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Norway is a bit unusual in the way it handles ID. In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible data

Norway is a bit unusual in the way it handles ID. In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. We can argue all day about whether or not this is a good idea. But ultimately, it’s red lines we’ve drawn in the ground, and we’ve decided the trade off (such as identity theft) is worth it. In the U.K. at least, two World Wars have taught us to be wary of central government databases. We’ve seen how they can be abused people in power seeking to persecute part of a population, and even now we’re seeing it again with the U.K.s governments persecution of migrants. At least in the U.K. there are clear and simple guidelines for undoing the damage caused by identity theft. If a bank account or loan was opened in your name, the bank has to close it and write off any losses, and they should compensate you for the trouble. If the mess you around, there’s a number of Ombudsmen and regulators filled with people waiting to take the financial organisation to task and make them really regret their obstinance (I’ve been on the receiving end of their wrath, it’s not much fun). All of this creates very strong incentive for banks to prevent identity theft in the U.K. Unfortunately US consumer protection is lacking in comparison.

TomSwirly 5y ago
> In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. That's because the US and the UK are mentally ill cultures actually engaged in cultural and political suicide, so any practical, useful ideas like that are considered suspect. > Unfortunately US consumer protection is lacking in comparison. That's what happens when a whole country decided to mistrust their elected government and instead put their faith in corporations.
felixhammerl 5y ago
I find it strange that folks in the US and UK, given that these are championing modern dragnet surveillance, would recoil at the idea of government issued ID, thus forcing everyone to come up with error-prone workarounds enabling identity fraud. As a German, the idea of a bill proving anything at all is just wild.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > the idea of a bill proving anything at all is just wild. It’s a little more complicated than that. KYC requirements aren’t that lax, but there are multiple ways of proving ID. Proof of address in the form of a bill is just one of many components that are used in tandem to prove identity. Rest assured you can’t open a bank account with just a utility bill.
- zahllos 5y ago
  It makes no sense, but this: > In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. Is a very true statement. I am British but I live in Switzerland. If I want to do anything here, I send a copy of my residency permit. Bank statements wouldn't count. The UK actually did experiment with ID cards under the Blair/Brown government. I never had one, they were only issued in a trial area. There was a campaign against it: https://www.no2id.net/ https://www.no2id.net/ and the Cameron government (2010-brexit) scrapped the ID cards. The law was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006 . One of the main objections was to the national identity register, which would contain biometrics and not need the card in order to query. I'm on the fence about this. On the one hand, I'm not sure I trust the UK government to run any kind of IT scheme - they tend to pick huge consultancies, waste enormous sums of money and the result is late, 6x the price and doesn't actually work. Also the biometrics thing seems excessive. On the other hand, there are plenty of centralised databases already and if you ever want to drive a car, at least one of them prints out an ID-0 sized card with your photo on it. I would also, honestly, prefer an identity card over proving my identity with easily forged bank statements.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > n Switzerland. If I want to do anything here, I send a copy of my residency permit. Even that would not fly in Norway. You have to close the loop with a trusted intermediary like BankID by providing a notarised copy of your ID then you can log in to other institutions using BankID's log in service.
- 5y ago
bakuninsbart 5y ago
The UK and US are actually in the minority when it comes to compulsory national ID, albeit in good company. [0] I don't really have a value judgement on this, but would like to note, that both the UK and US have some of the most advanced surveillance states in the world, something that countries like China can only aspire to. If there is a red line drawn in the sand, you forgot to check your back. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card...
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > UK and US have some of the most advanced surveillance states in the world, something that countries like China can only aspire to. I think that’s a little hyperbolic, the U.K. and US certainly have large surveillance states built in secret out of the public eye and public scrutiny. But China is on a completely different level, if you don’t think that’s true, then research the prevalent use of facial recognition, and the extreme forms of surveillance applied to minority populations like Uighurs. Everything in the U.K. pales in comparison. Before you bring up the topic of CCTV and facial recognition trials, almost all CCTV in the U.K. is privately owned and inaccessible to the state without a warrant. It certainly isn’t networked into some super surveillance hub. And the facial recognition trials have been a complete farce, more a demonstration of police incompetence, than state surveillance.
