5 ms·

As someone who's lived in a couple of countries, I think one reason credit bureaus are so heavily relied on in the US (and UK) is because they lack a centralise

As someone who's lived in a couple of countries, I think one reason credit bureaus are so heavily relied on in the US (and UK) is because they lack a centralised identity database that regulated financial institutions are able to draw from. Credit bureaus — as well as the various credit building products that are so common in these countries — are required to play that role.

mindslight 4y ago
Strengthening government identification would only be reasonable after the US has the equivalent of the GDPR. As it stands right now, doing so would just be another vulnerability for private surveillance companies to abuse just as they've abused social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and even phone numbers.
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  One way to ensure something never gets done is to bog it down with a bunch of politically challenging prerequisites.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    It's already "bogged down" - I described a direct concern. Brushing that aside is equivalent to saying the concerns don't matter. Social security numbers were introduced for the sole purpose of administering the social security program. The protections on private entities abusing them were neutered, which is how we ended up with the backwards regime under discussion. People have a vague fear that social security numbers are important and shouldn't be casually shared, which is the only thing holding back (for example) grocery stores from demanding your social security number to get the regular prices. If say the US issued everyone a cryptographic identity via a smart card, there would be little stopping every single business from demanding that you scan this card. Imagine needing to link your singular legal identity to every single online service, so they could better associate your surveillance records. Big tech is currently doing its best to accomplish this through phone numbers, but at least it's possible to get additional phone numbers.
    - dangerlibrary 4y ago
      The nature of the problem you are describing (private companies having a more reliable unique ID to correlate data than phone number) seems incrementally worse than what we have today. In practice, most people rarely, if ever, change their phone number. I don't like that companies demand my phone number to get cheaper groceries, but in practice I just type in "(local area code) 867-5309" [1] into whatever terminal is asking for my phone number and get the discount 100% of the time. The consequences of the problem the proposal is trying to address seem larger to me. Currently, you can be denied access to capital and even basic financial services because identity management has been outsourced to unreliable third parties with no incentive to do a better job. [1] Sorry Jenny https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo
      - mindslight 4y ago
        Yes, I agree it is incrementally worse. I agree that de facto, the surveillance industry is practically inescapable. The technical ability to avoid various forms of tracking requires an extreme amount of effort and unreasonableness. I myself will put in such unreasonable effort on many things, but I still cannot manage to do so for everything. Still, there is a difference between this de facto state of affairs, and a de jure mandate from the government to make us more trackable. If were talking about the deficiencies causing the original topic, the right answer is to rebuke this nonsensical concept of "identity theft" and make companies fully liable for their attempted frauds (ala the top level comment of this tree). If we're talking about constructively building systems to do things the "right way", then privacy needs to be incorporated in such systems from the ground up, as the previous bait and switch with social security numbers has demonstrated.
Terry_Roll 4y ago
In the UK there is a Jeremy Bentham philosophy, where by people get loaded up with debt because it generally keeps them productive and out of trouble. Then the UK can attend G7 conferences because its GDP is high enough. Some call it slavery by another name! The US Mil call it punching above its weight and the UK is generally recognised as the no1 soft power in the world. Forget expensive military hardware & Police hardware, intelligence led psychological warfare on the population is cheaper and more deniable when rumours are put out in the community as people voluntarily police their manor like vigilantes watching Emmanuel Goldstein figures. The innovation in innuendo based intimidation and harassment is quite entertaining and its all deniable. The techniques used to create the Nazi's can be deployed in tight knit communities via community watch schemes and the like, no paperwork so the Police are happy with that and the security services can also deny it.
- Pokepokalypse 4y ago
  I find your ideas interesting and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    Thats the best thing about authority figures, they are believed until they can be proven otherwise, I'm not in a position to prove otherwise. I often wonder if autism is being used as a cover for child abuse! Innuendo amongst other things is the perfect trigger for paranoia, and in such situations, people will get banged up in a mental health hospital and have drugs forced down their throat otherwise they just get labelled as uncooperative, and then other drugs will be forced down their throat and their detention period increased, perhaps even indefinitely. Its a clever system and there is no judge or jury to convince, you just go straight to mental hospital without passing Go! You cant argue against this craze for labelling everything as mental health issues, Doctors will not have their authority challenged. I even had a GP tell me how I could suicide myself! You dont run a country by being nice! You got a lot to learn, now obey your authority figures and back to work!
    - 4y ago
xoa 4y ago
>Credit bureaus — as well as the various credit building products that are so common in these countries — are required to play that role. No they absolutely are not. You know what institutions, after government, should have been in principle be absoultely ideally placed to help with identity in a private distributed way? BANKS (credit unions too perhaps). Lots of secure, physical locations people were used to going into. Already have a need to deal with serious physical security, and lots of money. Already tons of KYC infrastructure. Well regulated and trusted overall. Reasonable numbers of choices. Valuable in-house dogfooding opportunities. This should have been a slam-dunk service for banks themselves to do, and one near impossible to replicate the same way online which also would have been quite helpful for them vs online-only challengers. Each local branch could have a dedicated room or rooms to take photos and video, verify documentation, history, references, whatever else, all the stuff that was (and in much of the world still is) needed to prove ones' identity and open an account. Then the banks could all have their own CAs and give people a signed cert attesting that all this had been done in-person at XYZ location, every bank required to do it themselves with cross signing possible, and all online account usage required to use PKI, no password/email crap. And we'd live in a different, better world. Instead they've tried to outsource or externalize that. That should be absolutely on them. All the tech has been easily possible develop for something like 20 years (OpenSC even first release was 2001). I'd love to see a law along the lines that financial transactions and products including loans, credit cards etc that are only backed by stuff like described in this article (name, SS#, birthday etc) are simply unenforceable in court and that defendants can challenge it along the lines of anti-SLAPP statutes where the challenge happens pre-discovery and stops the whole process with attorney fees going to the defendant if they win. Bank tries to after somebody for unpaid debt and all they have are info like that? Case dismissed, they can just eat it. Criminal for credit collectors to go after it too. Bet we'd see some changes in a hurry then.

