6 ms·

It’s ridiculous that no one will be held accountable here (prosectors, police, public defender, etc) other than the guy that stole his identity.

Jolter 2y ago
How about the government, for failing to provide their citizens with the security of a proper government issued ID?
- rtkwe 2y ago
  We have these little things called elections for doing that. Parts of the government would love to have this perfect registry and things like RealID are attempts at that but there's a lot of push back and reasons not to have some mythical impervious citizen tracking system too.
  - Jolter 2y ago
    Sorry, what, elections are for doing what exactly? Not provide a registry of residence, surely. Your second sentence builds up two strawmen: 1. That the registry has to be "perfect", whatever that means. It doesn't, it just has to be canonical, and allow for errors in it to be corrected according to some well-defined process. (Not by pulling 20 random documents in front of a judge and suddenly legally become another person.) 2. That these registries are "mythical". It's very much a solved problem. You (I'm assuming you're American) are literally living the only developed country without a registry of who lives in it. Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. As for the reasons not to have such a registry, I have yet to hear any convincing ones.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      You asked about holding the government accountable for not providing secure IDs. Doing that is a political question and we've had attempts to for thinkgs like RealID, they don't because there's a significant block that don't want them to for all sort of reasons ranging from legitimate to paranoid. > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. You're just describing birth certificates here. The US has those... very very few people don't get them. Getting access to them was an important part of Keirans's method of stealing Mr. Woods's identity. They will inevitably get lost or destroyed so you have to have some method of bootstrapping someone's identity and Keirans exploited that system through research. It was designed around a time when it wasn't easy to acquire massive amounts of information about someone so it's not surprising that it starts to come apart a little bit in our digital panopticon.
      - Jolter 2y ago
        I am not describing birth certificates. I’m describing a registry of residence. That’s another thing the U.S. does wrong. If you hold a birth certificate for a child, what does that prove? It’s just an officially issued statement that a particular person was born to these particular parents. It’s completely useless as an authentication mechanism of identity. The problem is not that birth certificates can be re-issued when lost. The problem is that they are trusted to mean anything about that person that possesses it.
        rtkwe 2y ago
        Nothing you said made it sound any different from a birth certificate. What proves that you are the person living at that address and that you are the one that should be allowed to update that information? Just having a list of where people nominally live is meaningless by itself. The US has that information in loads of places, it's just not treated as the ground truth. Also that system doesn't seem to work that great, the numbers I'm finding show Japan has about 3 million identity theft victims a year. Lower than the US but only slightly lower per capita. The biggest problem in this instance isn't that his identity was stolen it was that he wasn't believed, partially because he was homeless, seems to have some mental health problems per the article and they're a maligned group in the US, and the courts and prosecutors didn't take the relatively simple step of requesting DNA evidence to resolve the situation.
    - WrongAssumption 2y ago
      You are not a citizen and you don't vote in U.S. elections. It is irrelevant what you think and the U.S. government is not beholden to what you want.
      - jacobgkau 2y ago
