23 ms·

Yes, they also do this for ID's, and for voter ID's. It's specifically created to prevent people whom don't have only 1 permanent address,with paper billing, be

Yes, they also do this for ID's, and for voter ID's. It's specifically created to prevent people whom don't have only 1 permanent address,with paper billing, being able to live their daily lives. I had to go to a local county courthouse 4 times to get a "realid" and to renew a driver's license. I had to call all sorts of people to get printed statements sent to me. It's incredibly ridiculous, I would call it completely contrary to the ethos of the United States, even. That as a citizen with all these forms of ID I still cannot readily operate as a citizen in my own country.

kube-system 5y ago
The point is to authenticate residency, and while it’s not a great system, there also isn’t any better alternatives.
- ginko 5y ago
  >there also isn’t any better alternatives. Of course there is. It's having a central resident registry like is common in most countries other than the US.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    That is not an alternative for the DMV. There is no central registry and they can't create one.
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > The point is to authenticate residency, and while it’s not a great system, there also isn’t any better alternatives. "No-one important enough is bothered, so we haven't had to try to fix it" is a far cry from "there [aren't] any better alternatives". We're HN; that's not the hacker ethos.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    RealID requirements were written in the past and exist in the present. While it would be great to have another solution, one doesn’t exist. Happy to hear a proposal, however. I, personally, haven’t been able to come up with a more equitable idea.
- yason 5y ago
  When you move to a new state, I suppose you don't fill in a bunch of forms to register yourself as a resident in the state then? So that when DMV and other institutions ask for residency they could just check back in the states records (or have you bring a copy of the state's residency certificate) ? The state surely must know how to tax you, and thus they need to know who you are and that you're a resident in the state... It seems the information inevitably must be there already so why try to imitate that with a bunch of random tokens such as bills sent to an address where they could go straight to the source? Just curious.
  - cdcarter 5y ago
    In the US, no, you don't need to fill out any forms to register yourself as a resident. The closest is probably moving your drivers license registration, which many people wait years to do after moving. Other than that, you generally prove residency by showing (as GP mentioned) bills mailed to you, or a copy of your lease. You're responsible for filing your own state taxes based on when/how/where you worked.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      > The closest is probably moving your drivers license registration, which many people wait years to do after moving. Most states do require by law that you do this in a very short period of time after moving. (Although yes, it is not uncommon for people to violate this)
      - SamBam 5y ago
        Only if you have a driving license and plan on driving. I agree, it's quite odd that you never officially register as a resident of the state, but I guess it's part of the US's aversion to "papers please."
        loeg 5y ago
        Or voting. You typically register with the secretary of state to vote.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  But given how easy it is to foil, I don't understand what it "authenticates". If you wanted to truly authenticate residency or at the very least prove that someone has access to the mailbox, sending them a one-time auth code per mail would be a better idea rather than relying on third-party services where people may use paperless billing for convenience.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I explicitly said it was not good authentication. :) Mailing someone a code would be more secure but, to the parents point, would be even more onerous of a process for people to comply with. Some comments above suggested above that this is an intentionally burdensome process, but to the contrary, bringing in a bill is one of the least burdensome ways to authenticate residency.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      > bringing in a bill is one of the least burdensome ways to authenticate residency My problem with this is how is the recipient supposed to authenticate said bill. Now we're talking about bringing a paper bill vs a printed one (or "faking" a paper bill by creasing/folding the printed one), but the real threat is fraudsters completely making up a fake bill to begin with. Unless the recipient has a relationship with the company that issues the bills, there is no way for them to verify whether the bill is real in the first place, making the whole endeavor pointless and only inconveniencing legitimate users.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Yes. There’s no question that a bill is a weak piece of evidence for residency. I am sure it only prevents low-effort or low-skill fraudsters, or casual fibs. The latter is probably where they get the most utility out of these requirements.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Why do you need to authenticate it in the first place? If people are discovered lying somehow, send them to jail. Otherwise, trust that people will be honest. Fraud is not nearly the problem people think it is...
- devwastaken 5y ago
