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They say in the article that it is no small feat, but in Vietnam, there is a lot of government. Even the most rural communities (where people literally have no

They say in the article that it is no small feat, but in Vietnam, there is a lot of government. Even the most rural communities (where people literally have no running water or barely and electricity), they have local party officials overseeing things. If they want to get this done, it'll get done.

alephnerd 3y ago
> where people literally have no running water or barely and electricity It's changed rapidly in the past few years. I've been to rural Gia Lai (a friend of mine is from there), and the amount of basic infrastructure being implemented is astounding. They are trying to use digital infra similar to what Aadhar was used for in India. It also makes sense to lock it biometrically given that the Cambodia and Laos borders are extremely porous, and it's fairly common for smugglers or migrants to try and bribe someone for VN ID cards. Digital infra is the fastest and most efficient way to disburse welfare without worrying about corruption or shrinkage. If that means being reducing civil liberties, so be it. You can't eat PGP or use it to send your kid to high school. > local party officials overseeing things They're useless (at least in Gia Lai). They messed up my friend's name on their passport and barely get anything done. It's MPS that's taking over this, and they're competent (and scary for obvious reasons)
- latchkey 3y ago
  I spent 2 years on a motorbike going all over VN/Cambodia/Laos... you go outside of the cities and it is village after village of people with very little infrastructure. Gia Lai isn't that rural. I drove AH17 and QL14c. I'm thinking more in the North. Ha Giang, Cao Bang, even out to Sapa. ALL of the borders are porous. I literally drove over the northern border into China at some random point, and there was nobody there. It is super easy to go back and forth. I also drove a lot of the trade routes along the border cut into the forests. ID cards aren't going to stop anything. You are definitely correct about competency. No argument there.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > I'm thinking more in the North. Ha Giang, Cao Bang, even out to Sapa Ah, the only parts of Vietnam poorer than Gia Lai. Fair enough. > Gia Lai isn't that rural On QL14c and AH17 it isn't, but in between those two highways it definetly is (think dirt roads, wooden shanties like you'd see in neighboring Mondulkiri/Ratanakiri). > ID cards aren't going to stop anything. If you are distributing social assistant payments, you need identification. If you leave identification to local PD (who are paid too little to care about being competent), it's not that difficult to bribe them to either add or remove you from a registry, or create multiple ghost identities in order to siphon social assistance payments (probably at the behest of the local party official). The only true form of identification that is tamper-proof is biometric. > ALL of the borders are porous Agreed, but Laos and Cambodia are significantly more impoverished than Vietnam, especially the portions of Cambodia and Laos neighboring VN. It's hard for someone there to migrate to Thailand like how Cambodians in Siem Reap or Laotians around Vientiane do.
- int_19h 3y ago
  The problem is that, in many cases, the governments that introduce those kinds of pervasive ID schemes are also the governments that lean authoritarian (or would love to). It seems to me that, long-term, we really have three options that do not lead to a totalitarian hellscape: 1. Keep our strong centralized governments, but retain privacy (by e.g. not having biometric IDs) as a check on their ability to control citizens. Downside: governments are much less efficient. Caveat: arrangement is unstable and governments will constantly try to upset it. 2. Accept a reduction in privacy while also scaling down and decentralizing governance (libertarian municipalism, democratic confederalism etc) to the point where governments simply don't have sufficient power to get too abusive with such schemes. Downsides: reduced security. Caveat: such abuses will still happen, they'll just be more localized instead of uniform, and thus easier (but still costly) to evade when they happen. 3. Go full Amish. Downside: reduction in quality of life (some people would argue about this, but the consensus is fairly clear based on how many people choose this lifestyle today).
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    If I earn less than $2 a day, I still need to eat today. Privacy be damned. ------ If civil libertarians want to be taken seriously, there needs to be an actual attempt at sympathizing with the plight of the poor, and then actually working on implementing a solution that works both ways. Think low-tech or simplified solutions with minimal moving parts. Complexity is the enemy of privacy. Instead, it's a bunch of blowhards who'd give their mother's SSN if an MPS type even threated to raise their hand at them. There is always a need for identification. Go implement a low tech solution with minimal moving pieces that provides privacy and identification at the same time. On top of that, does anonymity fall under privacy? If yes, then it's inherently impossible to implement privacy and identitification concurrently.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      You are implying that civil libertarians are in a position to "implement a solution". They generally aren't. But if you want to see an actual implementation of the concepts that I've mentioned, you can look at e.g. Rojava or the Chiapas.

