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Coming soon to a republic near you: https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/national-id/real-id https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/national-i

by 23B1 2y ago

Coming soon to a republic near you: https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/national-id/real-id https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/national-id/r...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lxgr 2y ago
There's gotta be some middle ground. The US seems to have one of the most vulnerable systems when it comes to identity theft, between SSNs being used as bearer tokens and utility bills being used as proof of residency. National ID cards can be done in very concerning, but also very privacy-preserving ways. For example, the German ID card has an e-ID function that lets you assert minimal statements about yourself (e.g. you can provably assert "I'm over 18 years old and live in Berlin", without sharing your exact date of birth or name with the requesting party). Something like that seems desperately needed in the US. Security questions (largely sourced from data in the public record) and taking a photo of your driver's license isn't going to cut it much longer, in a world of daily database breaches and plausible deepfakes.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > There's gotta be some middle ground We need a national ID without a national registry. The simplest (from a legal perspective) might be a national clearinghouse that polls states' registries.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    I don’t think there’s any advantage to that. Also, how do you deal with immigrants who weren’t even born in any state? Or are you relying that state records track people as they move? That seems unwise given how bad states are at maintaining those records / people tend to often not update the state about moving. Or do you have a national registry for immigrants and a statewide for those those born within the US? Oh and how do you deal with children of soldiers who aren’t actually necessarily living in a state? It’s much simpler to eat the cost of a national registry and avoid all sorts of logistical challenges of coordinating across 50 States’ and 5 territories IT systems and disparate standards on record keeping.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      How is this dealt with in the EU?
      - kergonath 2y ago
        Depends on the country, I think. Usually, if you move to another country, you have to register there so each country knows who is a foreigner. This is also tracked for taxes and social security, and for elections. For elections they need to keep track of each person’s status: EU citizens might be able to vote in local election in another EU country, but not national ones, so they have to record this type of information. These three things are different: you can live in a country, pay taxes in another, and vote in a third. I guess states are just good at keeping records.
      - Leherenn 2y ago
        Not the EU, but in Switzerland, you need to be registered in the place you live primarily. If you move to a different town, you have two weeks to deregister at the old one and re-register at the new. To prove you live, you would do it the same way as in the US/UK if I understand correctly, with whatever evidence you have. Rental contract in your name, utility bill, property deed, ... If you live with your parents and don't have anything in your name, they need to write a signed attestation you live there. And so on. It's not uncommon for the police to knock on your door and check if you actually live where you claim to if they have a doubt.
        troad 2y ago
        Also in the Czech Republic, and registering a new address requires the issuance of a new mandatory ID card, which is a paid 'service' (unsure how this meets any definition of 'service', but I digress). The last time I needed to do this in the CR, I had to get a notarised copy of my rental contract. They didn't care one jot about the accuracy of rental contract - I could have mocked one up in Word if I wanted to - they just cared that I had the copy notarised. Which required stamps and payment, naturally, because it's Europe. It's an absurd system. Why should you need to prove to the government you live anywhere? How much money is wasted sending policemen to knock on doors? And how does your absence at a given random moment prove anything at all about where you reside? Locals are generally surprised, in my experience, when I tell them that Australia has no system of registered permanent abode at all. If you have a driver's licence, and you move, you probably want to update your address with the motor bureau, which you generally do online with no documentation at all. No one verifies your new address or particularly cares about it, because the only thing it affects is where you get sent mail (it has no legal consequences like council tax, as it does in the CR, etc). Other than that it's your business what address you give where. No one will ever demand you prove your 'registered address of permanent abode' because no such thing exists. It fits into a broader pattern where everyone in Europe must have some kind of 'status' recorded. What's your registered place of permanent abode? What's your status with the mandatory state health insurance? For tax purposes, are you 'employed' or 'self-employed' or 'student' or 'retired'? Are you registered for self-employment with the social security bureau? There's generally no grey areas, and if you somehow fall outside the norm, they truly don't know what to do with you. You have not experienced Europe until you've had a civil servant glower at you because there's no drop down box for what you're telling them, and this is very much something they want you to know is your fault. Can't you just be normal?