  If all this was for is to ensure you live at an address then the local government can offer a number of solutions to that. If they want mail, they can simply mail you a unique qr code which you could then scan and complete the process entirely online. Or at a minimum bring physically to an office. A utility bill doesn't require proof of residency to get. Neither does a credit card statement. Infact if I were creative I could say I live anywhere and provide false documents of that. It is the legitimate use of this system that is difficult, not illigitimate use. The system is not designed to be secure or to ensure residency, that's not it's purpose. Its purpose is to create further government control to suppress citizens rights to operate freeley in their own country. Specifically, to target low income individuals. These people creating the policies are not the same people whom are affected by them. If I am U.S. born I have a right to operate in certain capacities as a citizen. Voting, owning land, and working are all rights unalienable. The fact this is not currently true is proof of the federal fascism we live in.
  - jbaber 5y ago
    I agree with everything you're saying, but disagree with the reason. The US federal government has to be too loose about keeping track of citizens specifically to avoid looking too fascist. One of your many American rights is to have no ID at all. Protecting that right for two dozen people makes everything extremely complicated for the rest of us.
    - devwastaken 5y ago
      The federal government is not too loose in tracking citizens, and you cannot effectively operate in the U.S. without I.D of some form. Birth certificates and tax ID's are necessary for everything from school to work. Infact those that forgo it originally struggle as adults heavily to get those documents later, if at all.
      - Jolter 5y ago
        It’s probably true that you can’t operate properly without an ID, and yet the US government is specifically avoiding the one necessary prerequisite to having reliable and convenient IDs: a complete list of its citizens, with place of residence and a mandatory assigned unique identifier. It fuck people coming and going. You can’t get an ID if you don’t have a place of residence, and yet you can’t just go about your business without an ID.
- queuebert 5y ago
  They could pay Google and Apple to tell them where you sleep, based on your phone GPS anyway.
- yhd8i3q7686i 5y ago
  Requiring people to print out a paper and fold it as if it had been in an envelope doesn't authenticate anything but access to a printer and some imagination. Just removing the requirement would be a better alternative.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I am referring to the requirement to produce a utility bill. Not the silly front-line bureaucratic interpretative variations thereof.
- sneak 5y ago
  That's false. Many other countries have implemented simpler, more accurate, and less discriminatory systems.
radicaldreamer 5y ago
It's also designed to make sure that poorer people who don't have stable, permanent housing have a tough time
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  You're misguided if you think there is any sort of design behind this. This is just bureaucracy expanding and slowly taking over a working nation. The unproductive members of society slowly winning over the productive ones and setting up rules to justify their comfortable existence. The same happened in most countries and won't die until the government itself dies (because a government never makes itself smaller) and a new society replaces it.
- lemax 5y ago
  I wouldn't say it's intentionally designed to do this, but that it's a consequence. There's no good reason anyone would intentionally want to keep the poor poor, it's just bad design.
  - scarby2 5y ago
    > There's no good reason anyone would intentionally want to keep the poor poor, it's just bad design. We need people to feel pressured into doing shitty jobs, if the poor get less poor maybe they won't flip burgers for minimum wage.
    - danhorner 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
    - solveit 5y ago
      Who is "We" and how do they coordinate this? Poverty traps are emergent phenomena, not a conspiracy (Usually. Occasionally governments intentionally wage "war" on a group of people, but this is not the typical case.).
varenc 5y ago
As a counterpoint, I had no problem using a printed cell phone bill as evidence of residency at a California DMV.
- alar44 5y ago
  You could give the cellphone company any damn address you want is the point. It proves nothing.
djrogers 5y ago
I and my son both got RealIDs in California this year with printed bills after submitting the PDF versions online without any problem.
president 5y ago
Isn't this just a consequence of inefficient government? These people don't get paid enough to care about their job to make a great experience for people. My friends working in government all say it's near impossible to get fired. It's why reasonable people try to not give more power to the government than they should.
eatbitseveryday 5y ago
> I had to go to a local county courthouse 4 times to get a "realid" and to renew a driver's license. If you have a passport... no need for a "real ID" driver license. If you don't like having to carry that big book around, other solutions include a federal passport card (USD 65) [1]. Same size, so fits in wallet. Bonus is it does not have my address on it, nor does it show what state I live in. If you're a legal non-citizen, you can use the passport of your home country (which you're required to have in the USA, and should carry with you when you travel anyway). [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...