        I understand your sentiment as a fellow US citizen; it can get annoying how so many people globally take part in debates about our society. To be fair, it's not like we in the U.S. shouldn't be open to hearing ideas from others about how we could run our government better. God knows there's plenty of room for improvement. And if I were to go to another country and see things that don't make sense to me, I'd understand they aren't going to just change anything immediately on my account, but I'd also appreciate having my thoughts considered by the people there. His problem is more that he seems to believe his (and all others') country's ID system is somehow impervious to abuse (despite being imperfect by his own admission). The more centralized things are, the less you have to hack to do a takeover. The less centralized things are, the easier it is to accumulate supporting evidence for a takeover. It's a necessarily complicated system that has certain holes, and the main thing that would've helped in this case was more benefit of the doubt for the person who was up against a lot of documentation.
        Jolter 2y ago
        I appreciate that you’re defending my right to voice my opinion. That said, you’re contradicting yourself: am I saying my country’s system is impervious to abuse, or am I admitting that it is not? My point is not that a central database of people makes identity theft a thing. My point is that by not having one (or any), you are making it a lot easier than it has to be. In one country, this kind of abuse of identity happens all the time, and in others, it is exceedingly rare. Anyone should be able to draw their own conclusions from that. I’m seeing a statistic online that says “33% of Americans Faced Some Form of Identity Theft at Some Point in Their Lives” — not sure if that’s accurate but it’s a scary number!
        kelnos 2y ago
    - lmm 2y ago
      > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth Japan is notorious for impersonation and false identities (especially children impersonating dead parents to claim their pensions). > As for the reasons not to have such a registry, I have yet to hear any convincing ones. The Japanese system is hugely cumbersome and also famously makes it difficult for people to escape from abusive family members (to the point there are e.g. dedicated companies for helping people move away in the middle of the night).
      - Jolter 2y ago
        I did not know these things! Thanks for that.
  - loeg 2y ago
    RealID is not attempting to provide a national ID.
    - jacobgkau 2y ago
      Technically correct, but it's an attempt by the federal government to increase the validity and security of state IDs, so it is relevant to this conversation about the shortcomings of state IDs and the role of the federal government in solving that problem.
      - loeg 2y ago
        It doesn't solve the problem, both because you have to ask for one (it's not issued to every citizen) and chiefly, it isn't a federal ID. The other parts are almost moot.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      An ID doesn't have to be national to be secure and state issued is still government issued. AFAIK RealID has the states check with other states electronically as part of the process of issuing a new ID, it's why some people have been so resistant to getting a RealID and we've pushed back the original deadline requiring RealID for plane travel for at least a decade (maybe 2 at this point?).
- ianburrell 2y ago
  He was homeless and likely lost his ID and the papers needed get a new one. Then the identity thief obtained an ID and birth certificate. Unless you are suggesting that the government take biometrics. Except that wouldn't have helped in this case, cause the identity thief would have shown up with ID and gotten scanned.
  - Jolter 2y ago
    The government's failure there is that they issued a faulty ID to the conman, of course. I think the victim should be entitled to damages from the state for that fault, and also for the false sentence he received.
  - snowe2010 2y ago
    He had his ID. They just didn’t believe him when he provided it.
- EvanAnderson 2y ago
  The responsible party, in the case of the Federal government failing to provide a national ID, is the contingent American citizens who are rabidly against the idea of national ID.
- balderdash 2y ago
  I mean it’s pretty easy to get, probably less so if you have mental issues
  - Jolter 2y ago
    Yes, the government ID being easy to get is precisely the problem in this scenario.
- kelnos 2y ago
  The US government isn't responsible for that failing. The people of the US generally do not want a national ID, and elect their representatives accordingly.