  - oneplane 2y ago
    What is the distinction between a state registry and a national registry? Besides the ever popular fallback to a founding document, is there any real difference in implementation if it's done either way? I'd say a big difference would be some system where there is no central registry at all vs. a system where one does exist. But a pseudo-central vs. central system hardly seems like a different solution. Perhaps one benefit of a segmented or partitioned system is that it can be 'disconnected', but that would also mean that if you need to interact with anything non-local that is now also not possible. And the other way around it would do the same thing (i.e. "depeering" a partition) where you wouldn't be able to verify any identity within that partition.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > What is the distinction between a state registry and a national registry? The difference between centralisation and decentralisation. States can fight back against the federal government's requests in a way that is simply not feasible for almost any person. > a pseudo-central vs. central system hardly seems like a different solution Under this model, the e.g. TSA wouldn't be allowed to keep a copy of your ID. It would have to poll for it anew each time. Looping back to the above: the TSA making this promise to us is almost meaningless. The TSA making this promise to the states could create real problems for it if it were found to be breaking the law. > that would also mean that if you need to interact with anything non-local that is now also not possible Correct.
      - jltsiren 2y ago
        > The difference between centralisation and decentralisation. States can fight back against the federal government's requests in a way that is simply not feasible for almost any person. I don't understand this idea. Usually there is more variance in the behavior of lower-level governments, while higher-level governments will be closer to the mean. If there is a real risk that the federal government will abuse its power in a certain way, many state governments must already be abusing their powers that way. And the same also holds between state governments and local governments. The smaller the administrated population, the more likely the government is either really great or really bad. But because the government can more easily do harm than good, lower-level governments are worse on the average. It can be argued that while the average state/local government is worse than the federal government, your government is special. But that is only plausible if there are persistent cultural differences between your area and the rest of the country. And I don't mean differences in political opinion but in things like corruption and respect to the rule of law. That could happen if there is little immigration from other areas to your area, or if immigrants must live there for a long time and prove that they fit in before they gain full rights. Which is why the sanest level of government is usually the one corresponding to citizenship.
  - chirau 2y ago
    Why are Americans so against a national registry? What are the actual arguments against it? Pretty every other developed country has one.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Why are Americans so against a national registry? Literally this article. (Not saying it's consistent with our various national registries. But it's not some dumbshit concern.) > every other developed country has one American culture is uniquely individualistic. Our First Amendment, for instance, remains unique despite having hundreds of years of precedence.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - makeitdouble 2y ago
      The core part of it: the US has much more vocal extremes in all directions, and they want to carve out niches where they can apply their own rules. That's where you see states that ban abortion and force religious views into education for instance, to take one extreme, and they sure don't want a ruling entity to tell them they can't do so. Same applies to any subject, including identifying people (I'm pretty sure there's a sizeable number of people who don't want any official ID at all, even limited to their town, under no circumstance) Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat.
      - bigstrat2003 2y ago
        > Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat. That's close but not quite right. The idea is that by solving matters as locally as possible, it lets people with strongly held opinions on the government coexist more easily. One person thinks abortion is a fundamental right everyone should have, another thinks it's tantamount to murder and a moral abomination. Neither is budging, so instead of having half the country at each others' throats as they try to force their views on everyone, it can be better to let them solve these issues locally. Then we have a better chance at getting along as a whole, because we can each find a community where our values are upheld and "live and let live". That's the idea, at any rate. There are various flaws we see in practice, and perhaps the idea is untenable in this day and age. But it's fundamentally an attempt to gain unity where otherwise there would only be division. And of course it's also tied to a strong cultural mistrust of government (especially centralized government), as I mentioned in my other post.
- mindslight 2y ago
  "Identity theft" has very little to do with ID cards, and everything to do with businesses not being held fully liable for their own negligence. If a bank contacts me thinking I owe them something, informing them once that they've seemingly been defrauded is where my responsibility should end (verbally, web form, or self-addressed stamped envelope) . If they want my help figuring out the details I should be able to give them the contact info to my attorney while they pay the attorney's rates and other costs incurred. Furthermore, the current identification systems are already being abused by surveillance companies as corroborating keys to facilitate their creation and storage of permanent dossiers on us. Until that is fixed (eg a US port of the GDPR that applies to every industry), I have absolutely no desire that the technical strength of identification be increased. People's hesitation at giving out their identifying info is basically the only thing holding back every single medium or large business from demanding even more of it.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    Id theft would be greatly reduced if compromised ids could be revoked but obviously revoking an id is ripe for abuse
    - mindslight 2y ago
      erm, US IDs generally have no digital authentication methods, so there is nothing to be revoked. They generally consist of your picture and your identifying information, including an identifying number the state assigns because (name, birthday) wouldn't be a good database key. The authentication process is performed by examining the physical document and judging whether it seems counterfeit, and whether the picture looks similar to the person claiming to be the listed person. This hasn't stopped a lot of negligent businesses from performing a fake authentication process that skips actually verifying the physical document and having people enter various fields from the ID card for some kind of dog and pony show, but the point remains there is still nothing to revoke.