kube-system 5y ago

The point is to authenticate residency, and while it’s not a great system, there also isn’t any better alternatives.

ginko 5y ago
>there also isn’t any better alternatives. Of course there is. It's having a central resident registry like is common in most countries other than the US.
- kube-system 5y ago
  That is not an alternative for the DMV. There is no central registry and they can't create one.
JadeNB 5y ago
> The point is to authenticate residency, and while it’s not a great system, there also isn’t any better alternatives. "No-one important enough is bothered, so we haven't had to try to fix it" is a far cry from "there [aren't] any better alternatives". We're HN; that's not the hacker ethos.
- kube-system 5y ago
  RealID requirements were written in the past and exist in the present. While it would be great to have another solution, one doesn’t exist. Happy to hear a proposal, however. I, personally, haven’t been able to come up with a more equitable idea.
yason 5y ago
When you move to a new state, I suppose you don't fill in a bunch of forms to register yourself as a resident in the state then? So that when DMV and other institutions ask for residency they could just check back in the states records (or have you bring a copy of the state's residency certificate) ? The state surely must know how to tax you, and thus they need to know who you are and that you're a resident in the state... It seems the information inevitably must be there already so why try to imitate that with a bunch of random tokens such as bills sent to an address where they could go straight to the source? Just curious.
- cdcarter 5y ago
  In the US, no, you don't need to fill out any forms to register yourself as a resident. The closest is probably moving your drivers license registration, which many people wait years to do after moving. Other than that, you generally prove residency by showing (as GP mentioned) bills mailed to you, or a copy of your lease. You're responsible for filing your own state taxes based on when/how/where you worked.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    > The closest is probably moving your drivers license registration, which many people wait years to do after moving. Most states do require by law that you do this in a very short period of time after moving. (Although yes, it is not uncommon for people to violate this)
    - SamBam 5y ago
      Only if you have a driving license and plan on driving. I agree, it's quite odd that you never officially register as a resident of the state, but I guess it's part of the US's aversion to "papers please."
      - loeg 5y ago
        Or voting. You typically register with the secretary of state to vote.
Nextgrid 5y ago
But given how easy it is to foil, I don't understand what it "authenticates". If you wanted to truly authenticate residency or at the very least prove that someone has access to the mailbox, sending them a one-time auth code per mail would be a better idea rather than relying on third-party services where people may use paperless billing for convenience.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I explicitly said it was not good authentication. :) Mailing someone a code would be more secure but, to the parents point, would be even more onerous of a process for people to comply with. Some comments above suggested above that this is an intentionally burdensome process, but to the contrary, bringing in a bill is one of the least burdensome ways to authenticate residency.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > bringing in a bill is one of the least burdensome ways to authenticate residency My problem with this is how is the recipient supposed to authenticate said bill. Now we're talking about bringing a paper bill vs a printed one (or "faking" a paper bill by creasing/folding the printed one), but the real threat is fraudsters completely making up a fake bill to begin with. Unless the recipient has a relationship with the company that issues the bills, there is no way for them to verify whether the bill is real in the first place, making the whole endeavor pointless and only inconveniencing legitimate users.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Yes. There’s no question that a bill is a weak piece of evidence for residency. I am sure it only prevents low-effort or low-skill fraudsters, or casual fibs. The latter is probably where they get the most utility out of these requirements.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Why do you need to authenticate it in the first place? If people are discovered lying somehow, send them to jail. Otherwise, trust that people will be honest. Fraud is not nearly the problem people think it is...
devwastaken 5y ago
If all this was for is to ensure you live at an address then the local government can offer a number of solutions to that. If they want mail, they can simply mail you a unique qr code which you could then scan and complete the process entirely online. Or at a minimum bring physically to an office. A utility bill doesn't require proof of residency to get. Neither does a credit card statement. Infact if I were creative I could say I live anywhere and provide false documents of that. It is the legitimate use of this system that is difficult, not illigitimate use. The system is not designed to be secure or to ensure residency, that's not it's purpose. Its purpose is to create further government control to suppress citizens rights to operate freeley in their own country. Specifically, to target low income individuals. These people creating the policies are not the same people whom are affected by them. If I am U.S. born I have a right to operate in certain capacities as a citizen. Voting, owning land, and working are all rights unalienable. The fact this is not currently true is proof of the federal fascism we live in.
- jbaber 5y ago
  I agree with everything you're saying, but disagree with the reason. The US federal government has to be too loose about keeping track of citizens specifically to avoid looking too fascist. One of your many American rights is to have no ID at all. Protecting that right for two dozen people makes everything extremely complicated for the rest of us.
  - devwastaken 5y ago
    The federal government is not too loose in tracking citizens, and you cannot effectively operate in the U.S. without I.D of some form. Birth certificates and tax ID's are necessary for everything from school to work. Infact those that forgo it originally struggle as adults heavily to get those documents later, if at all.
    - Jolter 5y ago
      It’s probably true that you can’t operate properly without an ID, and yet the US government is specifically avoiding the one necessary prerequisite to having reliable and convenient IDs: a complete list of its citizens, with place of residence and a mandatory assigned unique identifier. It fuck people coming and going. You can’t get an ID if you don’t have a place of residence, and yet you can’t just go about your business without an ID.
queuebert 5y ago
They could pay Google and Apple to tell them where you sleep, based on your phone GPS anyway.
yhd8i3q7686i 5y ago
Requiring people to print out a paper and fold it as if it had been in an envelope doesn't authenticate anything but access to a printer and some imagination. Just removing the requirement would be a better alternative.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I am referring to the requirement to produce a utility bill. Not the silly front-line bureaucratic interpretative variations thereof.
sneak 5y ago
That's false. Many other countries have implemented simpler, more accurate, and less discriminatory systems.

