6 ms·

Four States Are Sharing Driver's License Info to Help Find Out Who's a Citizen

35 points by erentz 6y ago

Rebelgecko 6y ago
Is this data sharing a consequence of RealID, or were these requests made independently of that?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  This is independent of RealID and a consequence of the census department not asking citizenship questions during the most recent 2020 census. New York state declined, and is having Global Entry signups from that state rejected by DHS [1]. Edit: @crooked-v: Agreed, the administration found a straightforward way to the data other than via the census dept (it boggles the mind that people thought the federal government wouldn’t or couldn’t aggregate this data, remember when they withheld federal highway dollars to extort states into raising the drinking age?). Throttled by HN, can’t reply directly to your comment. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/dhs-new-york-global-entry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/dhs-new-york-...
  - crooked-v 6y ago
    > a consequence of the census department not asking citizenship questions The purpose of the US Census has never been to determine citizenship. It's also fundamentally useless for that purpose, as not only is it entirely self-reported data, but it also cannot legally be accessed by other parts of the government until 72 years after that census is taken.
    - minerjoe 6y ago
      "Legally" But the power stucture doesn't seem to care very much about law. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03/secret-use-of-census-info-helped-send-japanese-americans-to-internment-camps-in-wwii/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...
    - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      It has to be accessible to the people drawing gerrymandered districts. Exfiltrating that is childs play.
    - hnlurker 6y ago
      Wrong. See 14A, S2. Gender and citizenship are both constitutionally required data points for census.
oneplane 6y ago
WHy do they not have a normal citizen identity like developed countries all over the world? It's not like they don't want or need it, but now they are taking an unreliable and costly route which ultimately gets a similar (but substandard) result.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  Republicans have a long history of torpedoing attempts at low-cost or free national ID card programs, nominally for privacy reasons, but in practice because it would eliminate piecemeal state-level voter suppression based on ID availability.
  - Aloha 6y ago
    I'm 37, and politically active, I'm generally slightly left of center too, I can't think of a single proposed program for a National ID, much less one scuttled by Republicans.
    - nipponese 6y ago
      Real ID Act of 2005
      - Aloha 6y ago
        This was both passed abs didn't create a National ID, not only that, passing it was a Bush administration priority.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    That’s great that you can read their minds so easily.
- mindslight 6y ago
  There isn't enough political will to include restrictions against abuse by private actors (eg what happened to social security numbers and license plates), so a system that was more technically competent would result in increased commercial surveillance and control.
gumby 6y ago
I rarely carry any ID as it seems offensive to have to justify my existence. People who ask for ID usually find a way to do business with me without it. I do have a driver’s license which I leave in my gf’s car in case I have to, you know, drive.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  What were you being asked to present your ID for other than driving (or alcohol if younger) in the first place?
  - gumby 6y ago
    People ask all the time: to enter certain buildings, when using a credit card (in almost every case that’s a violation of the card-merchant agreement). Entering bars and clubs or picking up liquor or some prescriptions (not even my prescriptions!). For many bars and clubs and at, say Walgreens for liquor they don’t merely look but swipe...and in the bars the info is collected by the company that makes the swipe system (learned of this from a HN post, though I could of guessed). What business is it of theirs where I go? I never hassle anyone — they didn’t make the rule. I just say I don’t have one and invariably to date (except entering a federal court house) I’ve been fine. This includes flying. It’ll be interesting to see if that “real ID” rubbish does finally get enforced. All the previous deadlines have been punted.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  Car locks aren't actually serious locks. Aren't you at least somewhat concerned that a car theft would escalate to an identity theft? Also, I would assume that it may be possible to somehow locate SHW's car info and then find the actual car.
  - gumby 6y ago
    Not at all. I have to have the license when I drive, along with other documents so I just keep it with the insurance and registration in the pouch with the manual. Much safer than being stopped by the cops When driving and not being able to produce it. Anyway, these days ID theft is done wholesale, not one person at a time. I have other defenses against that. And someone who wanted my DL info could simply find it online. Who cares about car locks: people will just break the glass and grab anything that looks worth taking. You need to think of the risk. My house has a Medeco key system (slightly modified outside the Medeco license). It’s not to keep people from breaking in (you could just throw a brick through a window there too) — it’s to prevent key copying.
motohagiography 6y ago
We have this in Canada because health care is provincially funded, and registered, but people have multiple residences across the country. Online registration renewal services recently include geo-ip checks for whether you are renewing your ID/cards from an IP address in the province. (give your parents a heads up if this affects them, they should do their renewals when they are in town.) There is also the tax question of whether your house is your primary residence, and when you sell it it's a question of whether you pay capital gains on the sale based on whether you in fact live there or not. This is one of those cases where technology meets policy.
davmar 6y ago
this is about shaping the electorate and finding more people to deport. nothing good ever comes from this admin.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  People who aren't here legally aren't part of the electorate though.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    The parent post reads as an 'and' of two separate purposes. Shaping the electorate is partially achieved here by eliminating citizens who can't prove their citizenship to a bar set by the federal government and historically in the US politicians set the bar very high for their own purposes. Many people either don't have a birth certificate (records were lost in a government building fire, etc) or don't have access to their certificate (getting a copy requires driving 4 hours to city hall and paying money, that sort of thing). They may already have a state ID which is enough to drive and get to work and vote, but any new system requires them to go through all the expensive hassle the previous ID took, plus potentially more. If you dig around you can find many stories of people who are provably citizens but had to jump through dozens of hoops to get legal ID, or failed to get it entirely because the system is rigged against them. We saw this impact with the rollout of voter ID laws and their uneven requirements, in some cases people simply could not acquire "acceptable" ID for voting purposes even though they were legally entitled to vote.
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      Those people who have trouble producing acceptable documentation to the state, but are citizens, generally aren't being deported though. And citizens who can't prove their identity to vote certainly aren't having their non-existent drivers license shared by states. So what part of the events described in the article are about "shaping the electorate"?
      - davmar 6y ago
gumby 6y ago
I’m frankly astonished that “driving licenses” have so much info in them. If I need to attest to my ability to drive (which is quite a reasonable thing to require of people while they drive), all that is needed is photograph or fingerprint, expiration date, class of qualification and any restriction (such as glasses). None of the other info has anything to do with driving.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Driver’s Licenses are effectively all-purpose state (or national, in the case of REAL ID-compliant ones) ID documents with driving-related endorsements.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
That's just great, when does Trump send out his secret police to have them removed from Trumphistan?