alephnerd 3y ago

> where people literally have no running water or barely and electricity It's changed rapidly in the past few years. I've been to rural Gia Lai (a friend of mine is from there), and the amount of basic infrastructure being implemented is astounding. They are trying to use digital infra similar to what Aadhar was used for in India. It also makes sense to lock it biometrically given that the Cambodia and Laos borders are extremely porous, and it's fairly common for smugglers or migrants to try and bribe someone for VN ID cards. Digital infra is the fastest and most efficient way to disburse welfare without worrying about corruption or shrinkage. If that means being reducing civil liberties, so be it. You can't eat PGP or use it to send your kid to high school. > local party officials overseeing things They're useless (at least in Gia Lai). They messed up my friend's name on their passport and barely get anything done. It's MPS that's taking over this, and they're competent (and scary for obvious reasons)

latchkey 3y ago
I spent 2 years on a motorbike going all over VN/Cambodia/Laos... you go outside of the cities and it is village after village of people with very little infrastructure. Gia Lai isn't that rural. I drove AH17 and QL14c. I'm thinking more in the North. Ha Giang, Cao Bang, even out to Sapa. ALL of the borders are porous. I literally drove over the northern border into China at some random point, and there was nobody there. It is super easy to go back and forth. I also drove a lot of the trade routes along the border cut into the forests. ID cards aren't going to stop anything. You are definitely correct about competency. No argument there.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > I'm thinking more in the North. Ha Giang, Cao Bang, even out to Sapa Ah, the only parts of Vietnam poorer than Gia Lai. Fair enough. > Gia Lai isn't that rural On QL14c and AH17 it isn't, but in between those two highways it definetly is (think dirt roads, wooden shanties like you'd see in neighboring Mondulkiri/Ratanakiri). > ID cards aren't going to stop anything. If you are distributing social assistant payments, you need identification. If you leave identification to local PD (who are paid too little to care about being competent), it's not that difficult to bribe them to either add or remove you from a registry, or create multiple ghost identities in order to siphon social assistance payments (probably at the behest of the local party official). The only true form of identification that is tamper-proof is biometric. > ALL of the borders are porous Agreed, but Laos and Cambodia are significantly more impoverished than Vietnam, especially the portions of Cambodia and Laos neighboring VN. It's hard for someone there to migrate to Thailand like how Cambodians in Siem Reap or Laotians around Vientiane do.
int_19h 3y ago
The problem is that, in many cases, the governments that introduce those kinds of pervasive ID schemes are also the governments that lean authoritarian (or would love to). It seems to me that, long-term, we really have three options that do not lead to a totalitarian hellscape: 1. Keep our strong centralized governments, but retain privacy (by e.g. not having biometric IDs) as a check on their ability to control citizens. Downside: governments are much less efficient. Caveat: arrangement is unstable and governments will constantly try to upset it. 2. Accept a reduction in privacy while also scaling down and decentralizing governance (libertarian municipalism, democratic confederalism etc) to the point where governments simply don't have sufficient power to get too abusive with such schemes. Downsides: reduced security. Caveat: such abuses will still happen, they'll just be more localized instead of uniform, and thus easier (but still costly) to evade when they happen. 3. Go full Amish. Downside: reduction in quality of life (some people would argue about this, but the consensus is fairly clear based on how many people choose this lifestyle today).
- alephnerd 3y ago
  If I earn less than $2 a day, I still need to eat today. Privacy be damned. ------ If civil libertarians want to be taken seriously, there needs to be an actual attempt at sympathizing with the plight of the poor, and then actually working on implementing a solution that works both ways. Think low-tech or simplified solutions with minimal moving parts. Complexity is the enemy of privacy. Instead, it's a bunch of blowhards who'd give their mother's SSN if an MPS type even threated to raise their hand at them. There is always a need for identification. Go implement a low tech solution with minimal moving pieces that provides privacy and identification at the same time. On top of that, does anonymity fall under privacy? If yes, then it's inherently impossible to implement privacy and identitification concurrently.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    You are implying that civil libertarians are in a position to "implement a solution". They generally aren't. But if you want to see an actual implementation of the concepts that I've mentioned, you can look at e.g. Rojava or the Chiapas.