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> That's a strawman [..] OK, I'll bite. How exactly are [US] domestic users of services supposed to prove they don't need to prove their identity? EDIT: it

> That's a strawman [..] OK, I'll bite. How exactly are [US] domestic users of services supposed to prove they don't need to prove their identity? EDIT: it reminds me of the Common Travel Area (between Ireland and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), which has some glorious inconsistencies. For instance that nationals of Ireland and the UK travelling between those two countries do not need a passport, except when you take an international flight and rock up at IE/UK border control it's fairly hard to prove you are a national who doesn't need to provide a passport without having ... a passport (or equivalent ID).

refulgentis 2y ago
KYC stands for Know Your Customer, and is a core regulation in banking. So we can pivot off that and work through what a bank does to verify your identity. I signed up for a Mercury bank account a few months back for my Delaware corporation without talking to anyone, so I'll use that as a template. I can't remember the exact steps, but tl;dr submit a passport photo / driver's license photo and a photo I take in the app itself. If it was a not-US passport, then they'd dig into a full verification, not just a quick manual check of "is that face the same as the passport/license, is the passport/license ID # valid, and are the photos edited"
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  You seem to be conceding the point that they would be forced to invade the privacy of their US customers in addition to just foreign ones.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    True, I guess I wouldn't call it invading privacy, that's sounds a bit overwrought to me. Then banks invade my privacy, the DMV invades my privacy, etc. There's always tradeoffs, I respect people's concern about them, and I wish there was a gentler to say it.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > Then banks invade my privacy, the DMV invades my privacy, etc. That is a reasonable and factually accurate statement. > There's always tradeoffs, I respect people's concern about them, and I wish there was a gentler to say it. The tradeoff here is astonishingly bad. Studies have shown that AML/KYC have an effectiveness of less than a fraction of one percent. They continue to proliferate because their largest costs fall on the users rather than the companies, so they're the thing that large corporations suggest as a "solution" when they're being pressured to do something. Because people have the perception that it will do some good, even though that perception is inaccurate. In reality what they do is provide a means to satisfy "something must be done" in a way that dumps the costs on marginalized users instead of politicians and corporations.
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        I had to look up what "effective" means in this context, found a couple crypto blogs using it as a talking point citing a 2011 UN study, the study says less than <1% of money laundering proceeds are confiscated worldwide, nothing about the laws. Money laundering is defined as an estimate of any money from illegal activity, including tax evasion.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        There have been more than one study and some of them more recent, e.g.: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1... AML laws are completely ineffective. People can write long papers about why, but the underlying reason is simple. Money is fungible. If Alice is selling heroin to Bob and the government knows this, they don't need AML laws to arrest them. If they don't know this, even if all of the financial records were 100% transparent and tied to the name on their birth certificates, they still wouldn't know this, because Alice and Bob would just claim the payment is for software licensing or personal grooming services or whatever they want to make up, and neither the bank nor the government has any way to know otherwise until they independently prove the underlying crime. Worse, Alice and Bob don't even have to pay each other. Bob can just buy whatever Alice asks him to with his money and then give that to Alice in exchange for the contraband. Then there is no financial transaction linking them at all. The entire concept of it simply doesn't work. It's all cost and no benefit.
- monksy 2y ago
  > a photo I take in the app itself So what else did they pull off your phone? Location data, personal photos, personal files, wifi connections near by, microphone data, ongoing location data?
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    None of those, just asked for the photo
    - monksy 2y ago
      You said it was their app correctly? Have you validated that they didn't take the other bits off your phone?
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        Every modern smartphone has permissions on that stuff for years now. I don't self-peasantize with "but what if..."
  - webspinner 2y ago
    Exactly, they just want more mass surveillance.
outop 2y ago
Have you travelled between the UK and Ireland? You most definitely do not need a passport and do not need "equivalent ID". You can travel (by boat) with a student card, driving license, photographic travel pass (ie over-60s pass, young person rail pass), or photographic id from your work. The check is very much "don't stop walking but hold your ID-looking thing in your hand so a nonchalant man can glance at it". You would attract very little attention with someone else's UK or Irish driving license, a bit more if you decided to test the waters with a weird form of ID. Children can travel with a birth certificate (no photo). You need more than this to get on an aeroplane, but that also applies to domestic flights in the UK. If you get the boat and show eg. a Romanian student card, they might ask you where your passport is, somewhat reasonably since you would have needed it to travel to the UK or to Ireland. They would accept an ID card probably and might let you in with legit looking non-government ID. That's the sea border. You can cross the land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland without any form of ID at all, government-issued, photographic or otherwise. Lots of people do it every day by car or bus and it would not remotely occur to them to take ID with them. So the Romanian student would have no problem travelling between London and Dublin without showing anything since they could get a boat Glasgow- Belfast and then get a bus to Dublin. If this was your best example of governments lying and changing the rules, it's not a very good one (and is also kind of offensive to Irish and British people).
- logifail 2y ago
  > You need more than this to get on an aeroplane, but that also applies to domestic flights in the UK. Can you clarify what you mean by "more than this"? I've travelled on many domestic flights within the UK, and ID is not routinely checked. > If this was your best example of governments lying and changing the rules Ouch. The common travel area has its origins way back in 1923, the rules are clear, no-one is lying. It's just that it's hard to prove you are entitled to its benefits without having an ID document with you that - if you're entitled - it says you don't have to have with you...
  - outop 2y ago
    When did you last travel on a UK domestic flight? You definitely need government issued ID. You are suggesting that having to show any photographic ID is the same as having to show a passport. That's obviously silly. No one has to prove that "they are entitled to not show a passport" by showing British or Irish ID. This is a fantasy. On the boat everyone, British, Irish or other, has to show ID of some kind. No one has to show a passport. At the land border no one has to show anything.