35 points by erentz 6y ago

Rebelgecko 6y ago

Is this data sharing a consequence of RealID, or were these requests made independently of that?

toomuchtodo 6y ago
This is independent of RealID and a consequence of the census department not asking citizenship questions during the most recent 2020 census. New York state declined, and is having Global Entry signups from that state rejected by DHS [1]. Edit: @crooked-v: Agreed, the administration found a straightforward way to the data other than via the census dept (it boggles the mind that people thought the federal government wouldn’t or couldn’t aggregate this data, remember when they withheld federal highway dollars to extort states into raising the drinking age?). Throttled by HN, can’t reply directly to your comment. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/dhs-new-york-global-entry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/dhs-new-york-...
- crooked-v 6y ago
  > a consequence of the census department not asking citizenship questions The purpose of the US Census has never been to determine citizenship. It's also fundamentally useless for that purpose, as not only is it entirely self-reported data, but it also cannot legally be accessed by other parts of the government until 72 years after that census is taken.
  - minerjoe 6y ago
    "Legally" But the power stucture doesn't seem to care very much about law. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03/secret-use-of-census-info-helped-send-japanese-americans-to-internment-camps-in-wwii/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    It has to be accessible to the people drawing gerrymandered districts. Exfiltrating that is childs play.
  - hnlurker 6y ago
    Wrong. See 14A, S2. Gender and citizenship are both constitutionally required data points for census.

oneplane 6y ago

WHy do they not have a normal citizen identity like developed countries all over the world? It's not like they don't want or need it, but now they are taking an unreliable and costly route which ultimately gets a similar (but substandard) result.

crooked-v 6y ago
Republicans have a long history of torpedoing attempts at low-cost or free national ID card programs, nominally for privacy reasons, but in practice because it would eliminate piecemeal state-level voter suppression based on ID availability.
- Aloha 6y ago
  I'm 37, and politically active, I'm generally slightly left of center too, I can't think of a single proposed program for a National ID, much less one scuttled by Republicans.
  - nipponese 6y ago
    Real ID Act of 2005
    - Aloha 6y ago
      This was both passed abs didn't create a National ID, not only that, passing it was a Bush administration priority.
- beervirus 6y ago
  That’s great that you can read their minds so easily.
mindslight 6y ago
There isn't enough political will to include restrictions against abuse by private actors (eg what happened to social security numbers and license plates), so a system that was more technically competent would result in increased commercial surveillance and control.

