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Historically, registries of citizen identities have been used for horrendous exploitation of the public. They have been used to ease profiling, targetting, dis

Historically, registries of citizen identities have been used for horrendous exploitation of the public. They have been used to ease profiling, targetting, discrimination, and elimination of anyone who is politically problematic. Personally, I resist most sort of formalization or systemization of human life or identity. Any person who says "our policy doesn't mention your situation" or "the software doesn't allow that value/have a field for that" and considers this to be a problem of the person with a life that doesn't fit the mold the designers of the system fantasized about really ought to be punched in the mouth, and creation of an easily-indexed national ID is an important step in such systems. Why do they want a NUMBER? Because names are too... human. They're messy, and they can change, and they don't fit standard forms. It's an impulse to purge the humanity from social identity that motivates establishment of national ID numbers.

mindslight 9y ago
Very well said!
a_t48 9y ago
How do you propose keeping track of people without assigning an ID number? Require everyone have a unique name?
- njarboe 9y ago
  That is the whole point. Some cultures have residual beliefs about limited government and privacy. Some sub-cultures and families in those cultures have maintained a strong believe that no one should be "keeping track" of them.
- vec 9y ago
  In the US at least, in theory the proposal for a long time was just to not keep track of people in the first place. The federal government collected taxes on things like property and tariffs that were hard to avoid, they performed a census once a decade to get a rough idea of how many people there were, and anything beyond that was none of their business. Then we got income taxes and federally guaranteed pensions (Social Security) and medical assistance (Medicare/Medicaid) and a few other, smaller safety net programs. Furthermore, while there's plenty of fighting around the margins, the overwhelming majority of Americans are broadly in favor of keeping at least some of the Great Society programs, and that means we have to have a national registry of some sort. It turns out that when the population is broadly distrustful of the idea of a national registry but broadly in support of a tax regime and social programs that require a national registry to function the stable equilibrium is a really really shitty national registry that everyone hates but nobody feels they can improve without getting shouted out of office. American politics is dumb.

mindslight 9y ago

Very well said!

a_t48 9y ago

How do you propose keeping track of people without assigning an ID number? Require everyone have a unique name?

njarboe 9y ago
That is the whole point. Some cultures have residual beliefs about limited government and privacy. Some sub-cultures and families in those cultures have maintained a strong believe that no one should be "keeping track" of them.
vec 9y ago
In the US at least, in theory the proposal for a long time was just to not keep track of people in the first place. The federal government collected taxes on things like property and tariffs that were hard to avoid, they performed a census once a decade to get a rough idea of how many people there were, and anything beyond that was none of their business. Then we got income taxes and federally guaranteed pensions (Social Security) and medical assistance (Medicare/Medicaid) and a few other, smaller safety net programs. Furthermore, while there's plenty of fighting around the margins, the overwhelming majority of Americans are broadly in favor of keeping at least some of the Great Society programs, and that means we have to have a national registry of some sort. It turns out that when the population is broadly distrustful of the idea of a national registry but broadly in support of a tax regime and social programs that require a national registry to function the stable equilibrium is a really really shitty national registry that everyone hates but nobody feels they can improve without getting shouted out of office. American politics is dumb.