  - bakuninsbart 5y ago
    China is indeed aspiring to copy western countries surveillance state, and taking it much further, but you are overestimating the infrastructure and data sharing already in place. The often discussed social credit system for example will start national operation soon, but in its absence, there is no national credit system. Ant Group was recently busted by regulators for not sharing credit data with the state [0] Facial recognition is very advanced in Xinjiang and first/second tier cities, but it is usually localized and data sharing between agencies seems very low. Life in China is full of legal grey zones, as is typical in developing countries, with things technically being not legal, but no one is there to enforce it. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/ant-group-to-share-consumer-credit-data-with-chinas-central-bank.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/ant-group-to-share-consumer-...
dolni 5y ago
> In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. You mean like the IRS? American here. Not having national ID is stupid. The government has an interest in knowing who it's citizens are. It doesn't have a legitimate interest in knowing where I am at all times, however.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  I don’t really have a super strong view either way. Here in the U.K. HMRC only knows about you if have a National Insurance Number (which isn’t mandatory) and get payed with PAYE (Pay As You Earn) where your employer collects your income tax on behalf of HMRC. You can avoid both by only accept payments in the form of cash and bank transfers without a proper payroll. Legally dubious, but there are people out there who actually do this. > The government has an interest in knowing who it's citizens are. The government has an interest in many things. Doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals share that interest and should capitulate. Personally I don’t think mandatory government ID is a requirement for a well run civilisation. Interestingly Norways Bank ID is an example of how you solve the issue of ID without making it mandatory (Norway doesn’t have a compulsory National ID and only got a National ID last year), and banks in the U.K. are experimenting with something similar built on top of Open Banking. Ultimately it’s down to the individual (in my view) to decide how much info they give to their government. But equally a government can request that info in exchange for government services, assuming that info is needed to provide that service.
  - dolni 5y ago
    > You can avoid both by only accept payments in the form of cash and bank transfers without a proper payroll. Legally dubious, but there are people out there who actually do this. Well there's the issue, isn't it? The government has to know your identity unless you're committing a crime. > The government has an interest in many things. Doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals share that interest and should capitulate. This isn't an argument against the government knowing who its citizens are. > Ultimately it’s down to the individual (in my view) to decide how much info they give to their government. But equally a government can request that info in exchange for government services, assuming that info is needed to provide that service. Why should we be providing any service to anybody without having any information about them? So one person can show up and collect the same benefits 10x at the expense of everyone else? At a BARE MINIMUM the government has to know your identity to determine your eligiblity to vote and to levy taxes. And both of those are so fundamental and important that I don't see how you can possibly argue that "shadow citizenry" is acceptable.
cycomanic 5y ago
The irony being that except for a register of addresses countries like the UK and the US have much more surveillance of their citizens than places like Sweden or Norway. The UK has about 1 surveillance camera per 11 citizens or so, I don't know numbers for Norway or Sweden, but from my own observations there are orders of magnitude less. So yes the UK government might not have your adress in a register, but they know where you sleep, go to work, with whom you talk etc.. Lets not even talk about the extensive spying by the 5 eyes.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Yeah, that stat is very misleading. Those cameras are all privately owned, mostly by shops. So unless you think there’s some great grocers government surveillance network (there isn’t, I’ve actually asked), then the government has no idea what your doing. To find out they would need to send a police officer with a warrant to every shop in the country to request the footage. Even then the footage is mostly crap (again I’ve actually seen what the police collect for investigations). To claim that the mere existence of a camera indicates a surveillance network is just intellectual dishonesty. No one would ever claim that very laptop camera is monitored by the government, but apparently supermarket cameras are?
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    That is not true, there are a lot of police/government owned CCTVs in public places in the UK. They even had some initiatives, were some of those had speakers attached so the person monitoring the camera calls out "unwanted" behaviour. I would say ignoring the fact that the US and UK have set up and are running (well the UK is really just tagging along) in the biggest worldwide surveillance operation on the planet is the intellectual dishonesty. Also I never said that the existence of a camera indicates surveillance, that's a straw man. However, the existence of automatic licence plate tracking is definitely an indication of surveillance. The wikipedia article on UK mass surveillance is quite enlightening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