      - lxgr 2y ago
        Why wouldn't it be possible to revoke IDs that don't have digital authentication methods? The absence of such digital authentication methods is also a big problem in the way photo IDs are commonly used in the US ("take a photo of it, or maybe a video and wiggle it around a bit"). But it seems orthogonal to revocation, which would help when presenting a lost/stolen ID physically, e.g. to open a bank account or apply for credit card. (Not that that seems to be the most common way identity fraud is actually done these days in the US, so the lack of digital authentication seems to be the worse problem here.)
29athrowaway 2y ago
If there was high speed rail there would be no need for such nonsense.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > If there was high speed rail there would be no need for such nonsense. I don't understand your point what high speed rails have to do with privacy.
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    The case for the Real IDs and TSA and all that nonsense is mostly from air travel. They are not required for trains and buses.
    - iosjunkie 2y ago
      Surely high speed rail wouldn't reduce air travel to point where there isn't a push for TSA and Read IDs.
      - vlovich123 2y ago
        And it wouldn’t be long before high speed rail would require IDs anyway. There’s not some intrinsic reason why rail doesn’t require that stuff & it’s as much of a terrorist target as any other form of transportation.
        ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        A bomb on a train doesn’t bring down the train
        defrost 2y ago
        Russia opens terrorist investigation after freight train derailed https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-opens-terrorist-investigation-after-freight-train-derailed-2023-11-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-opens-terrorist-... Millions of Americans face risk of a toxic ‘bomb train’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/29/vinyl-chloride-trains-chemical-report/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/2... Less than a year ago, a disastrous train derailment sent a massive plume of dangerous chemicals billowing over East Palestine, Ohio, startling the town of nearly 5,000 residents and onlookers nationwide. Now, a new report warns that more of these catastrophes may loom: At any given moment, more than an estimated 3 million people are unknowingly at risk, as toxic trains full of a highly combustible and carcinogenic chemical used to make plastic move between Texas and New Jersey.

by 23B1 2y ago

Coming soon to a republic near you: https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/national-id/real-id https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/national-id/r...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lxgr 2y ago

There's gotta be some middle ground. The US seems to have one of the most vulnerable systems when it comes to identity theft, between SSNs being used as bearer tokens and utility bills being used as proof of residency. National ID cards can be done in very concerning, but also very privacy-preserving ways. For example, the German ID card has an e-ID function that lets you assert minimal statements about yourself (e.g. you can provably assert "I'm over 18 years old and live in Berlin", without sharing your exact date of birth or name with the requesting party). Something like that seems desperately needed in the US. Security questions (largely sourced from data in the public record) and taking a photo of your driver's license isn't going to cut it much longer, in a world of daily database breaches and plausible deepfakes.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> There's gotta be some middle ground We need a national ID without a national registry. The simplest (from a legal perspective) might be a national clearinghouse that polls states' registries.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  I don’t think there’s any advantage to that. Also, how do you deal with immigrants who weren’t even born in any state? Or are you relying that state records track people as they move? That seems unwise given how bad states are at maintaining those records / people tend to often not update the state about moving. Or do you have a national registry for immigrants and a statewide for those those born within the US? Oh and how do you deal with children of soldiers who aren’t actually necessarily living in a state? It’s much simpler to eat the cost of a national registry and avoid all sorts of logistical challenges of coordinating across 50 States’ and 5 territories IT systems and disparate standards on record keeping.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    How is this dealt with in the EU?
    - kergonath 2y ago
      Depends on the country, I think. Usually, if you move to another country, you have to register there so each country knows who is a foreigner. This is also tracked for taxes and social security, and for elections. For elections they need to keep track of each person’s status: EU citizens might be able to vote in local election in another EU country, but not national ones, so they have to record this type of information. These three things are different: you can live in a country, pay taxes in another, and vote in a third. I guess states are just good at keeping records.
