5 ms·

People say this every time national id comes up, but I've never seen any evidence for it, and it doesn't sound particularly plausible. The US manages to pass al

People say this every time national id comes up, but I've never seen any evidence for it, and it doesn't sound particularly plausible. The US manages to pass all sorts of legislation that angers fundamentalists. Why is this one in particular a step too far?

Godel_unicode 6y ago
Because it's only half the story; states rights people are against national IDs because it's over-reach, and path to citizenship people are against national IDs because of ICE.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  I know many Republicans (the “states rights” people) who have no problem with a National ID. Granted, some of them have their beliefs based on an unfounded belief of “illegals can vote and the Democrats want that.”
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > states rights people are against national IDs because it's over-reach States also generate massive revenues from ID programs. That produces a motivated lobbying force. And in politics, a motivated minority can usually outmaneuver an unmotivated majority.
  - derefr 6y ago
    I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.) These provincial documents have unique identifiers on them, but those identifiers are only required to be provincially unique, not nationally unique. But that number is still registered in a national database; they just have use a compound key consisting of the province-of-record plus the number as the primary key. In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine.
    - _-david-_ 6y ago
      >I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.) The federal government cannot require a citizen to have a national id and cannot force states to require their residents to have one. I am not even sure if the federal government can force the states to issue birth certificates (all states do so its not an issue). >In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine. Pretty sure in the US there is no national registry of license plates. Each state gives access to their own database to the other states and the fed (for law enforcement purposes). There also isn't a namespace for each state. Each state could have the exact same plate numbers. The name of the state is on the plate but is not part of the actual number.
      - derefr 6y ago
        I meant my statement "I don't see what would change..." in the context of the GP post: I don't see what would change about the current business model where states make money by issuing their own IDs. As in, I don't see how making the state ID documents into "valid US-federal identification documents" (in some cooperating shared-distributed registry) would make it any harder for the states to make money issuing IDs. I don't think your reply really addresses that. Sure, some people wouldn't have IDs. There are always some people without government-issued identifiers. So what? > Each state gives access to their own database to the other states and the fed (for law enforcement purposes). Functionally equivalent, insofar as a state government opting out of this sharing program would screw everything up and get that state government in trouble with both national agencies, and with all the other state agencies that rely on the system. Of course, there are practical differences at implementation time, e.g. that the individual states don't have to adhere to any standard, but instead everyone has to just program against 50 individually-designed APIs. But politically, this system of registries is essentially nationalized. In the same sense that politically, the US only has one central bank; just one that has branches that each call themselves a "central bank." But they all, necessarily, coordinate; and defecting from said coordination would break the entire system. It's one of those "monolith masquerading as microservices" distributed systems, so tightly coupled that it may as well not be distributed at all. > There also isn't a namespace for each state. Each state could have the exact same plate numbers. I think you're misunderstanding; this property (that states can have the same plate numbers) is precisely what it means for states to have "separate namespaces." A namespace is something that prevents identifier collisions within itself. If you have one shared namespace, there are no collisions. If each state has its own namespace, then keys (license plate numbers) can collide between states, because each namespace only validates uniqueness within itself. You might be thinking of a "namespace prefix", which is not the same thing as a namespace. But there is a standard synthetic compound key, one that is nationally unique; and that key is the state of issuance plus the license plate number. This isn't printed on the license plate itself (i.e. the state of issuance is not a "namespace prefix"); it's something you figure out by recognizing the design of the license plate. That's why, when you hear e.g. a police BOLO, it's phrased as "[state] plates, number [XYZ123]." That phrase is the common English-language encoding of the nationally-unique license-plate identifier.
- Camillo 6y ago
  A national ID would be used for voting too, so you can count half the country against.
12xo 6y ago
Its important to know that the origin of this stems from the authoritarian actions of many governments during WWII. Especially Germany... Remember, Jews were tattooed with their ID#.
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
  Interestingly, it was somewhat common for Americans to have their SSNs - our now de facto national ID scheme - tattooed prior to WWII. Now, of course, we still have a de facto national ID scheme, but it is encumbered with a complex set of regulatory and security problems related to the odd legal insistence that it is not a national ID scheme despite all appearances.
  - salawat 6y ago
    It isn't odd at all. It's written right into the law. The fact everyone ignores it isn't really an excuse. National ID #'s for many are the top of a slippery slope. Once you start going down that path, that's it. You opened the door to surveillance nirvana. It is part of the reason I'm not terribly fond of driver's licenses; as even those are so damn networked the police don't even need your insurance to know whether you're insured or any of a myriad of other things. In the absence of a network integration, these concessions to traceability were fine. Now, the potential for abuse is just way to prescient. It isn't even about State's rights to me. It's about keeping the abuse enabled by a highly organized bureaucracy in check. If the government of the last couple decades hadn't continually escalated the erosion of civil/constitutionally guaranteed rights, I'd be more amenable to giving a bit of slack to the idea. That isn't how it has worked out though. Do I think a unique identifier can be used benevolently? Yes. Do I think the society I share my life with can be trusted with such a thing? Not demonstrably.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      The cat is already out of the bag, imho, if nothing else via ways of tracking phones, stuff online, social media, etc. Realistically unless we become a society of digital luddites that isn't gonna, change, so I see the question as more of a technical / political one of how do we _manage_ both the risks and benefits of an increasingly connected world. Not sure I'd be a fan of national ID's, but, I think the way you describe it paints an incomplete picture.