    - 5y ago
multjoy 5y ago
>In the U.K. at least, two World Wars have taught us to be wary of central government databases. Speak for yourself. The anti-ID faction is basically hysterically scared of the idea of 'papers, please'. That's it, and that's why there is a specific statutory defence to not carrying your drivers licence while driving (the HORT1 'producer'), which itself has been made irrelevant by the fact that the PNC has access to the DVLA driver file database. We need, as a society, an ID document. In the UK, we end up making it up through the use of a passport/DL and a combination of various other official letters. Young adults end up carrying their passports just so they can prove their age to go drinking - do you not see that this is a problem? While I share concerns re biometrics etc, the idea that an ID card is somehow anti-democratic is ridiculous and, frankly, far fetched. >At least in the U.K. there are clear and simple guidelines for undoing the damage caused by identity theft. If a bank account or loan was opened in your name, the bank has to close it and write off any losses, and they should compensate you for the trouble. Which is fine for the consumer, if not a considerable amount of hassle, but is also the source of much financial loss. Fraud, in the UK, takes place on an industrial scale.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > the idea that an ID card is somehow anti-democratic is ridiculous I don't think anyone invoked the spectre of 'democracy'. A common fear of ID cards is that, once everyone is supposed to own one, some government comes along and decrees that you must carry one at all times. Then the police are given powers to arrest anyone not carrying ID; and finally, to stop and search anyone on the suspicion that they are not carrying ID. Those fears are not "hysterical". Also: the novel 1981 was written about a future UK.
  - multjoy 5y ago
    >A common fear of ID cards is that, once everyone is supposed to own one, some government comes along and decrees that you must carry one at all times. Then the police are given powers to arrest anyone not carrying ID; and finally, to stop and search anyone on the suspicion that they are not carrying ID. And can you point towards a European country that isn't in the grip of a totalitarian state where this currently happens? It's typical British exceptionalism, like unarmed police and Brexit. We'll massively inconvenience ourselves out of principle, while sensible populations look on in bemusement. >Also: the novel 1981 was written about a future UK. I'll assume that you mean 1984, which is fiction. Orwell, after all, was English and you would expect him to write political allegories based here.
ksec 5y ago
> the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. >In the U.K. at least, two World Wars have taught us to be wary of central government databases. Well really it is a little more than a sort of Driving License. We might get away with it by calling it EuroClub Express.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  For those that haven’t seen Yes, Minister. https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE
xorcist 5y ago
> Norway is a bit unusual in the way it handles ID No, it is the US and the UK which is a bit unusual in the way it handles government ID. A functioning democratic government needs to know who is a citizen and who is not, in order to guarantee their citizen's rights. It may be a right to education, owning property and if not anything else then at least the basic right to vote. All this require identity. You can not show up at the doorstep of the UK and demand a pension or unemployment benefits. You need to identify as a citizen with the right to this. You can not show up at the bank and demand money from an arbitrary account. You need to identify as the legitimate owner. > We’ve seen how they can be abused people in power seeking to persecute part of a population That's not it. All this information is available in government databases. It must be, and it is. It's just the identification that's handled differently in a select few countries. It's not as if these countries have stronger data protection laws, to explain the weaker forms of identification. In fact, you'd be forgiven to think it is the other way around. Somehow it is only society itself which should use weak forms of identification, the same objections are not raised against certificates and two factor authentication by banks. Having spend some time in one of the mentioned countries a number of years ago, my impression was that it is mostly a matter that this is a symbolic question of having a strong government. Contrary to popular belief, there are influential forces that desires an ineffective government, to bolster political ideas about the economy. Nowhere is this more obvious than in identification and taxation, perhaps the two most important mechanism of a modern Western democracy. This is probably not a coincidence.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > A functioning democratic government needs to know who is a citizen and who is not, Citizenship is not the point. I am not a Norwegian citizen. But I still participate in the national ID system.

