory IDs, can you find examples of any of those governments abusing the citizenry? I just wonder if you are channeling 1984 instead of real world observations.

And failure. How often has the passport system failed? Ever heard on the news about checkpoints being shut down due to failure? Of course not, because we have data failover and caching.

Also, 4th amendment is unreasonable search and seizure. None of the data I have suggested is unreasonable, as it is already collected and sometimes shared (at expense and complexity). Several BMVs share databases. Several criminal systems share data. The proposal is to make it seamless and less expensive. You lose nothing in this scenario. So provide examples of abuses in Germany, Denmark, etc or keep fearmongering without evidence. *shrug*

Know why it takes 15 minutes to issue a traffic ticket? Because the officer is querying half a dozen systems. It is pretty silly when you think about it.

Additionally, there seems to be an assumption that since the government has your data centralized that every clerk would get all of it. If the a cop pulls you over for a traffic violation and queries your national ID record, why would that interface even expose your medical history or any of that other stuff? Such a system wouldn't allow a traffic court to "shut off" your medical data, so abuse at those levels wouldn't be possible. The "kill switch" scenario would probalby have to come from a high level within the agency itself and would likely only be used in response to stolen identity or court order.

If you're at the hospital and the Doctor queries your medical info, the system isn't intended to show him your criminal background too. Just like with HIPPA requirements I'd imagine such a system would only show relevant providers relevant data and just like credit reports citizens should be entitled to a report of everything in their file.