Jolter 2y ago

How about the government, for failing to provide their citizens with the security of a proper government issued ID?

rtkwe 2y ago
We have these little things called elections for doing that. Parts of the government would love to have this perfect registry and things like RealID are attempts at that but there's a lot of push back and reasons not to have some mythical impervious citizen tracking system too.
- Jolter 2y ago
  Sorry, what, elections are for doing what exactly? Not provide a registry of residence, surely. Your second sentence builds up two strawmen: 1. That the registry has to be "perfect", whatever that means. It doesn't, it just has to be canonical, and allow for errors in it to be corrected according to some well-defined process. (Not by pulling 20 random documents in front of a judge and suddenly legally become another person.) 2. That these registries are "mythical". It's very much a solved problem. You (I'm assuming you're American) are literally living the only developed country without a registry of who lives in it. Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. As for the reasons not to have such a registry, I have yet to hear any convincing ones.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    You asked about holding the government accountable for not providing secure IDs. Doing that is a political question and we've had attempts to for thinkgs like RealID, they don't because there's a significant block that don't want them to for all sort of reasons ranging from legitimate to paranoid. > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. You're just describing birth certificates here. The US has those... very very few people don't get them. Getting access to them was an important part of Keirans's method of stealing Mr. Woods's identity. They will inevitably get lost or destroyed so you have to have some method of bootstrapping someone's identity and Keirans exploited that system through research. It was designed around a time when it wasn't easy to acquire massive amounts of information about someone so it's not surprising that it starts to come apart a little bit in our digital panopticon.
    - Jolter 2y ago
      I am not describing birth certificates. I’m describing a registry of residence. That’s another thing the U.S. does wrong. If you hold a birth certificate for a child, what does that prove? It’s just an officially issued statement that a particular person was born to these particular parents. It’s completely useless as an authentication mechanism of identity. The problem is not that birth certificates can be re-issued when lost. The problem is that they are trusted to mean anything about that person that possesses it.
      - rtkwe 2y ago
        Nothing you said made it sound any different from a birth certificate. What proves that you are the person living at that address and that you are the one that should be allowed to update that information? Just having a list of where people nominally live is meaningless by itself. The US has that information in loads of places, it's just not treated as the ground truth. Also that system doesn't seem to work that great, the numbers I'm finding show Japan has about 3 million identity theft victims a year. Lower than the US but only slightly lower per capita. The biggest problem in this instance isn't that his identity was stolen it was that he wasn't believed, partially because he was homeless, seems to have some mental health problems per the article and they're a maligned group in the US, and the courts and prosecutors didn't take the relatively simple step of requesting DNA evidence to resolve the situation.
  - WrongAssumption 2y ago
    You are not a citizen and you don't vote in U.S. elections. It is irrelevant what you think and the U.S. government is not beholden to what you want.
    - jacobgkau 2y ago
      I understand your sentiment as a fellow US citizen; it can get annoying how so many people globally take part in debates about our society. To be fair, it's not like we in the U.S. shouldn't be open to hearing ideas from others about how we could run our government better. God knows there's plenty of room for improvement. And if I were to go to another country and see things that don't make sense to me, I'd understand they aren't going to just change anything immediately on my account, but I'd also appreciate having my thoughts considered by the people there. His problem is more that he seems to believe his (and all others') country's ID system is somehow impervious to abuse (despite being imperfect by his own admission). The more centralized things are, the less you have to hack to do a takeover. The less centralized things are, the easier it is to accumulate supporting evidence for a takeover. It's a necessarily complicated system that has certain holes, and the main thing that would've helped in this case was more benefit of the doubt for the person who was up against a lot of documentation.
      - Jolter 2y ago
        I appreciate that you’re defending my right to voice my opinion. That said, you’re contradicting yourself: am I saying my country’s system is impervious to abuse, or am I admitting that it is not? My point is not that a central database of people makes identity theft a thing. My point is that by not having one (or any), you are making it a lot easier than it has to be. In one country, this kind of abuse of identity happens all the time, and in others, it is exceedingly rare. Anyone should be able to draw their own conclusions from that. I’m seeing a statistic online that says “33% of Americans Faced Some Form of Identity Theft at Some Point in Their Lives” — not sure if that’s accurate but it’s a scary number!
        kelnos 2y ago
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth Japan is notorious for impersonation and false identities (especially children impersonating dead parents to claim their pensions). > As for the reasons not to have such a registry, I have yet to hear any convincing ones. The Japanese system is hugely cumbersome and also famously makes it difficult for people to escape from abusive family members (to the point there are e.g. dedicated companies for helping people move away in the middle of the night).
    - Jolter 2y ago
      I did not know these things! Thanks for that.
- loeg 2y ago
  RealID is not attempting to provide a national ID.
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    Technically correct, but it's an attempt by the federal government to increase the validity and security of state IDs, so it is relevant to this conversation about the shortcomings of state IDs and the role of the federal government in solving that problem.
    - loeg 2y ago
      It doesn't solve the problem, both because you have to ask for one (it's not issued to every citizen) and chiefly, it isn't a federal ID. The other parts are almost moot.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    An ID doesn't have to be national to be secure and state issued is still government issued. AFAIK RealID has the states check with other states electronically as part of the process of issuing a new ID, it's why some people have been so resistant to getting a RealID and we've pushed back the original deadline requiring RealID for plane travel for at least a decade (maybe 2 at this point?).
ianburrell 2y ago
He was homeless and likely lost his ID and the papers needed get a new one. Then the identity thief obtained an ID and birth certificate. Unless you are suggesting that the government take biometrics. Except that wouldn't have helped in this case, cause the identity thief would have shown up with ID and gotten scanned.
- Jolter 2y ago
  The government's failure there is that they issued a faulty ID to the conman, of course. I think the victim should be entitled to damages from the state for that fault, and also for the false sentence he received.
- snowe2010 2y ago
  He had his ID. They just didn’t believe him when he provided it.
EvanAnderson 2y ago
The responsible party, in the case of the Federal government failing to provide a national ID, is the contingent American citizens who are rabidly against the idea of national ID.
balderdash 2y ago
I mean it’s pretty easy to get, probably less so if you have mental issues
- Jolter 2y ago
  Yes, the government ID being easy to get is precisely the problem in this scenario.
kelnos 2y ago
The US government isn't responsible for that failing. The people of the US generally do not want a national ID, and elect their representatives accordingly.