    - Leherenn 2y ago
      Not the EU, but in Switzerland, you need to be registered in the place you live primarily. If you move to a different town, you have two weeks to deregister at the old one and re-register at the new. To prove you live, you would do it the same way as in the US/UK if I understand correctly, with whatever evidence you have. Rental contract in your name, utility bill, property deed, ... If you live with your parents and don't have anything in your name, they need to write a signed attestation you live there. And so on. It's not uncommon for the police to knock on your door and check if you actually live where you claim to if they have a doubt.
      - troad 2y ago
        Also in the Czech Republic, and registering a new address requires the issuance of a new mandatory ID card, which is a paid 'service' (unsure how this meets any definition of 'service', but I digress). The last time I needed to do this in the CR, I had to get a notarised copy of my rental contract. They didn't care one jot about the accuracy of rental contract - I could have mocked one up in Word if I wanted to - they just cared that I had the copy notarised. Which required stamps and payment, naturally, because it's Europe. It's an absurd system. Why should you need to prove to the government you live anywhere? How much money is wasted sending policemen to knock on doors? And how does your absence at a given random moment prove anything at all about where you reside? Locals are generally surprised, in my experience, when I tell them that Australia has no system of registered permanent abode at all. If you have a driver's licence, and you move, you probably want to update your address with the motor bureau, which you generally do online with no documentation at all. No one verifies your new address or particularly cares about it, because the only thing it affects is where you get sent mail (it has no legal consequences like council tax, as it does in the CR, etc). Other than that it's your business what address you give where. No one will ever demand you prove your 'registered address of permanent abode' because no such thing exists. It fits into a broader pattern where everyone in Europe must have some kind of 'status' recorded. What's your registered place of permanent abode? What's your status with the mandatory state health insurance? For tax purposes, are you 'employed' or 'self-employed' or 'student' or 'retired'? Are you registered for self-employment with the social security bureau? There's generally no grey areas, and if you somehow fall outside the norm, they truly don't know what to do with you. You have not experienced Europe until you've had a civil servant glower at you because there's no drop down box for what you're telling them, and this is very much something they want you to know is your fault. Can't you just be normal?
- oneplane 2y ago
  What is the distinction between a state registry and a national registry? Besides the ever popular fallback to a founding document, is there any real difference in implementation if it's done either way? I'd say a big difference would be some system where there is no central registry at all vs. a system where one does exist. But a pseudo-central vs. central system hardly seems like a different solution. Perhaps one benefit of a segmented or partitioned system is that it can be 'disconnected', but that would also mean that if you need to interact with anything non-local that is now also not possible. And the other way around it would do the same thing (i.e. "depeering" a partition) where you wouldn't be able to verify any identity within that partition.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > What is the distinction between a state registry and a national registry? The difference between centralisation and decentralisation. States can fight back against the federal government's requests in a way that is simply not feasible for almost any person. > a pseudo-central vs. central system hardly seems like a different solution Under this model, the e.g. TSA wouldn't be allowed to keep a copy of your ID. It would have to poll for it anew each time. Looping back to the above: the TSA making this promise to us is almost meaningless. The TSA making this promise to the states could create real problems for it if it were found to be breaking the law. > that would also mean that if you need to interact with anything non-local that is now also not possible Correct.
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      > The difference between centralisation and decentralisation. States can fight back against the federal government's requests in a way that is simply not feasible for almost any person. I don't understand this idea. Usually there is more variance in the behavior of lower-level governments, while higher-level governments will be closer to the mean. If there is a real risk that the federal government will abuse its power in a certain way, many state governments must already be abusing their powers that way. And the same also holds between state governments and local governments. The smaller the administrated population, the more likely the government is either really great or really bad. But because the government can more easily do harm than good, lower-level governments are worse on the average. It can be argued that while the average state/local government is worse than the federal government, your government is special. But that is only plausible if there are persistent cultural differences between your area and the rest of the country. And I don't mean differences in political opinion but in things like corruption and respect to the rule of law. That could happen if there is little immigration from other areas to your area, or if immigrants must live there for a long time and prove that they fit in before they gain full rights. Which is why the sanest level of government is usually the one corresponding to citizenship.