mindslight 4y ago

Strengthening government identification would only be reasonable after the US has the equivalent of the GDPR. As it stands right now, doing so would just be another vulnerability for private surveillance companies to abuse just as they've abused social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and even phone numbers.

dangerlibrary 4y ago
One way to ensure something never gets done is to bog it down with a bunch of politically challenging prerequisites.
- mindslight 4y ago
  It's already "bogged down" - I described a direct concern. Brushing that aside is equivalent to saying the concerns don't matter. Social security numbers were introduced for the sole purpose of administering the social security program. The protections on private entities abusing them were neutered, which is how we ended up with the backwards regime under discussion. People have a vague fear that social security numbers are important and shouldn't be casually shared, which is the only thing holding back (for example) grocery stores from demanding your social security number to get the regular prices. If say the US issued everyone a cryptographic identity via a smart card, there would be little stopping every single business from demanding that you scan this card. Imagine needing to link your singular legal identity to every single online service, so they could better associate your surveillance records. Big tech is currently doing its best to accomplish this through phone numbers, but at least it's possible to get additional phone numbers.
  - dangerlibrary 4y ago
    The nature of the problem you are describing (private companies having a more reliable unique ID to correlate data than phone number) seems incrementally worse than what we have today. In practice, most people rarely, if ever, change their phone number. I don't like that companies demand my phone number to get cheaper groceries, but in practice I just type in "(local area code) 867-5309" [1] into whatever terminal is asking for my phone number and get the discount 100% of the time. The consequences of the problem the proposal is trying to address seem larger to me. Currently, you can be denied access to capital and even basic financial services because identity management has been outsourced to unreliable third parties with no incentive to do a better job. [1] Sorry Jenny https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Yes, I agree it is incrementally worse. I agree that de facto, the surveillance industry is practically inescapable. The technical ability to avoid various forms of tracking requires an extreme amount of effort and unreasonableness. I myself will put in such unreasonable effort on many things, but I still cannot manage to do so for everything. Still, there is a difference between this de facto state of affairs, and a de jure mandate from the government to make us more trackable. If were talking about the deficiencies causing the original topic, the right answer is to rebuke this nonsensical concept of "identity theft" and make companies fully liable for their attempted frauds (ala the top level comment of this tree). If we're talking about constructively building systems to do things the "right way", then privacy needs to be incorporated in such systems from the ground up, as the previous bait and switch with social security numbers has demonstrated.