TomSwirly 5y ago

> In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. That's because the US and the UK are mentally ill cultures actually engaged in cultural and political suicide, so any practical, useful ideas like that are considered suspect. > Unfortunately US consumer protection is lacking in comparison. That's what happens when a whole country decided to mistrust their elected government and instead put their faith in corporations.

felixhammerl 5y ago

I find it strange that folks in the US and UK, given that these are championing modern dragnet surveillance, would recoil at the idea of government issued ID, thus forcing everyone to come up with error-prone workarounds enabling identity fraud. As a German, the idea of a bill proving anything at all is just wild.

avianlyric 5y ago
> the idea of a bill proving anything at all is just wild. It’s a little more complicated than that. KYC requirements aren’t that lax, but there are multiple ways of proving ID. Proof of address in the form of a bill is just one of many components that are used in tandem to prove identity. Rest assured you can’t open a bank account with just a utility bill.
zahllos 5y ago
It makes no sense, but this: > In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. Is a very true statement. I am British but I live in Switzerland. If I want to do anything here, I send a copy of my residency permit. Bank statements wouldn't count. The UK actually did experiment with ID cards under the Blair/Brown government. I never had one, they were only issued in a trial area. There was a campaign against it: https://www.no2id.net/ https://www.no2id.net/ and the Cameron government (2010-brexit) scrapped the ID cards. The law was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006 . One of the main objections was to the national identity register, which would contain biometrics and not need the card in order to query. I'm on the fence about this. On the one hand, I'm not sure I trust the UK government to run any kind of IT scheme - they tend to pick huge consultancies, waste enormous sums of money and the result is late, 6x the price and doesn't actually work. Also the biometrics thing seems excessive. On the other hand, there are plenty of centralised databases already and if you ever want to drive a car, at least one of them prints out an ID-0 sized card with your photo on it. I would also, honestly, prefer an identity card over proving my identity with easily forged bank statements.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > n Switzerland. If I want to do anything here, I send a copy of my residency permit. Even that would not fly in Norway. You have to close the loop with a trusted intermediary like BankID by providing a notarised copy of your ID then you can log in to other institutions using BankID's log in service.
5y ago

bakuninsbart 5y ago

The UK and US are actually in the minority when it comes to compulsory national ID, albeit in good company. [0] I don't really have a value judgement on this, but would like to note, that both the UK and US have some of the most advanced surveillance states in the world, something that countries like China can only aspire to. If there is a red line drawn in the sand, you forgot to check your back. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card...

avianlyric 5y ago
> UK and US have some of the most advanced surveillance states in the world, something that countries like China can only aspire to. I think that’s a little hyperbolic, the U.K. and US certainly have large surveillance states built in secret out of the public eye and public scrutiny. But China is on a completely different level, if you don’t think that’s true, then research the prevalent use of facial recognition, and the extreme forms of surveillance applied to minority populations like Uighurs. Everything in the U.K. pales in comparison. Before you bring up the topic of CCTV and facial recognition trials, almost all CCTV in the U.K. is privately owned and inaccessible to the state without a warrant. It certainly isn’t networked into some super surveillance hub. And the facial recognition trials have been a complete farce, more a demonstration of police incompetence, than state surveillance.
- bakuninsbart 5y ago
  China is indeed aspiring to copy western countries surveillance state, and taking it much further, but you are overestimating the infrastructure and data sharing already in place. The often discussed social credit system for example will start national operation soon, but in its absence, there is no national credit system. Ant Group was recently busted by regulators for not sharing credit data with the state [0] Facial recognition is very advanced in Xinjiang and first/second tier cities, but it is usually localized and data sharing between agencies seems very low. Life in China is full of legal grey zones, as is typical in developing countries, with things technically being not legal, but no one is there to enforce it. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/ant-group-to-share-consumer-credit-data-with-chinas-central-bank.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/ant-group-to-share-consumer-...