Godel_unicode 6y ago

Because it's only half the story; states rights people are against national IDs because it's over-reach, and path to citizenship people are against national IDs because of ICE.

colejohnson66 6y ago
I know many Republicans (the “states rights” people) who have no problem with a National ID. Granted, some of them have their beliefs based on an unfounded belief of “illegals can vote and the Democrats want that.”
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> states rights people are against national IDs because it's over-reach States also generate massive revenues from ID programs. That produces a motivated lobbying force. And in politics, a motivated minority can usually outmaneuver an unmotivated majority.
- derefr 6y ago
  I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.) These provincial documents have unique identifiers on them, but those identifiers are only required to be provincially unique, not nationally unique. But that number is still registered in a national database; they just have use a compound key consisting of the province-of-record plus the number as the primary key. In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine.
  - _-david-_ 6y ago
    >I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.) The federal government cannot require a citizen to have a national id and cannot force states to require their residents to have one. I am not even sure if the federal government can force the states to issue birth certificates (all states do so its not an issue). >In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine. Pretty sure in the US there is no national registry of license plates. Each state gives access to their own database to the other states and the fed (for law enforcement purposes). There also isn't a namespace for each state. Each state could have the exact same plate numbers. The name of the state is on the plate but is not part of the actual number.
    - derefr 6y ago
      I meant my statement "I don't see what would change..." in the context of the GP post: I don't see what would change about the current business model where states make money by issuing their own IDs. As in, I don't see how making the state ID documents into "valid US-federal identification documents" (in some cooperating shared-distributed registry) would make it any harder for the states to make money issuing IDs. I don't think your reply really addresses that. Sure, some people wouldn't have IDs. There are always some people without government-issued identifiers. So what? > Each state gives access to their own database to the other states and the fed (for law enforcement purposes). Functionally equivalent, insofar as a state government opting out of this sharing program would screw everything up and get that state government in trouble with both national agencies, and with all the other state agencies that rely on the system. Of course, there are practical differences at implementation time, e.g. that the individual states don't have to adhere to any standard, but instead everyone has to just program against 50 individually-designed APIs. But politically, this system of registries is essentially nationalized. In the same sense that politically, the US only has one central bank; just one that has branches that each call themselves a "central bank." But they all, necessarily, coordinate; and defecting from said coordination would break the entire system. It's one of those "monolith masquerading as microservices" distributed systems, so tightly coupled that it may as well not be distributed at all. > There also isn't a namespace for each state. Each state could have the exact same plate numbers. I think you're misunderstanding; this property (that states can have the same plate numbers) is precisely what it means for states to have "separate namespaces." A namespace is something that prevents identifier collisions within itself. If you have one shared namespace, there are no collisions. If each state has its own namespace, then keys (license plate numbers) can collide between states, because each namespace only validates uniqueness within itself. You might be thinking of a "namespace prefix", which is not the same thing as a namespace. But there is a standard synthetic compound key, one that is nationally unique; and that key is the state of issuance plus the license plate number. This isn't printed on the license plate itself (i.e. the state of issuance is not a "namespace prefix"); it's something you figure out by recognizing the design of the license plate. That's why, when you hear e.g. a police BOLO, it's phrased as "[state] plates, number [XYZ123]." That phrase is the common English-language encoding of the nationally-unique license-plate identifier.
Camillo 6y ago
A national ID would be used for voting too, so you can count half the country against.

12xo 6y ago

Its important to know that the origin of this stems from the authoritarian actions of many governments during WWII. Especially Germany... Remember, Jews were tattooed with their ID#.

jcrawfordor 6y ago
Interestingly, it was somewhat common for Americans to have their SSNs - our now de facto national ID scheme - tattooed prior to WWII. Now, of course, we still have a de facto national ID scheme, but it is encumbered with a complex set of regulatory and security problems related to the odd legal insistence that it is not a national ID scheme despite all appearances.
- salawat 6y ago
  It isn't odd at all. It's written right into the law. The fact everyone ignores it isn't really an excuse. National ID #'s for many are the top of a slippery slope. Once you start going down that path, that's it. You opened the door to surveillance nirvana. It is part of the reason I'm not terribly fond of driver's licenses; as even those are so damn networked the police don't even need your insurance to know whether you're insured or any of a myriad of other things. In the absence of a network integration, these concessions to traceability were fine. Now, the potential for abuse is just way to prescient. It isn't even about State's rights to me. It's about keeping the abuse enabled by a highly organized bureaucracy in check. If the government of the last couple decades hadn't continually escalated the erosion of civil/constitutionally guaranteed rights, I'd be more amenable to giving a bit of slack to the idea. That isn't how it has worked out though. Do I think a unique identifier can be used benevolently? Yes. Do I think the society I share my life with can be trusted with such a thing? Not demonstrably.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    The cat is already out of the bag, imho, if nothing else via ways of tracking phones, stuff online, social media, etc. Realistically unless we become a society of digital luddites that isn't gonna, change, so I see the question as more of a technical / political one of how do we _manage_ both the risks and benefits of an increasingly connected world. Not sure I'd be a fan of national ID's, but, I think the way you describe it paints an incomplete picture.