gumby 6y ago

I rarely carry any ID as it seems offensive to have to justify my existence. People who ask for ID usually find a way to do business with me without it. I do have a driver’s license which I leave in my gf’s car in case I have to, you know, drive.

zamadatix 6y ago
What were you being asked to present your ID for other than driving (or alcohol if younger) in the first place?
- gumby 6y ago
  People ask all the time: to enter certain buildings, when using a credit card (in almost every case that’s a violation of the card-merchant agreement). Entering bars and clubs or picking up liquor or some prescriptions (not even my prescriptions!). For many bars and clubs and at, say Walgreens for liquor they don’t merely look but swipe...and in the bars the info is collected by the company that makes the swipe system (learned of this from a HN post, though I could of guessed). What business is it of theirs where I go? I never hassle anyone — they didn’t make the rule. I just say I don’t have one and invariably to date (except entering a federal court house) I’ve been fine. This includes flying. It’ll be interesting to see if that “real ID” rubbish does finally get enforced. All the previous deadlines have been punted.
NullPrefix 6y ago
Car locks aren't actually serious locks. Aren't you at least somewhat concerned that a car theft would escalate to an identity theft? Also, I would assume that it may be possible to somehow locate SHW's car info and then find the actual car.
- gumby 6y ago
  Not at all. I have to have the license when I drive, along with other documents so I just keep it with the insurance and registration in the pouch with the manual. Much safer than being stopped by the cops When driving and not being able to produce it. Anyway, these days ID theft is done wholesale, not one person at a time. I have other defenses against that. And someone who wanted my DL info could simply find it online. Who cares about car locks: people will just break the glass and grab anything that looks worth taking. You need to think of the risk. My house has a Medeco key system (slightly modified outside the Medeco license). It’s not to keep people from breaking in (you could just throw a brick through a window there too) — it’s to prevent key copying.

motohagiography 6y ago

We have this in Canada because health care is provincially funded, and registered, but people have multiple residences across the country. Online registration renewal services recently include geo-ip checks for whether you are renewing your ID/cards from an IP address in the province. (give your parents a heads up if this affects them, they should do their renewals when they are in town.) There is also the tax question of whether your house is your primary residence, and when you sell it it's a question of whether you pay capital gains on the sale based on whether you in fact live there or not. This is one of those cases where technology meets policy.

davmar 6y ago

this is about shaping the electorate and finding more people to deport. nothing good ever comes from this admin.

oh_sigh 6y ago
People who aren't here legally aren't part of the electorate though.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  The parent post reads as an 'and' of two separate purposes. Shaping the electorate is partially achieved here by eliminating citizens who can't prove their citizenship to a bar set by the federal government and historically in the US politicians set the bar very high for their own purposes. Many people either don't have a birth certificate (records were lost in a government building fire, etc) or don't have access to their certificate (getting a copy requires driving 4 hours to city hall and paying money, that sort of thing). They may already have a state ID which is enough to drive and get to work and vote, but any new system requires them to go through all the expensive hassle the previous ID took, plus potentially more. If you dig around you can find many stories of people who are provably citizens but had to jump through dozens of hoops to get legal ID, or failed to get it entirely because the system is rigged against them. We saw this impact with the rollout of voter ID laws and their uneven requirements, in some cases people simply could not acquire "acceptable" ID for voting purposes even though they were legally entitled to vote.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    Those people who have trouble producing acceptable documentation to the state, but are citizens, generally aren't being deported though. And citizens who can't prove their identity to vote certainly aren't having their non-existent drivers license shared by states. So what part of the events described in the article are about "shaping the electorate"?
    - davmar 6y ago

gumby 6y ago

I’m frankly astonished that “driving licenses” have so much info in them. If I need to attest to my ability to drive (which is quite a reasonable thing to require of people while they drive), all that is needed is photograph or fingerprint, expiration date, class of qualification and any restriction (such as glasses). None of the other info has anything to do with driving.

dragonwriter 6y ago
Driver’s Licenses are effectively all-purpose state (or national, in the case of REAL ID-compliant ones) ID documents with driving-related endorsements.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

That's just great, when does Trump send out his secret police to have them removed from Trumphistan?