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It amazes me that there is no authentication provided by governments in the US to citizens. They just accept a social security number as if it was some sort of
by mostlyjason 6y ago
It amazes me that there is no authentication provided by governments in the US to citizens. They just accept a social security number as if it was some sort of password, when it was never intended for that purpose. Other countries give citizens an electronic ID to authenticate themselves. It seems this would prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and identity theft.
- MattGaiser 6y ago> It amazes me that there is no authentication provided by governments in the US to citizens. Vast numbers of Americans would view that as a big step towards totalitarianism and taking their guns away.
- dboreham 6y agoExcept if its about voting and then any amount of intrusion is fine.
- heavyset_go 6y agoMany of them quite literally want voting licenses.
- newfriend 6y agoAnd on the flip side, any amount of intrusion is fine, unless it's about voting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- otterley 6y agoVoting is a much more important right than the other rights, because voting is fundamental to the existence of a republic. One could argue that the right to bear arms exists for the primary purpose of protecting the right to vote.
- golergka 6y agoVoter ID fraud is exactly the kind of thing that infringes on right to vote. Stronger protections on voting is what protects this right, not the other way around. As someone who not only lives in a country with a widespread voting fraud (done by government officials), but also have been an observer on number of elections and have seen this taking place first-hand, I can't understand how relaxed are Americans about this issue.
- otterley 6y ago> Voter ID fraud is exactly the kind of thing that infringes on right to vote. There's a difference between "infringing on the right to vote," which is where you're literally preventing from someone from voting, and "diluting a legitimate vote", which is where your vote doesn't weigh what it ought to. Mathematically, it's the difference between scoring a zero and scoring some fraction less than one. It turns out that, at least in the USA, advocates of voter ID requirements and other unnecessary impediments to voting in fact desire the opposite effect - that their votes be worth more than they would be if widespread voting by qualified citizens were easier than it is. > I can't understand how relaxed are Americans about this issue We're relaxed about it because the data (and we have measured and investigated, many times) says that voter fraud here is so rare that it falls well beneath the noise floor of statistical significance.
- forgot_again 6y agoThat's not really true. The Right is generally united on the point of wanting universal ID. Nothing totalitarian about a nation being able to reliably identify and distinguish its citizens. Unfortunately the political Left believes that such ID, specifically when used as a means of election security, would lead to discrimination.
- jamroom 6y agoThe problem is that if the ID is not free, it could constitute a Poll Tax: https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/37045 https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/37045 Which is against the constitution. It also disenfranchises voters who do not have a permanent address.
- forgot_again 6y agoThose are both pretty simple issues to address. Many Democracies around the world use some form of voter ID and we could easily just follow their implementations with some adjustments.
- cududa 6y agoRight but every proposition suggesting those elements gets struck down. It isn’t about voter ID, it’s about not letting poor people vote
- rumanator 6y ago> Unfortunately the political Left believes that such ID, specifically when used as a means of election security, would lead to discrimination. I'm not an US citizen but this is the first time ever I've heard this extraordinary claim. Do you have any source to substantiate your assertion?
- forgot_again 6y agoThis is quite a common claim from the Left in the US. If you do a quick search in Left leaning publications on the issue of voter ID you'll see that stance dominates their discussion of the issue. I agree it's an extraordinary claim, but it's a conspiracy they've latched onto. You can in fact see a child comment below where someone is commenting that the purpose of such ID is to disenfranchise the poor.
- sershe 6y agoHow about making the id voluntary to get, but required to get benefits. Want to get the guvmint out of your life? Sure, then don't ask for unemployment benefits.
- Teknoman117 6y agoAs an American: see the classic "Get your government hands off my Medicare" line. I don't know how many of us actually paid attention in Civics or bothered actually trying to understand how our government is supposed to work.
- tptacek 6y ago"Voluntary to get, required for some benefits" is another way to say "involuntary". What is citizenship but a collection of benefits?
- ryanwaggoner 6y agoHow is that different from requiring vaccines for public school, a license to drive a car or fly a plane, or even a safety course and hunting license to hunt? Most of the things that are benefits of citizenship that don’t require any voluntary steps are true “public goods”, like national defense or the societal benefits of education, etc.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 6y agoIt seems more like the whole "Raise your drinking age to 21, or the federal government will withhold road improvement money from your state." It's coercion.
- arcticfox 6y ago> "Voluntary to get, required for some benefits" is another way to say "involuntary". What is citizenship but a collection of benefits? This is pretty clearly a poor extrapolation. For example, Global Entry. Is signing up for Global Entry involuntary? It is voluntary to get, required for some benefits.
- mrits 6y agoBetter identification requirements is actually a right wing view in the US. Requiring it is now considered discriminatory.