dolni 5y ago

> In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. You mean like the IRS? American here. Not having national ID is stupid. The government has an interest in knowing who it's citizens are. It doesn't have a legitimate interest in knowing where I am at all times, however.

avianlyric 5y ago
I don’t really have a super strong view either way. Here in the U.K. HMRC only knows about you if have a National Insurance Number (which isn’t mandatory) and get payed with PAYE (Pay As You Earn) where your employer collects your income tax on behalf of HMRC. You can avoid both by only accept payments in the form of cash and bank transfers without a proper payroll. Legally dubious, but there are people out there who actually do this. > The government has an interest in knowing who it's citizens are. The government has an interest in many things. Doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals share that interest and should capitulate. Personally I don’t think mandatory government ID is a requirement for a well run civilisation. Interestingly Norways Bank ID is an example of how you solve the issue of ID without making it mandatory (Norway doesn’t have a compulsory National ID and only got a National ID last year), and banks in the U.K. are experimenting with something similar built on top of Open Banking. Ultimately it’s down to the individual (in my view) to decide how much info they give to their government. But equally a government can request that info in exchange for government services, assuming that info is needed to provide that service.
- dolni 5y ago
  > You can avoid both by only accept payments in the form of cash and bank transfers without a proper payroll. Legally dubious, but there are people out there who actually do this. Well there's the issue, isn't it? The government has to know your identity unless you're committing a crime. > The government has an interest in many things. Doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals share that interest and should capitulate. This isn't an argument against the government knowing who its citizens are. > Ultimately it’s down to the individual (in my view) to decide how much info they give to their government. But equally a government can request that info in exchange for government services, assuming that info is needed to provide that service. Why should we be providing any service to anybody without having any information about them? So one person can show up and collect the same benefits 10x at the expense of everyone else? At a BARE MINIMUM the government has to know your identity to determine your eligiblity to vote and to levy taxes. And both of those are so fundamental and important that I don't see how you can possibly argue that "shadow citizenry" is acceptable.

cycomanic 5y ago

The irony being that except for a register of addresses countries like the UK and the US have much more surveillance of their citizens than places like Sweden or Norway. The UK has about 1 surveillance camera per 11 citizens or so, I don't know numbers for Norway or Sweden, but from my own observations there are orders of magnitude less. So yes the UK government might not have your adress in a register, but they know where you sleep, go to work, with whom you talk etc.. Lets not even talk about the extensive spying by the 5 eyes.

avianlyric 5y ago
Yeah, that stat is very misleading. Those cameras are all privately owned, mostly by shops. So unless you think there’s some great grocers government surveillance network (there isn’t, I’ve actually asked), then the government has no idea what your doing. To find out they would need to send a police officer with a warrant to every shop in the country to request the footage. Even then the footage is mostly crap (again I’ve actually seen what the police collect for investigations). To claim that the mere existence of a camera indicates a surveillance network is just intellectual dishonesty. No one would ever claim that very laptop camera is monitored by the government, but apparently supermarket cameras are?
- cycomanic 5y ago
  That is not true, there are a lot of police/government owned CCTVs in public places in the UK. They even had some initiatives, were some of those had speakers attached so the person monitoring the camera calls out "unwanted" behaviour. I would say ignoring the fact that the US and UK have set up and are running (well the UK is really just tagging along) in the biggest worldwide surveillance operation on the planet is the intellectual dishonesty. Also I never said that the existence of a camera indicates surveillance, that's a straw man. However, the existence of automatic licence plate tracking is definitely an indication of surveillance. The wikipedia article on UK mass surveillance is quite enlightening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
  - 5y ago