Terry_Roll 4y ago

In the UK there is a Jeremy Bentham philosophy, where by people get loaded up with debt because it generally keeps them productive and out of trouble. Then the UK can attend G7 conferences because its GDP is high enough. Some call it slavery by another name! The US Mil call it punching above its weight and the UK is generally recognised as the no1 soft power in the world. Forget expensive military hardware & Police hardware, intelligence led psychological warfare on the population is cheaper and more deniable when rumours are put out in the community as people voluntarily police their manor like vigilantes watching Emmanuel Goldstein figures. The innovation in innuendo based intimidation and harassment is quite entertaining and its all deniable. The techniques used to create the Nazi's can be deployed in tight knit communities via community watch schemes and the like, no paperwork so the Police are happy with that and the security services can also deny it.

Pokepokalypse 4y ago
I find your ideas interesting and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  Thats the best thing about authority figures, they are believed until they can be proven otherwise, I'm not in a position to prove otherwise. I often wonder if autism is being used as a cover for child abuse! Innuendo amongst other things is the perfect trigger for paranoia, and in such situations, people will get banged up in a mental health hospital and have drugs forced down their throat otherwise they just get labelled as uncooperative, and then other drugs will be forced down their throat and their detention period increased, perhaps even indefinitely. Its a clever system and there is no judge or jury to convince, you just go straight to mental hospital without passing Go! You cant argue against this craze for labelling everything as mental health issues, Doctors will not have their authority challenged. I even had a GP tell me how I could suicide myself! You dont run a country by being nice! You got a lot to learn, now obey your authority figures and back to work!
  - 4y ago

xoa 4y ago

>Credit bureaus — as well as the various credit building products that are so common in these countries — are required to play that role. No they absolutely are not. You know what institutions, after government, should have been in principle be absoultely ideally placed to help with identity in a private distributed way? BANKS (credit unions too perhaps). Lots of secure, physical locations people were used to going into. Already have a need to deal with serious physical security, and lots of money. Already tons of KYC infrastructure. Well regulated and trusted overall. Reasonable numbers of choices. Valuable in-house dogfooding opportunities. This should have been a slam-dunk service for banks themselves to do, and one near impossible to replicate the same way online which also would have been quite helpful for them vs online-only challengers. Each local branch could have a dedicated room or rooms to take photos and video, verify documentation, history, references, whatever else, all the stuff that was (and in much of the world still is) needed to prove ones' identity and open an account. Then the banks could all have their own CAs and give people a signed cert attesting that all this had been done in-person at XYZ location, every bank required to do it themselves with cross signing possible, and all online account usage required to use PKI, no password/email crap. And we'd live in a different, better world. Instead they've tried to outsource or externalize that. That should be absolutely on them. All the tech has been easily possible develop for something like 20 years (OpenSC even first release was 2001). I'd love to see a law along the lines that financial transactions and products including loans, credit cards etc that are only backed by stuff like described in this article (name, SS#, birthday etc) are simply unenforceable in court and that defendants can challenge it along the lines of anti-SLAPP statutes where the challenge happens pre-discovery and stops the whole process with attorney fees going to the defendant if they win. Bank tries to after somebody for unpaid debt and all they have are info like that? Case dismissed, they can just eat it. Criminal for credit collectors to go after it too. Bet we'd see some changes in a hurry then.