refulgentis 2y ago

KYC stands for Know Your Customer, and is a core regulation in banking. So we can pivot off that and work through what a bank does to verify your identity. I signed up for a Mercury bank account a few months back for my Delaware corporation without talking to anyone, so I'll use that as a template. I can't remember the exact steps, but tl;dr submit a passport photo / driver's license photo and a photo I take in the app itself. If it was a not-US passport, then they'd dig into a full verification, not just a quick manual check of "is that face the same as the passport/license, is the passport/license ID # valid, and are the photos edited"

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
You seem to be conceding the point that they would be forced to invade the privacy of their US customers in addition to just foreign ones.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  True, I guess I wouldn't call it invading privacy, that's sounds a bit overwrought to me. Then banks invade my privacy, the DMV invades my privacy, etc. There's always tradeoffs, I respect people's concern about them, and I wish there was a gentler to say it.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > Then banks invade my privacy, the DMV invades my privacy, etc. That is a reasonable and factually accurate statement. > There's always tradeoffs, I respect people's concern about them, and I wish there was a gentler to say it. The tradeoff here is astonishingly bad. Studies have shown that AML/KYC have an effectiveness of less than a fraction of one percent. They continue to proliferate because their largest costs fall on the users rather than the companies, so they're the thing that large corporations suggest as a "solution" when they're being pressured to do something. Because people have the perception that it will do some good, even though that perception is inaccurate. In reality what they do is provide a means to satisfy "something must be done" in a way that dumps the costs on marginalized users instead of politicians and corporations.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      I had to look up what "effective" means in this context, found a couple crypto blogs using it as a talking point citing a 2011 UN study, the study says less than <1% of money laundering proceeds are confiscated worldwide, nothing about the laws. Money laundering is defined as an estimate of any money from illegal activity, including tax evasion.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        There have been more than one study and some of them more recent, e.g.: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1... AML laws are completely ineffective. People can write long papers about why, but the underlying reason is simple. Money is fungible. If Alice is selling heroin to Bob and the government knows this, they don't need AML laws to arrest them. If they don't know this, even if all of the financial records were 100% transparent and tied to the name on their birth certificates, they still wouldn't know this, because Alice and Bob would just claim the payment is for software licensing or personal grooming services or whatever they want to make up, and neither the bank nor the government has any way to know otherwise until they independently prove the underlying crime. Worse, Alice and Bob don't even have to pay each other. Bob can just buy whatever Alice asks him to with his money and then give that to Alice in exchange for the contraband. Then there is no financial transaction linking them at all. The entire concept of it simply doesn't work. It's all cost and no benefit.
monksy 2y ago
> a photo I take in the app itself So what else did they pull off your phone? Location data, personal photos, personal files, wifi connections near by, microphone data, ongoing location data?
- refulgentis 2y ago
  None of those, just asked for the photo
  - monksy 2y ago
    You said it was their app correctly? Have you validated that they didn't take the other bits off your phone?
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      Every modern smartphone has permissions on that stuff for years now. I don't self-peasantize with "but what if..."
- webspinner 2y ago
  Exactly, they just want more mass surveillance.

outop 2y ago

Have you travelled between the UK and Ireland? You most definitely do not need a passport and do not need "equivalent ID". You can travel (by boat) with a student card, driving license, photographic travel pass (ie over-60s pass, young person rail pass), or photographic id from your work. The check is very much "don't stop walking but hold your ID-looking thing in your hand so a nonchalant man can glance at it". You would attract very little attention with someone else's UK or Irish driving license, a bit more if you decided to test the waters with a weird form of ID. Children can travel with a birth certificate (no photo). You need more than this to get on an aeroplane, but that also applies to domestic flights in the UK. If you get the boat and show eg. a Romanian student card, they might ask you where your passport is, somewhat reasonably since you would have needed it to travel to the UK or to Ireland. They would accept an ID card probably and might let you in with legit looking non-government ID. That's the sea border. You can cross the land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland without any form of ID at all, government-issued, photographic or otherwise. Lots of people do it every day by car or bus and it would not remotely occur to them to take ID with them. So the Romanian student would have no problem travelling between London and Dublin without showing anything since they could get a boat Glasgow- Belfast and then get a bus to Dublin. If this was your best example of governments lying and changing the rules, it's not a very good one (and is also kind of offensive to Irish and British people).

logifail 2y ago
> You need more than this to get on an aeroplane, but that also applies to domestic flights in the UK. Can you clarify what you mean by "more than this"? I've travelled on many domestic flights within the UK, and ID is not routinely checked. > If this was your best example of governments lying and changing the rules Ouch. The common travel area has its origins way back in 1923, the rules are clear, no-one is lying. It's just that it's hard to prove you are entitled to its benefits without having an ID document with you that - if you're entitled - it says you don't have to have with you...
- outop 2y ago
  When did you last travel on a UK domestic flight? You definitely need government issued ID. You are suggesting that having to show any photographic ID is the same as having to show a passport. That's obviously silly. No one has to prove that "they are entitled to not show a passport" by showing British or Irish ID. This is a fantasy. On the boat everyone, British, Irish or other, has to show ID of some kind. No one has to show a passport. At the land border no one has to show anything.