multjoy 5y ago

>In the U.K. at least, two World Wars have taught us to be wary of central government databases. Speak for yourself. The anti-ID faction is basically hysterically scared of the idea of 'papers, please'. That's it, and that's why there is a specific statutory defence to not carrying your drivers licence while driving (the HORT1 'producer'), which itself has been made irrelevant by the fact that the PNC has access to the DVLA driver file database. We need, as a society, an ID document. In the UK, we end up making it up through the use of a passport/DL and a combination of various other official letters. Young adults end up carrying their passports just so they can prove their age to go drinking - do you not see that this is a problem? While I share concerns re biometrics etc, the idea that an ID card is somehow anti-democratic is ridiculous and, frankly, far fetched. >At least in the U.K. there are clear and simple guidelines for undoing the damage caused by identity theft. If a bank account or loan was opened in your name, the bank has to close it and write off any losses, and they should compensate you for the trouble. Which is fine for the consumer, if not a considerable amount of hassle, but is also the source of much financial loss. Fraud, in the UK, takes place on an industrial scale.

denton-scratch 5y ago
> the idea that an ID card is somehow anti-democratic is ridiculous I don't think anyone invoked the spectre of 'democracy'. A common fear of ID cards is that, once everyone is supposed to own one, some government comes along and decrees that you must carry one at all times. Then the police are given powers to arrest anyone not carrying ID; and finally, to stop and search anyone on the suspicion that they are not carrying ID. Those fears are not "hysterical". Also: the novel 1981 was written about a future UK.
- multjoy 5y ago
  >A common fear of ID cards is that, once everyone is supposed to own one, some government comes along and decrees that you must carry one at all times. Then the police are given powers to arrest anyone not carrying ID; and finally, to stop and search anyone on the suspicion that they are not carrying ID. And can you point towards a European country that isn't in the grip of a totalitarian state where this currently happens? It's typical British exceptionalism, like unarmed police and Brexit. We'll massively inconvenience ourselves out of principle, while sensible populations look on in bemusement. >Also: the novel 1981 was written about a future UK. I'll assume that you mean 1984, which is fiction. Orwell, after all, was English and you would expect him to write political allegories based here.

ksec 5y ago

> the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide. >In the U.K. at least, two World Wars have taught us to be wary of central government databases. Well really it is a little more than a sort of Driving License. We might get away with it by calling it EuroClub Express.

avianlyric 5y ago
For those that haven’t seen Yes, Minister. https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE

xorcist 5y ago

> Norway is a bit unusual in the way it handles ID No, it is the US and the UK which is a bit unusual in the way it handles government ID. A functioning democratic government needs to know who is a citizen and who is not, in order to guarantee their citizen's rights. It may be a right to education, owning property and if not anything else then at least the basic right to vote. All this require identity. You can not show up at the doorstep of the UK and demand a pension or unemployment benefits. You need to identify as a citizen with the right to this. You can not show up at the bank and demand money from an arbitrary account. You need to identify as the legitimate owner. > We’ve seen how they can be abused people in power seeking to persecute part of a population That's not it. All this information is available in government databases. It must be, and it is. It's just the identification that's handled differently in a select few countries. It's not as if these countries have stronger data protection laws, to explain the weaker forms of identification. In fact, you'd be forgiven to think it is the other way around. Somehow it is only society itself which should use weak forms of identification, the same objections are not raised against certificates and two factor authentication by banks. Having spend some time in one of the mentioned countries a number of years ago, my impression was that it is mostly a matter that this is a symbolic question of having a strong government. Contrary to popular belief, there are influential forces that desires an ineffective government, to bolster political ideas about the economy. Nowhere is this more obvious than in identification and taxation, perhaps the two most important mechanism of a modern Western democracy. This is probably not a coincidence.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> A functioning democratic government needs to know who is a citizen and who is not, Citizenship is not the point. I am not a Norwegian citizen. But I still participate in the national ID system.