radicaldreamer 5y ago

It's also designed to make sure that poorer people who don't have stable, permanent housing have a tough time

jokethrowaway 5y ago
You're misguided if you think there is any sort of design behind this. This is just bureaucracy expanding and slowly taking over a working nation. The unproductive members of society slowly winning over the productive ones and setting up rules to justify their comfortable existence. The same happened in most countries and won't die until the government itself dies (because a government never makes itself smaller) and a new society replaces it.
lemax 5y ago
I wouldn't say it's intentionally designed to do this, but that it's a consequence. There's no good reason anyone would intentionally want to keep the poor poor, it's just bad design.
- scarby2 5y ago
  > There's no good reason anyone would intentionally want to keep the poor poor, it's just bad design. We need people to feel pressured into doing shitty jobs, if the poor get less poor maybe they won't flip burgers for minimum wage.
  - danhorner 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
  - solveit 5y ago
    Who is "We" and how do they coordinate this? Poverty traps are emergent phenomena, not a conspiracy (Usually. Occasionally governments intentionally wage "war" on a group of people, but this is not the typical case.).

varenc 5y ago

As a counterpoint, I had no problem using a printed cell phone bill as evidence of residency at a California DMV.

alar44 5y ago
You could give the cellphone company any damn address you want is the point. It proves nothing.

djrogers 5y ago

I and my son both got RealIDs in California this year with printed bills after submitting the PDF versions online without any problem.

president 5y ago

Isn't this just a consequence of inefficient government? These people don't get paid enough to care about their job to make a great experience for people. My friends working in government all say it's near impossible to get fired. It's why reasonable people try to not give more power to the government than they should.

eatbitseveryday 5y ago

> I had to go to a local county courthouse 4 times to get a "realid" and to renew a driver's license. If you have a passport... no need for a "real ID" driver license. If you don't like having to carry that big book around, other solutions include a federal passport card (USD 65) [1]. Same size, so fits in wallet. Bonus is it does not have my address on it, nor does it show what state I live in. If you're a legal non-citizen, you can use the passport of your home country (which you're required to have in the USA, and should carry with you when you travel anyway). [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...