- chirau 2y ago
  Why are Americans so against a national registry? What are the actual arguments against it? Pretty every other developed country has one.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Why are Americans so against a national registry? Literally this article. (Not saying it's consistent with our various national registries. But it's not some dumbshit concern.) > every other developed country has one American culture is uniquely individualistic. Our First Amendment, for instance, remains unique despite having hundreds of years of precedence.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    The core part of it: the US has much more vocal extremes in all directions, and they want to carve out niches where they can apply their own rules. That's where you see states that ban abortion and force religious views into education for instance, to take one extreme, and they sure don't want a ruling entity to tell them they can't do so. Same applies to any subject, including identifying people (I'm pretty sure there's a sizeable number of people who don't want any official ID at all, even limited to their town, under no circumstance) Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      > Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat. That's close but not quite right. The idea is that by solving matters as locally as possible, it lets people with strongly held opinions on the government coexist more easily. One person thinks abortion is a fundamental right everyone should have, another thinks it's tantamount to murder and a moral abomination. Neither is budging, so instead of having half the country at each others' throats as they try to force their views on everyone, it can be better to let them solve these issues locally. Then we have a better chance at getting along as a whole, because we can each find a community where our values are upheld and "live and let live". That's the idea, at any rate. There are various flaws we see in practice, and perhaps the idea is untenable in this day and age. But it's fundamentally an attempt to gain unity where otherwise there would only be division. And of course it's also tied to a strong cultural mistrust of government (especially centralized government), as I mentioned in my other post.
mindslight 2y ago
"Identity theft" has very little to do with ID cards, and everything to do with businesses not being held fully liable for their own negligence. If a bank contacts me thinking I owe them something, informing them once that they've seemingly been defrauded is where my responsibility should end (verbally, web form, or self-addressed stamped envelope) . If they want my help figuring out the details I should be able to give them the contact info to my attorney while they pay the attorney's rates and other costs incurred. Furthermore, the current identification systems are already being abused by surveillance companies as corroborating keys to facilitate their creation and storage of permanent dossiers on us. Until that is fixed (eg a US port of the GDPR that applies to every industry), I have absolutely no desire that the technical strength of identification be increased. People's hesitation at giving out their identifying info is basically the only thing holding back every single medium or large business from demanding even more of it.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  Id theft would be greatly reduced if compromised ids could be revoked but obviously revoking an id is ripe for abuse
  - mindslight 2y ago
    erm, US IDs generally have no digital authentication methods, so there is nothing to be revoked. They generally consist of your picture and your identifying information, including an identifying number the state assigns because (name, birthday) wouldn't be a good database key. The authentication process is performed by examining the physical document and judging whether it seems counterfeit, and whether the picture looks similar to the person claiming to be the listed person. This hasn't stopped a lot of negligent businesses from performing a fake authentication process that skips actually verifying the physical document and having people enter various fields from the ID card for some kind of dog and pony show, but the point remains there is still nothing to revoke.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Why wouldn't it be possible to revoke IDs that don't have digital authentication methods? The absence of such digital authentication methods is also a big problem in the way photo IDs are commonly used in the US ("take a photo of it, or maybe a video and wiggle it around a bit"). But it seems orthogonal to revocation, which would help when presenting a lost/stolen ID physically, e.g. to open a bank account or apply for credit card. (Not that that seems to be the most common way identity fraud is actually done these days in the US, so the lack of digital authentication seems to be the worse problem here.)

29athrowaway 2y ago

If there was high speed rail there would be no need for such nonsense.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> If there was high speed rail there would be no need for such nonsense. I don't understand your point what high speed rails have to do with privacy.
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  The case for the Real IDs and TSA and all that nonsense is mostly from air travel. They are not required for trains and buses.
  - iosjunkie 2y ago
    Surely high speed rail wouldn't reduce air travel to point where there isn't a push for TSA and Read IDs.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      And it wouldn’t be long before high speed rail would require IDs anyway. There’s not some intrinsic reason why rail doesn’t require that stuff & it’s as much of a terrorist target as any other form of transportation.
      - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        A bomb on a train doesn’t bring down the train
        defrost 2y ago
        Russia opens terrorist investigation after freight train derailed https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-opens-terrorist-investigation-after-freight-train-derailed-2023-11-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-opens-terrorist-... Millions of Americans face risk of a toxic ‘bomb train’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/29/vinyl-chloride-trains-chemical-report/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/2... Less than a year ago, a disastrous train derailment sent a massive plume of dangerous chemicals billowing over East Palestine, Ohio, startling the town of nearly 5,000 residents and onlookers nationwide. Now, a new report warns that more of these catastrophes may loom: At any given moment, more than an estimated 3 million people are unknowingly at risk, as toxic trains full of a highly combustible and carcinogenic chemical used to make plastic move between Texas and New Jersey.