- qmmmur 6y agoYou're forgetting the other half of the story which is insisting on requirements without providing the means to get it.
- mrits 6y agoYou probably should be telling that to the person that thought requiring more identification to the most vulnerable people in society was a good idea.
- ByteJockey 6y agoParts of the right. The more libertarian parts are terrified at the idea of a database of Americans.
- pugworthy 6y ago> Vast numbers of Americans... Very vocal (and provocative) minority
- Spooky23 6y agoThey are just loud and there aren’t many of them. The bigger issue is that people who need services like unemployment and food stamps most have low penetration rates for things like valid government IDs.
- bradgessler 6y agoAfter 9/11 there was an attempt at a national ID card, but it never pans out. https://www.aclu.org/other/5-problems-national-id-cards https://www.aclu.org/other/5-problems-national-id-cards does a decent job laying out the rationale why it never gets that far. What we got instead is Real ID, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act?wprov=sfti1, which is a set of guidelines that States and federal agencies must follow to authenticate people for the issue of their ID and anti-counterfeit features that the ID should have. In other words, the issue was put onto the states.
- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoIn Oct 2020 a passport or state-issued Enhanced ID [0] will be required to board a domestic flight in USA. It's about as close as they could get since no one wants a "national ID card". [0] https://www.dhs.gov/enhanced-drivers-licenses-what-are-they https://www.dhs.gov/enhanced-drivers-licenses-what-are-they
- Androider 6y agoThat requirement has now been delayed until Oct 2021.
- Tade0 6y agoReason #4: ID cards would function as "internal passports" that monitor citizens' movements I don't understand this one. This was never a thing in the EU, even though IDs are mandatory in just about every member state. I spent on-and-off four years in Italy and while I initially had to present and ID to my landlord there, who then needed to pass this data to the police, nobody bothered me after that or checked if I'm still there. Hell, even after a law was passed that initially basically forbade anyone who was in the country more than half of the year from driving a car with foreign plates I still wasn't bothered by anyone, because as I was a citizen of a Schengen area state, there was no reliable way to determine when and where was I lately.
- yebyen 6y ago
- kingkawn 6y agoIf it were harder to scam the social safety net republicans would lose another piece of their argument against making it more comprehensive.
- MattGaiser 6y agoOne of the reasons they are happy to cripple it. https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its-a-sh-sandwich-republicans-rage-as-florida-becomes-a-nightmare-for-trump-1271172 https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its...
- j4kp07 6y agoIf it were harder to scam our elections (eg. voter id) democrats would lose another piece of their argument against securing our democracy.
- jonahbenton 6y agoI am as conceptually socialist and communitarian as they come but there are many reasons for the federal government not to be the identity provider. It should set the rules (the GOVERNance) by which identity providers provide that service, but it should not itself be in that business. My favorite way of thinking about it is- the US federal government is a singleton. In any system, you want your singletons to operationalize as little as possible, because they are hardest to change. Another way- the US federal government is an immortal entity. It represents a perpetual accumulation of all kinds of debt- legal, administrative, technical, financial, whatever. Building and scaling new operational systems within an infrastructure consumed by debt is doomed. The thing it can do is creating the rules and policies by which a federation of private entities can operationalize a particular need. These entities have limited lifespans, can fail, and have profit and efficiency motives, can compete for business, and are overseen and supervised. This structure exists in lots of areas, and is more successful in some- banking- less in others- military contracting. But it's vastly preferable to that work being done in the singleton itself. Cheers.
- lolc 6y agoIf governments are singletons, what are individuals? Maybe individuals are other objects? And now the individuals don't need to hold a reference to a government service object if they want to authenticate a message they get from another object. They just ask an identity provider object. But which one? Do individuals have a list of identity provider objects? But what if the sender is using another identity provider object they don't have? Ah! The message could contain a reference to an identity provider. But why should the receiving object trust it? Wouldn't it have to ask a government service whether the identity provider is to be trusted? No silly, we don't want a government reference! It could ask other individual objects whether they trust that identity provider object! Then cache the response? Help me out here, how does reputation work? Seriously though, you're just moving the problem around. Adding complexity. I mean, does an identity provider object still respond to messages when it's entered bankruptcy proceedings? If you're going to use an analogy, find one that informs.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
- Spooky23 6y agoUI is a program geared toward optimizing payment speed, with fraud looked at as something that is addressed via audit. Historically most fraud or bad reporting can be addressed by capturing future benefits. With the unprecedented load being placed in these systems, you’re going to see things like email and sms used more, which enables new paths for fraud. Pandemic unemployment is also geared towards gig economy workers, which again is a new frontier of fraud.
- sp332 6y agoIt removes a lot of friction if you police transactions after the fact. The only trick is to make transactions un-doable if they turn out to be fraudulent.